Stories

Back in 1993, we had a big black engine visit the railway, which was called a 4F. The 4 bit means it's a class 4 engine (British Railways had a class 0 which was very small through to a class 9 which was huge), the 'F' bit stands for freight engine.

This big black engine had no trouble pulling the four and five coach trains it had to pull even on the steepest part of the line. His driver didn't have to work him too hard and his fireman didn't have to shovel loads of coal onto his fire.

Just before he left the railway, he pulled a very special train. This was no ordinary train. It all started when two of our tank engine drivers started talking. They were talking how easy it was to drive and how powerful it was. Then one of them said, "I wonder just how many coaches this engine can pull?" "There's only one way to find out," said the other driver and they started to look around the sidings to see how many carriages they could find.

This was going to be a very big train. While the big black engine's fireman and driver started to get a really big fire ready, Primrose started shunting round the station. There were FOUR carriages in the platform. Primrose pulled three more carriages out of the sidings and coupled them up. Now there were FIVE, SIX, SEVEN carriages.

Then Primrose found two more EIGHT, NINE. The train was very long now, but they hadn't finished yet. Another carriage was shunted out of the yard, that made it TEN.

Then the old wooden Restaurant Car was carefully coupled on the front of the train.


"Have we any more carriages anywhere?" asked Primrose's driver. "There's one more carriage around the back of the engine shed," said her fireman "it doesn't look very pretty at the moment but I suppose we could use it."

So the last carriage was pulled out from behind the engine shed and added to the back of the train. This made the train up to a TWELVE-coach train - what a sight!

You could hardly see from one end of the train to the other, it stretched in fact from Embsay Station to Bow Bridge, that's about ¹/₄ of a mile!

The Big Black Engine was going to need every ounce of steam possible to pull this train. The Big Black Engine was coupled onto the front of the train and the fireman piled lots and lots of coal into the firebox.

The guard was in his brakevan right at the back of the train. He had to blow his whistle very loudly so the driver could hear him. The driver blew the engine's whistle and opened the regulator (the lever that makes the engine move).

Nothing happened.

So the driver opened the regulator a bit more... nothing happened... he opened it further still and then with an almighty "wooof" the Big Black Engine's wheels slipped forward. It took a bit of time for the engine to stop slipping because the train was very heavy. In total this train weighed about 400 tons! Once it had stopped slipping, it began to get faster and faster. The people standing on the platform at Embsay watched the train go past. They counted the coaches as it went past, one. two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve.

When the engine got past the engine shed the driver opened the regulator as far as it could go and the engine was really making a lot of noise. The fireman was having a hard time having to throw more and more coal onto the fire to make more steam.

When the huge train safely got to Stoneacre, everyone agreed that the engine was very strong but now they had the problem of getting the train back to Embsay. It had started to rain and it was too slippery for the big engine to push the train back to the station. So, Primrose chuffed up from Embsay, and with Primrose on the front and the Big Black Engine on the back, the train got safely back to Embsay.


The guard, the driver and the fireman had a long job putting all the coaches back where they had come from!