Description
No.5820 was built by Lima in 1945 and sent straight to Poland as part of the war effort. At the end of hostilities the engine was taken into Polish State Railways stock as TR203-474 and later gained an ALCO boiler from another class member. The engine was mostly based at the Katowice steam shed in Silesia, but was eventually withdrawn and preserved at the Polish Railway Museum in Warsaw. An approach by a member of the Diplomatic Corps in the late 1970s led to the engine being made available for purchase and use on the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway.
Photo courtesy Alun Hughes, with thanks.
It arrived in November 1977 and entered traffic the following year with its Polish number and livery. The engine briefly ran on the mainline, working to Shipley to turn on the triangle, ready for filming ‘Yanks’ for which the engine was repainted in original livery and number 5820. Following a period out of use from 1992 the engine returned to service in 2014, operating regularly until the expiry of its boiler certificate in 2023. During this period it carried its original number and livery.
Each model features factory-fitted speakers in the smokebox and tender, dual LED firebox glow with dynamic fire draw effect, a large twin flywheel motor, detachable loco and tender connections, pickups on all driving and tender wheels alongside a tender mounted 21-pin DCC decoder socket. DCC Sound versions will be fitted with an ESU LokSound5 decoder and our own sound project.
