Bourne Valley Tramway 0-4-0 Locomotives in Great_Britain

Class Mars (Locobase 5981)

According to Alan Wilson, writing in the Industrial Railways society journal reproduced on [], Mars was produced in 1915 -- Avonside works # 1701 -- as a substitute for the drafted Pioneer (Locobase 5980), so the name seems somehow appropriate.

Although bigger than Pioneer with greater staying power in theory, the locomotive offered no more tractive effort and was rated at the same single clay car weighing 9 tons. Pioneer and Mars served the BVR together until World War II, when Mars was sold to British Periclase Company of West Hartepoole in 1942.

Class Pioneer (Locobase 5980)

Data from Alan Wilson, " The Bourne Valley Tramway", The Industrial Railway Record, No 1 (November 1962), p. 18-19 at [], last accessed 18 September 2022. Works number was 336 in 1889.

Willson wrote that the BVR was a 1 1/4-mile (2 km) long line near Poole Bay in Dorset that connected Sharp, Jones & Company's clay deposits to the drying areas. Pioneer was the line's first locomotive, arriving 28 June 1889 and immediately giving good service. Although apparently a strong engine, Pioneer's train was limited to one clay car of 9 tons because the gradients were so adverse (the downgrade was 1 in 22 (4.5%).

A stint in the military during World War I interrupted service on the BVR, but that railway regained the Pioneer after the war. A 1938 rebuild introduced a new boiler and substituted a steel firebox for the original copper version. Pioneer continued in service until the line was pulled up in 1948, at which point the aged engine was scrapped. (The locomotive had pulled the train that carried the dismantled railway.)