Eigiau Reservoir Tramway 0-4-0 Locomotives in Great_Britain

Class Eigiau (Locobase 8484)

Data from G J Mullis, "Locomotive Preservation, (3) Eigiau", Industrial Railway Record (#14, June 1967), pp. 55-57, 72, as preserved in the IR Society's online archives at [], accessed 31 May 2007.

G J Mullis actually found this little orphan near the Penrhyn Quarry where it had spent its latter days. O&K works #5668 had begun its service life supporting the construction of the Eigiau Reservoir near Llyn Eigiau in the Carneddau Range of Snowdonia in North Wales.

After the dam was completed, Eigiau operated for the Aluminium Corporation in Dolgarrog (downstream of the reservoir - see note below) and moved to Penrhyn Quarry, Bethesda, Caernarvonshire, North Wales in 1928.

[The Eigiau Reservoir Dam broke on 2 November 1925, when its poor construction and 26 inches of rain in 5 days proved insupportable. Water from the burst dam overwhelmed Coedty Reservoir farther down and the resulting flood engulfed the town of Dolgarrog, where 17 residents drowned.]

It appears that the parts that constituted the remains of Eigiau wound up at Alan Bloom's Bressingham Steam Museum Mullis's article details how he rescued Eigiau from its limbo in January 1963 and moved it to to his Coley Pits Farm in Wychbold (near Droitwich in Worcestershire), where he spent hundreds of hours replacing tubes, reworking the boiler lagging. By the time of the article's appearance in 1967, the Eigiau was ready for visitors to take a short ride on his 120-yard track.

The website for the Bredgar & Wormshill Light Railway (The Warren, Bredgar, Sittingbourne, Kent) -- [], accessed 1 June 2007 -- says it took ownership of the Eigiau in 1995.