Whittingham Hospital Railway 0-4-0 Locomotives in Great_Britain

Class 1 (Locobase 8598)

Data from "The Whittingham Asylum Railway", Locomotive Magazine, Volume XXIV [24] (14 April 1918), pp. 59-60. See also [], accessed 29 July 2007. Works number was 304.

This locomotive was delivered to the mental asylum operated in Lancashire by the county. Located in a remote area of England on a tract "much of which consists of wild moorland and fells", even as late as 1918, the Asylum opened in 1873. At that time, its supplies came in by road.

This soon proved inadequate and a railway was built. Although a horse-drawn tramway originally was planned, the 1 1/2-mile (2.45-km) line opened in 1889 with a single locomotive. Grimsargh was the Preston & Longridge Railway terminus with the other end ending at the hospital. Both termini had station buildings and sidings. In 1918, LM reported that the railway carried 3,000 passengers/week and about 12,650 tons of goods/year. Three coaches on a train ran about nine times a day in additon to goods traffic.

In both World Wars, part of the Asylum (later hospital) served military patients. By the time of the LM report, the Asylum could accommodate 2,895 male and 1,816 female patients. (It wasn't until the 1930s that the actual patient population exceeded 3,000.)

This little saddle-tanker operated WHR trains for almost 60 years before being withdrawn in 1947 and scrapped. An 0-4-2ST sister joined #1 in 1904; see Locobase 8599.