Alderney 0-6-0 Locomotives in Great_Britain

Class 1 (Locobase 20344)

Data from "The Railways of the Channel Islands--The Alderney Railway, Ltd", Locomotive Magazine, Volume 20 (14 March 1914) p. 126-127. See also Charles Bertram Black; Guernsey, Jersey, Herm, Sark, Alderney and Western Normandy (London: A & C Black, 1891), p. 87; and "Alderney Breakwater damage worst in years", Guernsey Press, 6 January 2018, online at [].; last accessed 8 February 2018. Works number was 231 in 1880.

Alderney is the northernmost inhabited island of the Channel Islands dependency, which lie in the English Channel (La Manche) north of Brittany (Bretagne) and 8 miles west of the Cotentin peninsula in Normandy (Normandie). In 1891, Black's guidebook reported that from steamboat distance, Alderney's appearances was "wild and gloomy", but the writer reassured his readers that "with exception of the heights on the southwest, which are covered with heath, the land is generally cultivated and fertile."

On the north coast, engineers built the Alderney Breakwater in 1847, a 0.9 mile (1.45 km) quay protecting Brays Harbour. Along this breakwater for its whole length ran the Alderney Railway then farther east to the Admiralty quarry at Mannez, whose sandstone blocks replenished the breakwater's structure. That such restoration was needed is underlined by the extensive damage wrought by a January 2018 storm: " a combination of gale force winds and a strong spring tide meant it sustained a worse pounding than usual. Around 12 granite blocks, measuring about a metre and a half in length, broke off the seaward side of the breakwater and were brought over the top by the force of the water on Wednesday."

The saddle-tank Hunslet still pulled wagons of stone in 1914, but it had not been updated and its boiler pressure was then set to 100 psi (7 bar). When the Channel Islands Granite Co Ltd took over the railway in 1923, it replaced both the 1 and a Peckett 0-4-0ST with the "Nitro", a Manning Wardle 0-6-0ST

(The first passenger service began in 1980 and was served by a two-car trolley and a W G Bagnall 0-4-0T locomotive (1931) named JT Daly, It pulled two open wagons fitted with lightweight roofs until the early 1990s before being sold to the Pallot Steam Museum.)