Nocton Potato Estate 0-6-0 Locomotives in Great_Britain

Class unknown (Locobase 21027)

Data from "0-6-0 Tank Locomotive for Hauling Potatoes," Locomotive Magazine, Volume VII [7] (15 November 1926), p. 348. See also Frank Jux, John Fowler & Co.. Locomotive Works List, self-published (1985), supplied to Locobase by Allen Stanley from his extensive Rail Data Exchange Collection; " Nocton Estate - The Lincolnshire Potato Railways: Nocton Estate Light Railway "29 May 2007 blog entry on the Nocton in Lincolnshire website at [], last accessed 20 June 2022; and History of the Nocton Estates Light Railway" posted 12 March 2011 on the All Saints Church, Nocton, Lincolnshire Online Magazine at [], last accessed 20 June 2022. Works number was 16991 in October 1926 (NB: Fowler works numbers were applied consecutively to all machinery they produced.)

J H Dennis, a potato grower in Linconshire, ordered this small six-coupled steam engine when his petrol-powered locomotives couldn't muscle up a 1/2 mile, 2 1/2% grade on his quite-narrow gauge railway. The Fowler was rated at 204 tons hauling power on the level, 128 tons up 1/2%, 94 tons up 1%, and 50 tons up the 2 1/2% up even badly laid 20 lb/yard (10 kg/metre) rails.

The 2007 Church's blog post comments regrettfully on W Dennis and Sons' upheaval of the "idyllic Lincolnshire countryside forever at the end of World War I. He did so by dismissing the 26 tenant farmers "from the edge of the Lincoln Heath to the Fens", leaving their vacant homesteads to be demolished. To further eradicate the small scale, his estate felled woods and uprooted hedgerows.

As a result, Dennis created an 8,000 acre (12.5 sq m/32.5 sq km) spread to grow barley, beets, potatoes, and wheat. The 2007 Nocton blog notes it was the largest of the Lincolnshire Estates, which also included Deeping St Nicholas (2,000 acres) and Kirton (2,000 acres). In the beginning, four miles (6.4 km) of ex-World War I light military railways line was laid east of Wasp's Nest. In 1926, the line extended to the junction with the Lincoln to Sleaford's LNER (ex-Great Northern) main line. Altogether, the Estate operated 23 miles of single track and 30 miles in total.