Bideford, Westward Ho! & Appledore 2-4-2 Locomotives in Great_Britain

Class Grenville (Locobase 8034)

Data from [], accessed 26 December 2006. See also "The Bideford, Westward Ho! and Appledore Railway", Railway Magazine, Volume 37, pp. 404-406. See also "Bideford, Westward Ho! & Appledore Railway"article on at [], last accessed 8 April 2017. Works numbers were 713-715 in 1901.

Kingsley and Torridge were the other two locomotives that made up this batch (works #713-715) of side tanks that made up the motive power for this delightfully named standard-gauge short line on Cornwall's Irish Sea coast.

Two qualities, one rare and one unique, distinguished this seven-mile line that outlined the peninsula from Bideford on the south coast to Appledore on the north. It was rare for a standard-gauge line to stand isolated from all other standard-gauge railways and Westward Ho! is unique in having an exclamation point as part of its official place name.

Aaccording to the Westward Ho! village website (whose motto is "There's more to the village than you might imagine"), the village was named for the location of the best-selling 1855 novel by Charles Kingsley. Disregarding the fact that "Westward Ho!" was actually about Bideford, the Northam Burrows Hotel and Villa Building Company noted that the novel had "excited increased public attention to the western part, more especially, of this romantic and beautiful coast. Nothing but a want of accommodation for visitors has hitherto prevented its being the resort of families seeking the advantages of sea bathing, combined with the invigorating breezes of the Atlantic.ö

According to the Wikipedia account, maximium speed outside of the towns could run as high as 30 mph for the two-coach, 120-passenger trains. In town, the 97-short-ton trains were limited to 4 mph. The engines wore skirts extending down to the rails to shroud the motion, reducing the risk of entangling citizens in the running gear, and featured full-size "cow catcher" pilots.

The Hunslet tanks served this little railroad until it was requisitioned by the British Ministry of Munitions in 1917. Although some thought was given to reviving the line for civilian traffic after the World War I, it never did. The three locomotives remained in service with the Ministry of Munitions in South Wales. Only Kingsley's fate is known (scrapped in 1937 after sale to the National Smelting Company).

However,: "Grenville and Torridge were loaded onto the captured German freighter Gotterdammerung for duty in France, but the ship was torpedoed off the north Cornwall Coast and sank."

"The wreck was discovered in 2001 and the locomotives may be recovered for restoration as static displays."