Manchester & Milford 4-4-0 Locomotives in Great_Britain

Class Aberystwyth (Locobase 10668)

Data from "Six-Coupled Goods Locomotive, Manchester & Milford Ry", The Locomotive Magazine, Volume XIV [14] (15 September 1908), p. 157-158 (See also "The Manchester & Milford Ry, Volume VIII [8] 10 January 1903, p. 30-33) and "Railways in West Wales Part 1B - Pembrokeshire - the Mainline Railways" on Roger Farnworth's blog at [], last accessed 22 September 2022. . Works number was 255. Boiler pressure is an estimate.

The clue to this railway's true location in western Wales comes from the locomotive's name. The port town lay at one end of this short railway and Pencader at the other; a total of 42 miles (68 km) of route were laid. Meanwhile, Milford remained at the end of a connecting line from Pencader and Manchester was over the hills and far away. The 1903 article on the line summarized its history as "....one of perpetual difficulty and misfortune." Traffic was never very great and several of the proposed linking sections were never completed.

Around the same time that the M&M was standing up, Manning, Wardle was delivering this commonplace six-coupled goods locomotive. True, the safety valve stand over the raised firebox looked rather like an amphora and the dome in the center of boiler stood like a large thumb. Otherwise, the engine was not markedly different from many other 0-6-0s operating at the time.

Aberystwyth endured until the M&M was taken over by the Great Western in the early 1900s. By then it had a new boiler and 17" x 24" cylinders. It was withdrawn in December 1906.