Appeal launched for £150k to overhaul steam locomotive 76077’s boiler

Standard class 4 2-6-0 no. 76077's owner, Toddington Standard Locomotive Ltd (TSLL), has launched an appeal to raise £150,000, the estimated cost of overhauling the locomotive's boiler.

TSLL revealed its plan to do this to its shareholders at the company's Annual General Meeting in November 2023.

The loco itself is currently at Locomotive Maintenance Services' (LMS) Loughborough workshops, but the boiler is at the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Steam Railway's (GWSR) Toddington depot.

A professional boiler inspection will identify the work that needs to be done, and will inform the tender document, which the company is sending to selected boiler workshops.

The boiler is numbered 1052, and was built at Darlington in 1952. It was overhauled at Eastleigh in 1964, and three years later the engine was withdrawn from service. As a result, the boiler is in good general condition, but some important work will need to be carried out, including:

• replacing although both the parallel front section of the boiler barrel and the front tubeplate
• repairing some corrosion pitting at the bottom of the tapered barrel section
• new studs for the dome cover
• cutting out and replacing corroded platework at the front corners of the firebox throat plate
• building up wasted metal on the backhead
• refinishing the pads and fitting new studs for manifold, backhead fittings and other boiler mountings
• replacing rivets and patch screws within the copper firebox
• replacing Monel stays and stay nuts as necessary
• replacing crown stay nuts and repair copper stay heads
• replacing foundation ring rivets
• supplying and fitting the 156 smoke tubes and 24 flue tubes.

The company is aiming to have the locomotive steaming by December 2026. This will be its seventieth birthday, and will be the first time that it has steamed since its withdrawal from service in 1967.,

When its overhaul is complete, 76077 will join the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Steam Railway's fleet, and is likely to visit other heritage railways on a loan basis.

Full information and a brochure is available here, and can be requested from info@standard76077.com

The boiler was part of the first batch of Standard no.7 boilers to be built, and was completed in 1952 at Doncaster. The Standard class 4 2-6-0's boiler design is based on the boiler fitted to the Ivatt class 4 2-6-0.  It was first fitted to no. 76007, built in Horwich was supplied to British Rail's Southern Region.

When 76007 was overhauled at Eastleigh Works in 1958, its boiler was removed and re-fitted to Southern Region sister no. 76012.  In January 1964, 76077 moved from its depot in Sutton Oak, St. Helens to Eastleigh works for overhaul, as the works at Horwich, which was much nearer, was no longer carrying out general overhauls.

While 76077 was at Eastleigh, it had the overhauled boiler no 1052 fitted, together with its original SR smokebox, which can be identified by the additional SR lamp/disk brackets on the smokebox door.  Eastleigh works records note that the lower half of the firebox had new copper stays fitted, replacing the original Monel stays, and that new nuts were fitted to the remaining Monel metal stays. New tubes were also fitted.

76077 was outshopped in February 1964 and went to the Southern Region for several weeks, before going back to its home shed at Sutton Oak shed in mid-April that year. The 8G shedplate was never re-fitted.

The 76077's original boiler – no. 1799, built at Swindon, was removed at Eastleigh, overhauled and re-fitted to Sutton Oak sister 76079, which survives in preservation on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway.

One hundred and twenty Standard no. 7 boilers, including five spares, were built for the class at Darlington, Doncaster, Swindon and Crewe. The last was built in 1960 at Crewe.

Andrew Meredith, TSLL's Engineering Director, said, “While it would be possible to carry out repairs, the cost of replacement isn't too much greater than the labour and material costs of repair.  Fitting these new items will help ensure trouble-free operation over the first ten-year boiler insurance certificate and minimise the amount of work that might otherwise be needed at the next overhaul.

“The boiler has suffered over the past 50 years, being stored outside firstly in the salt sea air at Barry scrapyard and then at Toddington. But it is fundamentally sound and I'm confident that after the overhaul, it will give good service for the foreseeable future.

“We are on target to meet that date [December 2026] despite delays during Covid. However, to meet our deadline it's vital that we raise the necessary money for the boiler overhaul as quickly as we can, so that we can press on with the overhaul without interruption due to lack of funds.”

Marketing Director Ian Crowder said, “The boiler overhaul project has got off to a good start with almost £10,000 banked already.  It's important that we raise a ‘fighting fund' to get the work started sooner rather than later but we will also launch a component sponsorship scheme to fund specific elements of the overhaul, such as tubes and stays.

“76077 may not be a glamorous locomotive with a fancy name. It spent its working life in handling goods traffic in and around the industrialised North West. But as a modern heritage locomotive it counts among the most useful and easiest to maintain and operate.

“What's more, the very fast pace of restoration seems to have captured the imagination of so many people: in less than ten years, we are transforming an incomplete and corroded kit of parts into a living, functioning locomotive.”