The Erlestoke Manor Fund has announced it has moved 7802 Bradley Manor from Bridgnorth to Kidderminster to appear at the Severn Valley Railway’s Spring Steam Gala next weekend.

Because of a landslip between Bewdley and Bridgnorth in January, Bradley Manor was marooned at Bridgnorth end of the Railway.

However, an appeal by the Erlestoke Manor Fund shareholders raised sufficient funds to move the locomotive by road to Kidderminster.

The Spring Steam Gala from Good Friday, 18th to Easter Monday, 21st April will allow Bradley Manor to be operational once more after its recent overhaul.

It will also enable Bradley Manor to appear alongside classmate No. 7812 Erlestoke Manor for the first time since 2017.

It is planned that Bradley Manor’s first day back in service will be Good Friday, 18th April. After the gala, Erlestoke Manor will be on loan at the West Somerset Railway until the end of the 2027 season.

Towards the end of steam on the Western Region, named locomotives often appeared without their nameplates.

However, Danny Rowlands, the shed master at Aberystwyth, still managed to turn out Manors in clean condition, and adorned them with substitute Danny’s Bull names in white paint.

Both 7802 and 7812 were active at this time, and to replicate Manor class locomotives during their last months of service on the Cambrian lines in 1965, and just for this Gala event, Bradley Manor will appear without its nameplates. That condition will be similar to when, with Erlestoke Manor, it hauled the Cambrian leg of a Ffestiniog Special on 1st May 1965.

“Nearly six years’ work by both Tyseley Loco Works and EMF volunteers together with a spend exceeding a quarter of a million pounds has enabled 7802 to be fitted with a completely new cylinder block, a new right hand cylinder cover, new pistons and rings, new piston rods, new valve sleeves, new valve heads and new valve rings. In other words, the working front end of the loco is brand new!”

Terry Jenkins, Erlestoke Manor Fund Trustee and Engineering Lead for the overhaul project