Merry Christmas!

nevard_111225_BQ_DSC_0545_WEB, a photo by nevardmedia on Flickr.

When I took this photo around 0600 this morning, I quickly came to the conclusion that if a Christmas Pudding or Plum Pudding was a loco it would be a Beattie Well Tank, compact, un-athletic, well rounded, rich and oozing in character.

I hope you'll agree with me that it looks perfectly at home tootling about the sidings on Brewhouse Quay, so much so that history has been re-written, well in Nevardland anyway!

Imagine if when the delightful locomotives left Wadebridge shed for the last time in the early 1960's, that one of them at least was whisked up to Bath to operate the tight curvy brewery sidings, an ideal task for a design which spent much of its life on the windy and curvy Wenford Bridge line. The loco would not only shunt the brewery rail-network, but would also perform the occasional trip working from the brewery to Bath Green Park goods.

Merry Christmas!