Railway Herald
Sunday on 31st August 197No. 5 and the 1857 built George England 0-4-0WT ‘Shannon’ is steaming past admiring crowds as a proud member of the Shildon cavalcade that celebrated the 150th anniversary of the opening of the Stockton & Darlington Railway The locomotive was built in 1857 for the owner of the Sandy and Potton Railway where it ran until being sold to the L&NWR in 1862. In 1878 it was sold on to the Wantage Tramway, where she survived until closure in 1946 and was subsequently bought by the GWR and put on display at Wantage Road station. When the station closed in 1965 ‘Shannon’ escaped and was eventually moved to Didcot in January 1969, magically being restored to operation later that year.
Denis Lewis
