5 inch gauge 2-8-4T "Dholpur"

A 5 inch narrow gauge Hunslet 2-8-4T "Dholpur" - about the largest Hunslet you're likely to come across. The prototype was built for export to India as late as the 1950s, although you need only look at "Russell", built for the North Wales Narrow Gauge Railways some fifty years earlier, to see where the design came from.

This one came in last year as part exchange against an even bigger locomotive (think twice as long, twice as heavy and twice as many cylinders...). Whilst the boiler was bought early on for the project, built by the estimable Morewood Boilers, the engine itself wasn't finished until nearly thirty years later - it was first steamed in 2014.

Very much a gentle giant, the large boiler makes steam freely, the engine runs well - there's some video of it here.

Now, if they could bring one of these back to Porthmadog...