7 1/4 inch gauge MVR No.16 "Robert Snooks"

A large, commercial specification "Tinkerbell" - privately owned from new, the engine was built in the legendary Moors Valley Railway workshops and ran at that railway as their number 16, "Robert Snooks" in the hands of its owner and builder, himself a retired main line driver. The owner's day job shows throughout in the engine, cab is as close to driving main line on 7 1/4 inch gauge as you'll get - I spent a very happy day some years ago driving the engine and can confirm that "the office" is a very agreeable place to spend a few hours.

Welded steel boiler with expanded tubes, 100psi working pressure, feed by twin injectors. Cast iron cylinders with slide valves actuated by Walschaert's gear, mechanical lubricator. The engine is fitted with vacuum brake equipment, with gauge and driver's brake valve in the cab. There is a slacking pipe plumbed into the offside injector with diverter valve, providing a quick and highly effective means of washing down the footplate.

All axles run on sealed roller bearings, same with connecting and coupling rods. MVR have developed a house style for large, good looking engine that are capable of the heaviest commercial duties day in day out. If you haven't visited the railway I recommend it - an interesting run and superb motive power depot, with everything from Roger Marsh's original "Tinkerbell", up to large narrow gauge tender engines, all showing a common ancestry. There's a full inventory of their engines and details about the railway on their website here.

Built as an 0-4-4T the locomotive comes out at just over seven feet long excluding the couplings, we estimate it at about three quarters of a ton. The nameplates and works plates were removed on sale by the owner - we haven't retouched the paint beneath, given that it will almost certainly be having a new set of plates fitted (which for my money, given its history, would be replicas of the originals).