Wigan Album

Barrie you forgot to mention it's a short tanked engine.
Keith should colourise this photo so the bloke asking what colour the engine was would know.

It's called Thomas and it's blue.

I have a hornby train just like this called Smoky joe. Black.

We have a 'Puffing Billy' similar to this on the Poppy Line, Nice to see it chuffing along.

When you say this loco ended up at Chequerbent Barrie , a good few years ago , I used to frequently see a loco in a scrapyard between the M61 motorway and the A6 at Chequerbent .

It’s a long time ago now , I forget how long , and I also forget the name of the owner of the scrapyard , but it seems possible that this may well have been the same loco that I saw .
Perhaps you’ll know .

Incidentally , the scrapyard was more or less situated on ( or at least very close to ) the former trackbed of one of the very first railway lines in this country .

[ and for “this country“ you can read “the entire world“ ]

I’m speaking of the line that ran from Bolton via what is now Atherleigh Way, to link up with the Manchester to Liverpool line at Kenyon Junction , close to Huskisson’s memorial plaque .

But you’ll no doubt already be aware of this I should imagine .

I too remember the steam engine at the Chequebent scrapyard. I use to drive a coach to Rochdale from Wigan, the route was Bolton, Bury, Heywood and Rochdale that was when the M61 and M62 was under construction.

The Engine is a Saddle tank for the Water. That means it's not a Tank and no need for a tender. The Saddle is on top of the boiler.

This particular engine was at Holt and Gordon scrapyard at the Chequebent, Westhoughton. I've no idea what happened to the engine or the scrapyard.

Thanks for that fellas , and yes you’re right Walter , Holt’s was the name I was struggling to recall .
And the year the M61 was under construction would have been around 69/70 , as McAlpine had a tarmac plant on the former Brackley colliery site just off the A6 between Little Hulton and what became the Plodder lane access junction .

The photo says "the Avonside ROBERT", however, the Avonside ROBERT is not the loco shown in that photo. It seems like some sort of misunderstanding has occurred.

Stop picking some of you...it Robert be told.

Well I never!--- thought that this uploaded Photo would cause such a ruction on Wigan World album. It was a simple request on the WW Communicate section ( which I won't join) that caught my eye, and as I had tracked down the 2 volumes of the 1991 books and purchased them some years ago thought I'd help out.