Geograph - photograph every grid square

These two small locomotives storm up the bank, with a heavy train. Note the dry stone embankment; one of many on the Ffestiniog Railway.

‘Palmerston’ is named after Viscount Palmerston - a Liberal Prime Minister - and was one of the original four 0-4-0 engines built by George England in 1863/4. She was constructed with a domed boiler, benefiting from the trials of the first batch of these locomotives delivered. In 1880, she was then fitted with a saddle tank to improve adhesion.

Blanche was built by the Hunslet Engine Company in Leeds for the Penrhyn Quarry Railway (PQR) in 1893 for the princely sum of £800. She is named after Blanche Georgina Fitzroy (1865-1944) the wife of the owner of the PQR.

Blanche came to the FR in 1963, the year after her sister Linda, and the pair of them quickly became the mainstay of the fleet. Originally an 0-4-0 she has been rebuilt as a 2-4-0, fitted with a tender, new piston valve cylinders and been superheated, most of this being done in a 1972 overhaul. She then ran consistently until withdrawn for overhaul in 1989. A major volunteer led overhaul returned Blanche to traffic just in time for her 100th birthday celebrations which starred Linda, Blanche and their older brother Charles.
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