This is not going to be about the infamous beauty spot on the South Downs , but about building a replica locomotive of that name.

The original was built in Brighton Works in July 1911, its purpose along with the other 5 locos built around that time, was to haul trains between London and Brighton a distance of 52 miles in 1 hour.

The loco weighs in at 108 tons, that’s including the tender, ( loco 68.5 tons, tender 39.5 tons) this includes 4 ton of coal and 3500 gallons of water plus what was in the boiler and coal in the firebox.

In 1958 this loco was cut up for scrap at Eastleigh Works, the work force at the time were against it as it was the sole survivor but the powers at be said cut it up or your out of work, no choice really !!!!.

The building of the replica was muted back in October 2000, prior to this the Bluebell had acquired a Great Northern boiler from a factory in Essex, the loco works manager had been over there to chose one out of four that were there and after examining them picked the one we now have for our project.

The boiler was transported to the Bluebell Rly and laid in the boiler park for 20 years.

The project took off just over two years ago, but prior to this a there was an awful lot of work to be done before a start could be made. Our designer spent 2 years at least producing drawings, we now have between 80 to 90 out of about 200, these are all in feet and inches and our materials would you believe are in Metric, good game, good game…

The Brighton Atlantic Group was set up to raise money so that we could build and erect a purpose built workshop which contains the boiler, main frames and a tender, there is an office where all the drawings are kept, but most importantly, a kettle for tea, and a microwave oven because we are rather partial to warm doughnuts for the 11 o’clock tea break……

George Hopkins.

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