Craig Alderson (left) of Shildon and a Conservation Workshop Trainee is watched by Coordinator Bill Brown. © Locomotion

Shildon, a town once famous for its locomotive manufacturing has turned back the clock to produce a locomotive for the first time in over 20 years.

The Woolmer steam locomotive is the first restored vehicle to come out of the conservation workshops at Locomotion: the National Railway Museum at Shildon and the first since the Shildon Wagon Works closed in 1984. It made its debut this weekend as part of the museum’s ‘Cab It’ event.

Originally built in 1910 by Avonside of Bristol The Woolmer locomotive worked on the Longmoor Military Railway in Hampshire until 1954. It arrived at Locomotion in 2005 and restoration work began in the early part of 2007 as part of the museum’s Learning in Motion project.

“We picked Woolmer up as a rusting, dismantled and sad locomotive and we had a three dimensional jigsaw puzzle to finish as the previous owner had already stripped her down ready for restoration,” explained Bill Brown, Workshop Coordinator.

Woolmer was launched by Alan Williamson, until recently Director of Corporate Affairs at the Post Office. © Locomotion

“We set a completion target as the “Cab It” event, and are bang on time. We can now look forward to the next project, a Great Eastern Railway saloon coach in what is just the start of the rolling project to restore collection vehicles.”

Over 800 visitors turned up over the weekend to welcome Woolmer at the Cab It event, which allows people access to many of the cabs of the locomotives at Locomotion.

As the first locomotive to be overhauled at Shildon since the Shildon Wagon Works closed amidst much local acrimony and controversy in 1984, the restoration was particularly poignant for Craig Alderson, one of the workshop trainees.

“My father was one of the last apprentices at the Shildon Works and it is great for me to be one of the first in the recently opened conservation workshop,” he explained. “The variety of skills I have learnt since March is amazing and we cover just about every trade in this line of work and at a highly skilled level.”

In its heyday the works were amongst the most famous and productive in the country and formed the terminus of the Stockton & Darlington Railway, when it opened in 1825. A section of them now forms part of the museum, which features a display about the works' closure and the devastating impact on the local community.