Whilst the Isle of Man Railway was a remains primarily a steam-operated railway system, there have been various other methods of motive power employed over the years. It is interesting to note that it wasn’t until the arrival of the railcars from the County Donegal Railway in 1961 that the railway branched out into anything other than steam, although alternative motive power had been mooted for several years previously. More recently the name Viking was finally allocated in 1993 when No. 17 was inaugurated (the name having previously been intended for No. 3 which of course became Pender in honour of a company director) and the latest addition has been No. 18 Ailsa, finally making the fleet numbers of the railcars consistent - their original numbers of 19 and 20 were retained when they arrived on the island.

A WORD ON FLEET NUMBERING

Whilst the railway's operational fleet follow a direct numbering scheme, the same cannot be said about the various items below; to complete the lineage of this section we have taken the liberty of adding our own fleet numbers for the sake of reference, using the fact that one of the Wickham Trolleys had No. 23 transfers added (albeit unofficially) in the past.  We have therefore numbered these two trolleys and the two Motor-Rail units as listed below.  No. 21 has been omitted from the list, simply because although it is not currently used, it is to be allocated to a proposed new diesel locomotive (as detailed in Issue No. 153 of Manx Steam Railway News), and so this will be added at a later date.  We always welcome feedback from visitors and look forward to hearing from anyone who has an opinion on this purely unofficial numbering system . . .