Home Steam Locos No. 10 G.H.Wood
10-cmte

 

Fleet No.: 10
Builders: Beyer, Peacock & Co., Manchester
Year Built: 1905
Works No.:   4662
Name: G.H. Wood
Wheel Arr.: 2-4-0
Weight: 20t, 10cwt (As Built)
Re-Boilered: 1926, 1946, 1993 (Ex-No.13), 2006
Service Mileage: 1,612,162 Miles (December 2011)
Status: In Traffic

 

 

The first of two 1905 purchases, No. 10 is named after the railway's one-time company secretary and director George Henry Wood and indeed when new, so proud was the director of his namesake that he posed for photographs in front of the locomotive, the photos then being reproduced on his Christmas cards!  As the first of the larger class of locomotives on the line, she was a regular performer and rarely out of service, operating mostly on the south line.
 

 

She worked through the Ailsa years to nationalisation but was withdrawn in 1977 with a defective boiler and dismantled.  At this time she was stored in Douglas Workshops and it wasn't until 1992 when sister No. 13 was withdrawn that she was reconditioned and launched at Easter 1993
 

 

As part of the Year Of Railways marking the centenary of the Manx Electric Railway the locomotive returned to service sporting a darker green livery and red/black/red lining scheme akin to that used during the line's earliest days. She remains in service today, after a spell with a slight colour scheme change to black/yellow lining, then into "fleet" livery of indian red, and is now running in the spring green livery of the Ailsa years.  She was until 2009 the only current fleet member not to carry chimney numerals.  Manx Northern Railway No. 4 Caledonia (see separate entry) had her numerals removed in early 2007 but this was owing to an inconsistency in numbering only.  However when No. 12 Hutchinson regained her tank mounted numerals in the summer of 2009 her chimney numerals removed to be historically consistent with he livery.
 

 

In July 2008 to commemorate 40 years since the Peel and Ramsey lines closed No. 10 was chosen, due to her livery, to masquerade as No. 5 Mona, the latter being the locomotive to have hauled the last trains on the closed sections.  Today the locomotive remains in regular traffic in the spring green livery.  July 2011 saw the locomotive used to haul a Royal Train for the Duke of Gloucester who travelled between Ballasalla and Douglas, riding the footplate between Port Soderick and Douglas.