3 Coppernob 0-4-0 Furness Railway Class A2

Power Classification
Introduced	1846
Designer	E Bury
Company	Furness Railway
Weight	19t 10cwt
Driving Wheels	4ft 9ins
Boiler Pressure	110psi
Cylinders	Inside – 14in x 24in
Tractive Effort	7,718lbf
Valve Gear

This is a good example of Bury’s 0-4-0 tender engines with bar frames.

On the Furness Railway (FR) the type continued to be built up to 1861 by W Fairburn & Son, who perpetuated the design after the original firm of Bury Curtis & Kennedy Ltd of Liverpool had ceased production.

3 was built in 1846 by Bury, Curtis, and Kennedy of Liverpool, a company with which the F.R.’s first locomotive superintendent, James Ramsden, had been an apprentice. It is a four-coupled version of Edward Bury’s popular bar-frame design of the period, with iron bar frames and inside cylinders, and is historically significant as the only survivor in the United Kingdom of this type. It is also one of the few items of rolling stock surviving from the Furness Railway whose Indian red livery it carries.

3 was nicknamed Coppernob because of the domed shape of its copper firebox, which was characteristic of Bury engines.

Furness Railway 3 hauled the first passenger train on the Furness Railway on the 24th August 1844. It shared with three other similar engines all traffic on the F.R. for around six years. Latterly it was used for shunting around the docks at Barrow-in-Furness and on local duties, being withdrawn in 1898.

At that time of withdrawal Coppernob and a class mate were the oldest engines still in service in the country.

It was installed in a large glass housing outstide the station at Barrow in Furness, and remained there, except for a visit to Wembley Exhibition in 1924/25, until the Second World War, when the glass case was damaged and the engine acquired shrapnel wounds from the German bombs.

The engine was removed to Horwich works until it was transferred to the railway museum that was established at Clapham.

It steamed again on the Furness line in 1996 as part of the Furness Railway 150th anniversary celebrations.

In 2014, it was placed on loan to the Dresden Transport Museum in Germany to take part in an exhibition celebrating the 175th anniversary of the Leipzig–Dresden railway due to its similarities to early locomotives built for the line.

Home Base

Current Status

Owner

National Railway Museum – York

Static display

National Railway Museum

NRM Object Number{1975-7015}