34105 Swanage

34105 Swanage was built at Brighton Works in 1950.

BR motive power depot allocations.

Date Arrived	Depot
March 1950	Bournemouth
August 1964	Eastleigh

Whilst based at Bournemouth, as well as performing on Waterloo – Bournmouth expresses it also worked to Bath over the Somerset and Dorset line.

In 1951 Swanage hauled the inaugural Royal Wessex from Weymouth to Waterloo.

In September 1959 whilst working a Bournemouth West to Newcastle train the locomotive caught fire at Pokesdown near Bounemouth.

When it was withdrawn in October 1964, having covered 623,405 miles in service, it was sold to Woodham Brothers at Barry for scrap where it arrived in February 1965. It remained there until March 1978 when it was purchased for preservation by Richard Hedder and moved to the Mid Hants Railway at Alresford.

It was restored to steam again in 1987 on the Mid Hants Railway and ran for ten years until withdrawn for overhaul. For a long time Swanage was stored out in the open at Ropley but has now been moved into the locomotive shed there for overhaul.

It was anticipated in 2018 that the locomotive would be returned to steam by mid 2021 or earlier

In February 2020 it had its driving wheels and trailing “delta” truck refitted on the wheeldrop at Ropley. The front bogie still needed to be installed but this has been left off in order to replace the centre cylinder casting. This will be the first time that a new centre cylinder has been fitted to a locomotive of this class in preservation. Whilst the cylinder to be replaced is not life expired it was thought questionable as to whether it would get through another ten year certificate period.

It was still thought in March 2020 that the locomotive would return to steam in mid 2021.