This locomotive was built by John Fowler in Leeds in 1886 for the gravel tramway at Kiama in New South Wales. It was steam tested but was not used before the business failed.
The local council began liquidating the gravel tramway assets in 1889 and the locomotive was sold in the following year to a railway construction contractor building routes for the Queensland Government Railways.
After some years in Queensland the locomotive is thought to have been transferred to Tasmania by 1898 for breakwater construction duties at the entrance to Macquarie Harbour on the west coast.
The entrance to the harbour was the scene of several shipwrecks and had to be navigated by convict transport ships to the prison on Maria Island. Now tourists cruises operate around the Macquarie Harbour and feature a visit to the convict prison at Maria Island.
By 1944 the locomotive was stored in Hobart Station yard.
At some time in the 1940s it was purchased by a contactor for a dam construction project but the locomotive remained in store at Hobart until 1972 when donated to the Van Diemen Railway Society for preservation.
In 1974 the locomotive was transferred to the workshops of the Emu Bay Railway in Burnie where it was dismantled for restoration.
In 1981 it was relocated to the Don River Railway workshops at Don. After a long rebuild which included the fabrication of a new boiler the locomotive was returned to steam on the Don River Railway in September 2007.
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