This locomotive was built in 1893 by Hudswell Clarke for Edmund Nuttall to work at Salford at the Ship Canal Dock. It was employed on construction projects which included the construction of the Castle Cary line for the Great Western Railway and the dismantling of the Liverpool Overhead Railway. It was also employed at a number of large housing estate construction sites.
As a locomotive designed to work for a contractor it was designed to weigh only 15½ tons. The small size of such locomotives was determined by the need for easy haulage by road, on a low loader towed by a steam traction engine. As most of these locomotives were narrow gauge Lord Mayor is somewhat unusual in being standard gauge.
Lord Mayor was later owned by Messrs Price and Wills and was used in dock construction in South Wales. From 1905 to 1908 (then owned by C W Wills and Company), the locomotive was used in the building of the Birmingham & North Warwickshire Railway. In 1914 it returned to Yorkshire for defence work at Spurn Head, spending the whole of the First World War on the railway there.
In 1920 it went south to Essex where Messrs Wills were building part of the Becontree housing estate. At the time the Becontree estate was said to be the largest housing estate in the world.
In 1934 it was sold to a Leicestershire quarry, the Cliffe Hill Granite Company, and it spent the next fourteen years moving stone from the quarry face to the crushing plant. In 1948 the locomotive was sold to Messrs George Cohen and Company, possibly as part of Cohen’s purchase of the scrap machinery after the quarry closed. Cohens used the locomotive to help dismantle the Liverpool Overhead Railway, and then as a shunter in their yard at Stanningley, near Leeds.
In 1966 it ended its working life with Messrs George Cohen who donated it to the Lord Mayor Trust for preservation and was moved to Haworth on the Keighley Worth Valley Railway (KWVR) in June 1968.
In August 1975 it was on static display at the Shildon Works of British Railways as part of the Stockton & Darlington Railway’s 150th Anniversary celebrations.
Lord Mayor visited the National Railway Museum, York in October 2005 as part of the centenary celebrations for The Railway Children.
It has been steamed on special occasions on the KWVR and since 1990 it has been owned by the Vintage Carriage Trust. It is currently not operational but is on display in the Vintage Carriage Trust Museum of Rail Travel at Ingrow.
Preserved British Steam Locomotives 