No. 705 was built by in 1937 as No. 2047 by Andrew Barclay & Sons Co. Ltd at the Caledonia works in Kilmarnock. It was built for the The Clyde Valley Electrical Power Company and was used at the Yoker power station near Glasgow, where it spent its entire working life as locomotive number 4.
Althouth it was withdrawn from service in the 1970s it was a few years later before it was sold to a company who planned to build a railway on the Orkney Islands but this scheme failed.
The locomotive remained stored at the Strathspey Railway until it was purchased by Mr. N.Jeary in 1991 and moved to the East Somerset Railway where the restoration was completed and the engine steamed again in 1994.
A number of similar locomotive were used by the Swansea Harbour Trust, and so taken into GWR ownership in 1923 and some survived into BR ownership. Therefore, No. 705 was restored in a fictitious GWR guise and was numbered 705, this number being the next vacant number in the range used by the GWR for this type of engine. No. 705 underwent boiler repairs in the summer of 1994 at Cranmore Workshop and was regularly used on off-peak services and footplate experience courses.
In late 1998, 705 was withdrawn from traffic again for further boiler repairs. It re-entered traffic in May 2000, in a fictitious BR Black livery in May 2000.
The locomotive was offered for sale and it was purchased by a Plym Valley Railway member in June 2011 and work on restoring it started in 2012.
The overhaul was completed in April 2018 and the locomotive returned to traffic on the Plym Valley Railway. It continues to carry the pseudo GWR identity of No 705.
Preserved British Steam Locomotives 