Black Five 45305 the Drapers engine.

So named because it was to be scrapped

at Albert Drapers in Hull but thankfully

he kept it instead.

 

 

No.5305, curiously and unlike most preserved Black 5s, is usually known by its LMS number. It is an Armstrong Whitworth locomotive constructed in 1937. It spent its working life all over the more southerly sections of the former LMS network and saw its final allocation to Lostock Hall (in Preston), and  lasted to the end of main line steam on British Railways in the summer of 1968. It was then sent for scrap.

No.5305 became  the last locomotive on the scrap line of Drapers of Hull, who broke up 742 former BR locomotives. No.5305 was to have been the 743^rd and last, but it was decided to keep it and bring it back to full running order.

 

No.5305 was put in the care of the Humberside Locomotive Preservation Group and based at Hull Dairycoates MPD where it was eventually brought up to full main line standard. The locomotive left Hull Dairycoates in April, 1992 on the closure of that shed and went to RAF Binbrook in Lincolnshire. It arrived on the GCR 20^th November, 1996 and was returned to service in 2003. On 26^th April, 2005 the Mayor of Charnwood, Mike Jones, welcomed the Lord Mayor of Hull, John Fareham, to the Great Central Railway to re-name the engine “Alderman A E Draper’” using the plates used when the locomotive was first named in 1984. The locomotive remains in the ownership of A E Draper and Sons and is in the long term care of the 5305 Locomotive Association, the successor to the Humberside Locomotive Preservation Group.

 

Now at the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway. A long term visitor to the Railway, 5305 Locomotive Association’s LMS 5MT is normally based on the Great Central Railway.

 

http://kwvr.co.uk/