What, when or where?  Images from the SLS collections. (Last updated - 26 June 2021)

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Image name jacobs_5.jpg Number 2943 Hampton Court at Hastings Miniature Railway

The image below is from the SLS Library (Stanford Jacobs Collection) and was presented to us over the winter of 2008/9.  Some photographs were annotated but others were not.  Some of these have previously been featured in the What, When, Where? page, this is one of those with the history behind the image now researched and written up. Thank you's go to Andrew, David Colley, Dave Holroyde, Richard Pearson, Chris Krupa, Jez Kirkwood, Simon Moore, SteveK, PLD, Peter Ellingworth and Stationmaster for the information supplied either directly or through an on-line forum. 

The image is one of a set of three all of locomotives that have surviived into the C21 and all having the common connections of having run previously at the Dudley Zoo miniature railway.

Image name jacobs_5.jpg  The original print has no annotation. 

However detective work has confirmed it to have been taken at the Hastings Miniature Railway at the Fish Market end and the locomotive is No 2943 Hampton Court.  2943 survived the major changes at Hastings and is now based at Stapleford.  

2493 was built in 1938 by Twinning to 10 1/4" gauge and before arrival at Hastings had previously worked at Dudley Zoo Cleethorpes, Lowestoft and Hunstanton. The car in the back ground  is a Ford Popular (103E) and the photograph has to be after 1959 as the locomotive is in rebuilt condition. In June 2021 further information was received dating the image to 1961 0r 1962 and a possible name for the driver.

A chronology for the locomotive is as follows:-

1. 10 1/4" 4-4-2 begun G&SLE, completed Twinings Models in 1939 and supplied new to Dudley Zoo as No 3.
2. 1944 owned by E Dove and used on temp lines
3. by 1950 at Cleethorpes as number 1944
4. by ???? at Lowestoft
5. by 1956 at Hunstanton
6. by February 1957 auctioned
7. in 1958 to Hastings, where rebuilt by JB Hughes as 2943 HAMPTON COURT, therefore the image is from after 1959
8. by 1974 ownership had passed to M Bamford
9. In 1981 at the Stapleford Miniature Raliway where rebuilt by N Simkins in 1990