A GREAT Western Railway steam locomotive, which once worked on the branch lines of South Devon, is being returned to active life at Williton on the West Somerset Railway.

The loco has been restored by a team at West Somerset Restoration, and its boiler work carried out at Buckfastleigh’s South Devon Railway.

Number 4561 is a GWR ‘Small Prairie’ tank engine which was built at Swindon in 1924. It first came to Devon to work on local trains in 1930 when it was allocated to Laira locomotive shed in Plymouth. A year later it moved to Newton Abbot where its duties included passenger and local goods trains on branch lines between Brent and Kingsbridge, the Moretonhampstead branch and the line between Totnes and Ashburton.

In 1941 4561 moved to Truro and for the next two decades the engine alternated its home locosheds between Truro and Newton Abbot, until it was withdrawn at the end of 1961.

After spending time in the scrapyard at Barry in South Wales it was purchased by the West Somerset Railway Association for working passenger trains between Bishops Lydeard, near Taunton, and Minehead. Williton is the mid-point of the 20-mile line, between the Quantock Hills and the Bristol Channel coast.

Work on the latest overhaul is being carried out by the team at West Somerset Restoration which includes apprentices funded by the WSRA as part of its remit to train engineers, both in traditional skills and for the future. Other projects being worked on at the Williton workshops include further steam engines and historic carriages and wagons.

There’s an opportunity to see the ongoing work when the workshop doors of West Somerset Restoration open on April 29 and 30, as part of the West Somerset Railway Spring Steam Gala.