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Film engine funnel takes a new role
The funnel from the steam engine immortalised on film in The Railway Children has been retired to a new role – as a plant pot at the country's smallest full size railway station in Yorkshire.
Famed for its role on top of the Green Dragon, as the engine was called in the classic children's film filmed on location on the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway, the funnel was fitted when the train was built in 1887 for the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway.
More than a century later it has been installed as a plant pot at Damens Station, which is on the line where the 1970 film was shot.
By 1959 the engine was out of service and faced the scrapyard until enthusiast Dr Tony Cox bought it for preservation. He moved it to the Worth Valley Railway at Haworth before the line reopened to passengers 40 years ago.
It shot to fame, alongside Jenny Agutter, Bernard Cribbins and Sally Thomsett in the film.
The engine was eventually acquired by the Bowers 957 Locomotive Trust for restoration and in recent years has operated on Sunday afternoon trains on the Worth Valley line from Keighley to Ingrow West, Oakworth – where The Railway Children was filmed – Haworth and Oxenhope.
But a recent inspection revealed the funnel was cracked and beyond repair.
Keighley and Worth Valley Railway spokesman Jim Shipley said: "Clearly it was too historic or valuable to send for scrap so we decided to put it where the public could enjoy it – in a station garden as a plant pot."
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Weather for Yorkshire
Saturday 11 February 2012
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