Furness Railway No.3, "Old Coppernob", is a preserved English steam locomotive. It acquired its nickname because of the copper cladding to its dome-shaped "haystack" firebox.
It was built in 1846 by Bury, Curtis, and Kennedy of Liverpool, a company with which the F.R.'s first locomotive superintendent, James Ramsden, had been an apprentice. It is a four-coupled version of Edward Bury's popular bar-frame design of the period, with iron bar frames and inside cylinders, and is historically significant as the only survivor in the United Kingdom of this type. It is also one of the few items of rolling stock surviving from the Furness Railway whose Indian red livery it carries.
It shared with three other similar engines all traffic on the F.R. for around six years. Latterly it was used for shunting around the docks at Barrow-in-Furness and on local duties, being withdrawn in 1900.
It is now housed in the National Railway Museum, York. It has shrapnel wounds from German bombs, acquired during World War II when it was displayed in a glass pavilion at Barrow-in-Furness railway station.
In February 2007, No. 3 had one of its shedplates stolen at York.
Famous quotes containing the word railway:
“Her personality had an architectonic quality; I think of her when I see some of the great London railway termini, especially St. Pancras, with its soot and turrets, and she overshadowed her own daughters, whom she did not understand—my mother, who liked things to be nice; my dotty aunt. But my mother had not the strength to put even some physical distance between them, let alone keep the old monster at emotional arm’s length.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)