Welcome to Andrew Briddon Locos

Most people collect things that are small and easily stored - like stamps. Others collect more esoteric things – Victorian glass bottles, beermats or similar. Not many people in the UK collect railway locos and full size ones at that!

a home

Thanks to my father's business, I was able to drive locos when aged 6, and by 12 I was quite competent enough to be left to drive while my father acted as shunter.

By age 13 I was campaigning for a loco of my own, and luckily my parents agreed, selecting a 30ton Yorkshire 0-4-0 diesel hydraulic on which my father's firm had been carrying out maintenance.

The chosen loco was owned by Ford but they refused to sell just one loco – there were two to go and Ford would not split them and so the two had to be purchased for me.

My collection was started and eventually reached 15 locos and a few other interesting railway bits. During 2009 I finished my university degree (earning myself a BEng) and after six years with Porterbrook Leasing and then a spell as Fleet Engineer with Colas Railfreight, I am currently working for a train operating company. In December 2012 I earned my Incorporated Engineer (IEng) status, on the path to becoming a Chartered Engineer.

By the summer of 2010, with too many locos spread over too many locations, the decision of one host railway forced me to reconsider the future of the collection and several were sold. Since then I have been consolidating the collection both in numbers and depth, and two of those sold in 2010 have subsequently been bought back. With the bulk of the collection now centered on Peak Rail, the 'Geoffrey Briddon Building', named in honour of my grandfather, has been developed at Darley Dale.  The collection currently has climbed back to 19-20, and hopefully in the future you will see more of them operating and fewer awaiting their turn. Nevertheless you might remember that this is a private collection and only my father and myself normally work on them in our spare time.

I hope you enjoy reading about my locomotives and the work done on them.

Weekend Rails blog site Late Sunday nights Click HERE to be taken straight to the site

 

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