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Class 33 Crompton No. 33110 (the former D6527) was working on the Bodmin & Wenford Railway today in place of the rostered Class 37 No. 37142.

Built at the Birmingham Railway Carriage and Wagon Company’s Smethwick works D6527 entered traffic in October 1960 allocated to Hither Green depot on the Southern Region of BR. The Push-Pull equipment, enabling working with the 4TC trailer cars over the then unelectrified line to Weymouth, was fitted at Eastleigh Works in April 1967, the additional air pipes under the cab windows earned the Class 33/1 sub-class the nickname ‘Bagpipes’. The Crompton’s were one of the locomotive classes where the ‘TOPS’ renumbering did not run in sequence and thus 6527 became 33110 in February 1974. Final withdrawal came in September 1992 after nearly 3 years of restricted Engineers Departmental use and 33110 arrived on the Bodmin & Wenford Railway in December 1993, it worked its first train on the line in March 2000 after a long overhaul. The current faded and flaking Engineer’s Grey Livery made its debut in September 2009 and is an authentic view of how 33110 would have looked in its final BR years.

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All images by Mark Simpson