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Volunteers buy 134-year-old Oxfordshire locomotive

Jeremy Davey 19B on The Beeches garden railwayJeremy Davey
The locomotive ran on Mr Shooter's one-mile (1.6km) track in his Oxfordshire garden

Volunteers who operated a unique 134-year-old steam locomotive have bought it at auction for £250,000.

The Darjeeling Himalayan Mountain Railway steam locomotive belonged to the late Adrian Shooter, former boss of Chiltern Railways.

The buyers said they were in "complete shock" and have set up a locomotive trust which they hope will encourage younger and more diverse enthusiasts.

The train and two carriages are moving to a country park in Staffordshire.

Trust chairman Jeremy Davey said he thought the idea initially was "completely barking".

"We had this idea over dinner in January when we set up the trust. A lot of people thought they've not got a hope in hell," he added.

The group managed to raise £300,000 in three months, which they used to buy the locomotive as well as two blue Darjeeling carriages.

Mr Davey said he thinks the former Chiltern boss would be "absolutely over the moon".

He added: "We feel like without telling us he set us this challenge and we've completed it."

Mr Shooter picked up the running of Chiltern, after it had been threatened with closure in the 1980s.

He ran Locomotive 19B on his working narrow-gauge railway, The Beeches Light Railway, in Steeple Aston, Oxfordshire for almost two decades, before his death in December.

Adrian Shooter built the railway line in his garden and invited the BBC to see it in action in April 2022

A railway enthusiast by nature, Mr Shooter was also the President of The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway Society, a preservation and support group founded in 1998, with a membership of over 750 people across 20 countries.

The trust will move the train to Statfold Country Park, a narrow gauge railway museum near Tamworth.

The volunteers are expected to move to Statfold who have welcomed the team with "open arms", according to Mr Davey.

ALAMY A single loop in the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, India, c 1910ALAMY
The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, pictured in about 1910, included steep ascents and narrow turns

Built in 1889, 19B is the only engine of its kind to leave India and has the oldest working locomotive boiler in the world.

The 48-mile (88km) Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, built in 1879, once took tea from the Makaibari plantation to the Bengal Plains.

A Ford Model T converted to run on rails, which was also part of Mr Shooter's collection, sold for £25,000.

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