Fundraisers hope to buy 134-year-old Oxfordshire garden locomotive

A rail trust is campaigning to buy a 134-year-old Indian steam locomotive which has spent nearly two decades on a track in a private garden.

Locomotive 19B, a relic of the Darjeeling Himalayan Mountain Railway, belonged to former Chiltern Railways chairman Adrian Shooter, who died in December.

He ran it on a mile-long track at his home in Steeple Aston, Oxfordshire.

The Darjeeling Tank Locomotive Trust hopes to buy it at auction on 21 June.

The locomotive ran on Mr Shooter's one-mile (1.6km) track in his Oxfordshire garden

Trust chairman Jeremy Davey said: "We know that there are people of substantial means around the world who are very attracted by this locomotive.

"We're up against potentially other museums... [or] someone who just wants it on a whim and has an enormous amount of money, wants to take it to his home, build a railway and just run it in private."

The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, pictured in about 1910, included steep ascents and narrow turns

Mr Davey said the trust had met its minimum fundraising target but was hoping to attract more money to increase its bid.

He said the locomotive would be based at the rail museum at Statfold Country Park, near Tamworth, and would be used to attract a more diverse heritage railway workforce including British Asians.

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

Mr Shooter's property up for auction includes a Model T Ford, modified to run on rails

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

Mr Shooter's property from The Beeches garden railway is expected to fetch £350,000, auctioneers HJ Pugh said.

Other lots include a 1930 locomotive from the Post Office railway beneath London and a Model T Ford modified to run on rails.