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Rapier

This locomotive was built new for George Cohen & Sons for use at their Cuba Works in Swansea and was delivered in November 1937. After only a few months, the loco was returned to the manufacturers and then passed to the Chinnor Cement & Lime Co. Ltd. in Oxfordshire in March 1938. Here it was restricted, along with another two Rapiers and a Hunslet, to shunting in the quarries and washmills, the main haulage in the chalk pits being by two rope-worked lines. The railway at Chinnor closed in 1962, and in April 1966, the Rapier was acquired by Brockham Museum, where it was restored using parts of R&R 82 from The Ashover Light Railway. No. 80 came to Amberley along with the rest of the Brockham collection in 1981.

Very few of these machines, by narrow gauge locomotive standards, were built and there are now only two Ransomes and Rapiers still in existence; the other, 84, is still working in the peat industry in Ireland, although it has been heavily rebuilt.

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