Lion & The Old Locomotive Committee

LION, an interesting ‘Old Locomotive’, built in Leeds in 1838 by Messrs Todd, Kitson and Laird for the Liverpool & Manchester Railway. Probably best known as taking a starring part in the film ‘Titfield Thunderbolt’.

“Lion is one of the key exhibits in The Great Port Gallery at the Museum of Liverpool.”

The Old Locomotive Committee seeks to promote activities, foster research, encourage communication, preserve artefacts and publish relevant information associated with the Locomotive ‘LION’.

Explore LION’s history and discover the information available to the researcher and modeller.

LIONSHEART

Scanned copies of early editions of ‘Lionsheart’ are available to OLCO members in a member’s only secure folder.

All 100 editions are now available. For access to these pages please contact the webmaster.

In January 1923 an interesting ‘Old Locomotive’ was noticed still doing duty as a pumping engine at the Graving Dock, Princes Dock on the River Mersey.

This locomotive was subsequently identified as LION, built in Leeds in 1838 by Messrs Todd, Kitson and Laird for the Liverpool & Manchester Railway and sold ‘Out of Service’ to the Mersey Docks & Harbour Board in 1859. She had been used as a pumping engine since 1871.

 Late in 1927, a number of members of the (now defunct) Liverpool Engineering Society, conscious of the recent Centenary of the Stockton & Darlington Railway and anxious that the Centenary of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway should reflect the greater importance of the latter enterprise, began to look towards seeking LION’s restoration and with this objective in view, formed themselves into an

Old Locomotive Committee.