Chuffed to have you home, big man

IT WAS nearly 200 tonnes of proudly built, but rusting, Glasgow steam engineering about to be shipped to China and turned into cars.

However, this massive locomotive was rescued from a South African railway siding and has been returned to its home city on a perilous journey by rail and sea.

And yesterday, restoration work started on the class 15F monster as part of a £300,000 project to make it the centrepiece of Glasgow's new Riverside Museum.

ScotRail apprentice engineers, who will soon be working on Britain's newest trains, are part of the team transforming the 65-year-old Locomotive 3007 before it goes on display in mid-2011.

The engine was chosen to epitomise the tens of thousands of Glasgow-built locomotives exported across the world.

Three of more than 200 built in the city are still running on South African heritage railways, which was also one of the last to use steam on main lines.

It was built in 1944 at the North British Locomotive Company's Queen's Park works in Polmadie – the largest in Europe – before being shipped in pieces and assembled near Cape Town.

The locomotive's sheer scale – 74ft long, 13ft high and 179 tonnes – was required to haul heavy trains over the country's vast distances and rugged terrain. John Messner, the Glasgow Museum of Transport's railways curator, said: "It had very little decoration and is not the prettiest, but was a workhorse of tried and tested design."

Museum officials scouring South Africa for a good-condition class 15F locomotive came across 3007 shortly before it was due to be broken up and shipped to China to be recycled for the car industry.

The locomotive had to be towed 300 miles by rail to Durban to be brought home, with ten trailers added to a diesel locomotive to provide extra braking to ensure the engine did not run away. The train also kept having to stop because 3007's bearings repeatedly overheated.

The locomotive will be the largest and youngest engine at the new museum, beside the Rivers Clyde and Kelvin, which will replace the Museum of Transport at the Kelvin Hall.

The seven-month restoration will include replacing brass piping stripped from the locomotive while it languished in a Bloemfontein siding for 18 years after a crash. There was evidence of plants – and even people – living in it.

Jonathon Gourlay, one of the ScotRail apprentices who will be working with project leaders Eura Conservation, said he relished the challenge.

Mr Gourlay, 18, from Cowdenbeath in Fife, who is also a volunteer fireman at the Scottish Railway Preservation Society in Bo'ness, said: "I was taken aback by seeing the size of it. It has been rusting away, but we are going to make it look fabulous.

"The components we will be replacing and repairing are very different from those in our depots, but it involves learning some of the same techniques."

The apprentices involved in the three-month secondments include some from Shields depot in Glasgow, where new Desiro class 380 trains will be maintained after arriving next year.

Louise Lawson, a project conservation and collections management officer at the Glasgow Museums Resource Centre in Nitshill, where the restoration is being carried out, said: "It will form part of one of the key displays in the new museum. It will be an absolutely fantastic project."

The cost of the museum, designed by the Iraq-born architect Zaha Hadid, increased in 2007 from £57 million to £74m because of inflation and design problems. It is being funded by the city council and the Heritage Lottery Fund. A public appeal to raise the remaining £5m required is more than half way towards its total.