''Fire Queen'' is an early

steam locomotive A steam locomotive is a locomotive that provides the force to move itself and other vehicles by means of the expansion of steam. It is fuelled by burning combustible material (usually coal, oil or, rarely, wood) to heat water in the locomot ...

built by A. Horlock and Co in 1848 for the

Padarn Railway The Padarn Railway was a narrow gauge railway in North Wales, built to the unusual gauge of . It carried slate from Dinorwic Quarry to Port Dinorwic. The line opened on 3 March 1843, replacing the Dinorwic Railway. It initially used horses, ...

. It is the only surviving locomotive from that railway, and it is preserved at the

Penrhyn Castle Railway Museum The Penrhyn Castle Railway Museum ( cy, Amgueddfa Rheilffordd Castell Penrhyn) is a museum of industrial railway equipment, located at Penrhyn Castle near Bangor in Wales. In the nineteenth century, Penrhyn Castle was the home of the Pennant ...

History

''Fire Queen'' was one of two identical locomotives built for the

, which connected the Dinorwic Quarry near

Llanberis (; ) is a village, community and electoral ward in Gwynedd, northwest Wales, on the southern bank of the lake and at the foot of Snowdon, the highest mountain in Wales. It is a centre for outdoor activities in Snowdonia, including walking, mo ...

in north

Wales Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the Wales–England border, east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the ...

with the port at

Y Felinheli Y Felinheli (), formerly known in English as Port Dinorwic, is a village and community beside the Menai Strait ( cy, Y Fenai or ''Afon Menai'') between Bangor and Caernarfon in Gwynedd, northwest Wales. History Toponymy Etymologically, its ...

. The railway was opened in 1840 using

horse The horse (''Equus ferus caballus'') is a domesticated, one-toed, hoofed mammal. It belongs to the taxonomic family Equidae and is one of two extant subspecies of ''Equus ferus''. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million y ...

s to pull the

slate Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. It is the finest grained foliated metamorphic rock. ...

trains. It replaced the even earlier

Dinorwic Railway The Dinorwic Railway was an early narrow gauge industrial railway connecting the slate quarry at Dinorwic in Caernarvonshire with the coastal port at Y Felinheli. The line is sometimes referred to as the Dinorwic Tramroad or the Dinorwic Tramw ...

which opened in 1824. The two locomotives, ''Fire Queen'' and ''Jenny Lind'', were built by marine engineers A. Horlock and Co. They were the only railway locomotives built by this company. The locomotives were based on an 1847

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A p ...

of Thomas Crampton, which specified a locomotive with

driving wheel On a steam locomotive, a driving wheel is a powered wheel which is driven by the locomotive's pistons (or turbine, in the case of a steam turbine locomotive). On a conventional, non-articulated locomotive, the driving wheels are all coupled ...

s positioned at the ends of the

boiler A boiler is a closed vessel in which fluid (generally water) is heated. The fluid does not necessarily boil. The heated or vaporized fluid exits the boiler for use in various processes or heating applications, including water heating, central h ...

driven by steeply inclined cylinders placed between the wheels. The locomotives lacked a frame, and the wheels and cylinders were attached directly to the boiler. They were delivered to the railway in 1848 and continued working until 1886. ''Jenny Lind'' was scrapped, but ''Fire Queen'' was placed in a small shed at the quarry workshop,

Gilfach Ddu Gilfach Ddu (also known as the Dinorwic Slate Quarry Workshops) are a series of well preserved Listed building, Grade I listed industrial buildings built to serve the Dinorwic quarry, Dinorwic slate quarry near Llanberis in Caernarfonshire, Nort ...

. It stayed there until the quarry closed in 1969 at which time it was sold to John Smith MP and loaned to the nearby

where it remains on display. File:Locomotive "Fire Queen".jpg, ''Fire Queen'' in Penrhyn Castle Railway Museum File:Fire Queen Builders Plate.jpg, ''Fire Queen''s Builders Plate

References

{{Reflist

External links

''Fire Queen'' at the Industrial Railway Society archives
(with photographs) 0-4-0 locomotives Narrow gauge locomotives Individual locomotives of Great Britain 4 ft gauge railways in Wales