ONE WORKSHOP TWO KINGS!
The first monarch to arrive at the Flour Mill was King Faisal of Iraq, Hunslet Austerity 0-6-0ST No. 3183 of 1944, which was sent new to the armaments depot at Bicester as WD 85133.
It acquired its name when the 11-year old King Faisal visited the depot in 1946, and although the nameplates have disappeared, the engine has long outlived the king, who was brutally murdered in the revolution of July 14, 1958.
After demobilisation in 1963, by now renumbered 138, the Austerity was sold to the National Coal Board and worked until 1982 at Arthur Scargill’s Woolley Colliery as No. 8, eventually coming into the ownership of the National Railway Museum (NRM) in 2005.
At one time intended as an example of what an unrestored engine looked like before preservation, being in very poor condition with
