Museum of Science and Industry

The replica 1830 Planet locomotive, which is based at MOSI, is to have an historic meeting with the replica 1829 Rocket, when the two steam locomotives are reunited with each other in a Bank Holiday Victorian rail extravaganza at the Great Central Railway.  

Both the original locomotives once chugged along the world’s first passenger railway 180 years ago on the 1830 Liverpool & Manchester Railway. Planet left the MOSI site at the former Liverpool Railway Station (the end of the original 1830 railway) yesterday and was transported by road to GCR in Loughborough, where it will provide train rides alongside the replica Rocket from the National Railway Museum during 28-31 May.  

George and Robert Stephenson’s Rocket won the Rainhill trials in 1829 to be the first locomotive to run along the Liverpool & Manchester Railway, and they later developed the improved Planet locomotive to run on the line from 1830.

Matthew Jackson, Railway officer at MOSI said: “It’s a really historic occasion to get Planet and Rocket together 180 years after the original railway opened. It’s quite an event to transport a steam locomotive. Planet weighs around 12 tons, and was transported on a low loader, so we got a few interested stares on the motorway!”

The two locomotives will be part of four guest engines on the GCR, which also include the Furness Railway number 20, from 1863 (the oldest working steam locomotive in Britain), and the Beattie Well Tank, from Cornwall and built in the 1870s. Two of the older resident engines at the GCR, a Class O4 freight engine built in 1912 and an engine which hauled commuter trains out of Kings Cross station in the 1920s will also be running.

For more information please call Sarah Roe, MOSI press and publicity officer on Tel: 0161 606 0176, m: 07847 372647.

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