Bishops’ head of steam

Wednesday, 1st September 2010

Two Bishops of Wakefield have paid tribute to a predecessor at the rededication of steam locomotive 45428 ‘Eric Treacy’ at Pickering Station on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway on the 27th August.

The current and twelfth Bishop of Wakefield, the Rt Revd Stephen Platten, gave thanks for the life and ministry of Bishop Treacy, who was the eighth Bishop of Wakefield from 1968 to 1976, and whose name is renowned amongst railway lovers as a talented photographer of trains from the 1930s to his death in 1978. Treacy’s collection of 12,000 pictures now forms a major part of the National Railway Museum’s photographic collection.

The locomotive is a ‘Black Five’ built in the 1930s and privately preserved at the end of steam traction on British Rail in the 1960s. Named after Bishop Treacy in the early 1970s, its brass nameplate features a bishop’s mitre. It has returned to service in 2010 after an overhaul lasting ten years, and is ready for another decade’s service pulling heritage trains through the incomparable North Yorkshire Moors from Pickering to the coast at Whitby.

Bishop Platten paid tribute to the skill of those who built the locomotive and restored it; to the staff and volunteers of the North Yorkshire Moors Railway who give pleasure to thousands and help to boost the local economy every year; and to the well-known tendency of so many church people to find relaxation and refreshment through a love of railways.

Lord Hope of Thornes (Bishop David Hope), tenth Bishop of Wakefield and later Archbishop of York, and the Revd Stephen Sorby, Railway Chaplain for the North East, were joined by over fifty clergy for the rededication at Pickering Station before boarding the 12.00 noon train for Whitby pulled by ‘Eric Treacy’.