I was very interested to see the picture in last week's Review re the rather sorry looking locomotive. As far as I remember it is a Peckett Locomotive works number 2013 similar to but smaller than the one at the Coleford railway museum and at Norchard Dean Forest Railway.

The picture shows it at the end of the line just below Whitecliff Quarry, just to the south [Monmouth] side of the Dog Kennel Bridge, which of course is still there to this day.

I remember as a small boy in the early 1960s my Dad often picking up me and my friends from the then Scowles School, and taking us down to see the loco which could be reached from a forest track on the far side of the bridge.

It is shown standing on the end of the Head Shunt of Whitecliff Quarry which was then the last surviving length of the GWR line from Coleford to Newland and Monmouth. It got into this sorry looking state as a result of a run-away of Hopper wagons loaded with railway ballast from the Quarry, bending the back of its cab as can be just seen in the picture.

As I remember some of these wagons were derailed, and as a result at least one only just stopped short of going over the edge of the bridge into the road below.

The story I heard was that the loco had been bought by Fred Watkins for use at his Sling Engineering Works. Some readers will, I expect, recall this at the time had a rail connection from the S&W line from Parkend to Coleford, known as the Sling branch, leaving the said line at Milkwall.

As far as I know the loco was eventually taken to the yard and cut up for scrap.

– Robert Payne, Coleford.