Template:Featured picture/March 2013
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Princess is (probably) the second locomotive to be delivered to the FR. This engine, was carried by the LNWR from London to Caernarfon and then brought (around 22 July 1863) by road to Portmadoc on Job and Harry Williams' specially built cart or wain drawn by ten horses. This was the first locomotive to run on the railway and was first steamed on 4 August 1863. Initial documents number Princess as 2 but the number 1 seems to have been applied from at least 1870, as in the photograph above. The Princess was named after Princess Alexandra of Denmark (1844-1925), who had married Albert Edward, Prince of Wales (later Edward VII, 1840-1910) in March 1863. Princess has not been restored to working order but remains as she was left by the old company in 1946. For some years from 1969 she was displayed in the open outside the Queen's Hotel at Blaenau Ffestiniog, then on a plinth at the site of the Blaenau LNWR Exchange station and then at Porthmadog before finally being displayed inside the museum in the Goods Shed at Porthmadog Harbour Station (now Spooner's Bar) from 1981. She was temporarily removed from Spooners in November 2012, to be repainted and re-attached to her tender (which has for the last 25 years been attached to Welsh Pony). She will then be used as a roving ambassador for the celebrations for 150 years of steam in 2013, for a time in March, being displayed at Paddington Station. Photo credit: C Parry, uploaded by User:Chrisjones |