A LADY rubbed shoulders with a grizelled old veteran hero last week on the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway.

Dame Helen Ghosh took a ride on the 126-year-old Coal Tank locomotive as part of the railway’s steam spectacular weekend.

Dame Helen is the director-general of the National Trust, which owns the locomotive and allows it to be used on the line.

Coal Tank, which served in the Second World War, was restored by Ingrow-based volunteers from the Bahamas Locomotive Society.

Dame Helen rode on the Coal Tank as it pulled coaches from Keighley to Oxenhope, mostly filled with railway enthusiasts.

She also explored the society’s Ingrow Railway Centre facility, which is both a maintenance depot and a museum.

The LNWR Coal Tank was built at the Crewe works of the London and North Western Railway in 1888.

It was the 250th example of only 300 ‘six-wheels coupled side tank coal engines’ or, as they were more popularly known, Coal Tanks.

In the early part of the last century the engine worked at Abergavenny in South Wales, and in 1936 it moved to Shrewsbury and was withdrawn from service three years later, after clocking up more than 880,000 miles during 51 years of active service.

Waiting to be scrapped, Coal Tank was enlisted for the war effort and worked across the Manchester and Shrewsbury areas. It performed further service in the 1950s with the National Coal Board.

The last surviving member of its class, Coal Tank was bought by the Webb Coal Tank Engine Preservation Fund, becoming the first engine to be purchased for preservation by public subscription.

In 1963 the engine was donated to the National Trust, to be displayed amongst other historic engines at Penryhn Castle in North Wales.

Since then it has received three overhauls by Bahamas Locomotive Society volunteers, the latest at Ingrow with support from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Coal Tank last year won an Engineering Award from the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, putting it on a par with the Vulcan bomber, Tower Bridge and E-Type Jaguar.