Old locomotives at the Shipyards

As regular visitors to you Island, and having noticed the wonderful work at the Aviation Museum, it would make perfect sense to restore these engines and revive the Interest in The History of the Malta Railway. As an Island you have so much to Heritage to offer please do not lose it!

Rory O'Neill Gosport,England.

The three boilers Mr.Azzopardi is referring to are actually portable boilers ( portable loco boilers) which were used to provide steam wherever it used to be required in the shipyard. They carry yard numbers 315, 351 and 318 and were first registered in the books of the then Malta Drydocks in 1946. It is likely that they were not new at the time but modified to suit the requirements of the shipyard.
Malta Shipyards has been in contact with Heritage Malta for a while and the process to restore these three boilers has already commenced. The first step was to remove safely all the asbestos insulation; this was kindly carried out by Cape East Malta, who are experts in this field, free of charge. The second phase of the plan is to transport these three boilers to the shipyard where some basic repairs to the steel structure, blasting and protective coating shall be carried out.
The third phase will be to transport them to sites selected by Heritage Malta where more restoration and painting to original colors shall be carried out.
Definitely , once restoration is complete, these three boilers should be quite an attraction and part of the industrial heritage of Malta.

Is Mr Azzopardi quite sure that these are locomotives? If I recall correctly, they could simply be the steam traction engines that were used (in the 1960's) as mobile boilers to generate steam wherever it was required at MDD.

I to was very interested in Mr Azzopardi's letter. These locomotives are a great discovery for Malta and would be a great asset to local history. If some how the money and time could be found to restore these locomotives they would be another interesting exhibit for Malta's fantastic history.
As a railway buff I think it is a great find.

May I suggest that the old Birkirkara train station be convered into a rail museum.

It would be a great tourist attraction to restore part of the Malta railway. It would be a draw to the thousands of rail enthusiasts around the world and bring tourists to areas perhaps devoid of tourist income. These engines would be a great start to any such project.

I was absolutely fascinated to read Nazarene Azzopardi's letter.

Being a part-time historian and a railway fanatic I completely agree that it would be fantastic to have these locomotives restored for the benefit of tourists and students.

The brief history of the Malta Railway is absolutely fascinating and, despite it's demise in 1931, the story of the line and the people who built and designed it, used it and work on it forms an interesting part of Maltese recent history.

There's quite an interesting website relating to all this at: www.maltarailway.com.

I'm not sure if there many railway enthusiasts in Malta. I know restoring railway engines is a labour of love by volunteers - perhaps there are Maltese businesses who would be interested in sponsoring the costs to restore the engines back to their former interesting glory (a little market diversification every so often is good!).

As a child my family and I lived in the Station Masters House at Princetown on bleak Dartmoor - the Princetown railway closed in 1956, the year we moved in! My great grandfather and his son work for Great Western Railway - so I guess apart from broadcasting, you could say I have railway smoke in my blood!

I hope these locomotives receive the the attention and care they deserve.