THREE steam age survivors will be flying the flag for St Helens next week at a Staffordshire festival.

One of them, ‘Vulcan’, an 0-4-0 tank was built in 1918 at Vulcan Foundry, where it worked as a shunter, and nowadays is based at the Barrow Hill Roundhouse near Chesterfield.

The second is an Hunslet 0-6-0 saddle tank was built in Leeds in 1950 and named ‘Whiston’.

‘Whiston’ is one of 484 locomotives built to the Austerity design hurriedly developed during the Second World War. The simple layout proved ideal for collieries and various industrial railways, and has become a mainstay of many preserved tracks in the UK.

The engine was delivered new in October 1950 to the National Coal Board at Haydock Colliery, before moving in April 1951 to Cronton pit.

In 1961 she was on the move again to Bold Colliery where it endured a hard life, tackling gradients as steep as one in 17.

Haydock Foundry 0-6-0 well tank ‘Bellerophon’ is one of the oldest steam locomotives still in action. It was built in 1874 by the Haydock Foundry, to Josiah Evans’ design.

He was the son of Richard Evans who owned the Haydock Collieries which were to become Lancashire’s largest privately owned mining and related engineering concern.

‘Belerophon’ was one of the first six similar locomotives built at the foundry, the first being turned out in 1868. Working duties included twice daily runs between Haydock and Northwich and, alternately, twice daily runs between Golborne and Edge Green collieries and the shunting yards at Haydock.

These duties involved runs over the mainline railways, as private owners often exercised their rights to run their own locomotives as well as wagons.

In the 1880s, ‘Bellerophon’ and similar locomotives were involved in annual passenger excursions to Blackpool for the Haydock employees and their families.

Some say the colliery locos completed the journey but some believe they only took passengers to Earlestown where an LNWR loco took over for the trip to the seaside.

‘Bellerophon’ received its last overhaul at Haydock in 1957. It then worked with little or no maintenance until 1964, by which time it attracted considerable attention from railway enthusiasts as it had been at work for 90 years.

The five other similar Haydock locomotives were cut up for scrap in the early 1960s.

Author Alan Davies, former mining museum curator, photographed “Bellerophon” on May 1, 2013 at Haworth Station on the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway.

The NCB donated the loco to the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway in November 1966. It was later purchased and restored by The Vintage Carriages Trust.

‘Bellerophon’ steamed for the first time in preservation on May 1, 1985 and hauled its first passenger train for about 100 years that October.

In 1986 it won the National Coal Board’s ‘Steam Heritage Award’, and in 1987 began a tour of many preservation sites around the north of England, including Steamtown, Carnforth, Crewe Heritage Centre and the Embsay Steam Railway.

To enable ‘Bellerophon’ to be seen in an authentic industrial railway environment, the Vintage Carriages Trust kindly loaned the locomotive to the Foxfield Railway.

The engine has been a popular performer as well as becoming a star for its role in the period costume drama Cranford.

You can see it on the weekend of July 19/20 at the Foxfield Railway steam festival at Blythe Bridge, Stoke-on-Trent.