Titan

**Titan** is a small industrial tank locomotive owned by the Moorland Steam Railway. He is the oldest industrial locomotive owned by the MSR and is normally used for departmental duties, due to the reason is that he was built for work, not passengers. He serves as shed pilot formerly at Northampsmith MPD, and now Gladsville MPD but occasionally, he handles passenger trains when needed.

## Bio

Titan has never revealed when he was built or who he was built for, apart from the fact that he was built by Hunslet in the 1890s and spent his working life in a colliery. This "colliery" he worked for was where he got the name 'Titan', along with his nameplates on his water tanks. Titan was sold to the MSR in 1970, when he was finally retired from service following 80 years of hard work shunting coal around County Durham. He found out how to keep shed movements running by shunting coal and other important materials, earning the title of 'shed pilot' by the MSR's resident locomotives.

Normally at Northampsmith, Titan was bullied by modern diesel shunters and other diesel-electrics owned by British Rail (BR) due to him being only built of shunting, one even called him "old and very early-Victorian" due to the fact he had no vacuum brakes. Titan was fitted with vacuum brakes in 1973 with the railway's view towards modern railway safety on the heritage line, since the new extension to Dentin was opened that year. Titan was involved with recreating small passenger trains since Jinty was now out of traffic due to a hot axlebox on the same train the day before.

## Personality

Titan was originally a rough locomotive due to him working at a colliery his whole service life.

## Livery

For most of his appearances, Titan is painted in the unique Moorland Steam Railway lined Brunswick Green with the number '14' on his bunker and the letters 'MSR' on his tanks, painted in LNER-style golf leaf with red and black shadowing. Between May and September 1993 and from 2014 onwards, Titan is painted in the long-lost Midland & Great Northern Joint Railway (M&GNJR) "autumn leaf/ golden ochre" livery with the crest and his number '14'.

In green livery, he wore a set of Isle of Wight-style nameplates which had silver bordering and letters with a black backing.

## Basis or real locomotive

   Titan is based on a Hunslet Engine Company "Jazzer" class 0-6-0T. These were built for industrial work aound the private and industrial railways of the UK, with the last going in the 1980s. One has been preserved by the Severn Valley Railway, Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) Dyestuffs No. 686 'The Lady Armaghdale'. It was originally built in 1897 as Manchester Shipping Canal (MSC) No. 14 'St John' until sold to ICI in 1963. This locomotive is on static display in the Engine Shed at Kidderminster and owned by the Warwickshire Industrial Locomotive Trust.

## Trivia

Titan is built using a CSP Models kit. This model later gains custom vacuum brake pipes for 1973 onwards.

* Titan's nameplates are Isle of Wight-pattern nameplates by Narrow Planet.

Titan is often mistaken for a Hudswell Clarke Canal & Sweden class by former employees of Manchester Shipping Canal (MSC). This is due to the fact that both the Hunslet Jazzer and Hudswell Clarke Canal & Sweden classes are built to the same specifications, which leads to them looking identical.

Titan is the third industrial locomotive introduced to the franchise, the first being the unnamed Kerr Stuart Victory 0-6-0T and second being Barclay from the movie, and the first industrial type locomotive owned by the MSR.

Titan was originally going to be a Peckett B2 0-6-0ST, another industrial design which was built in Bristol, but Shane Sowter changed it since he thought that industrial side tanks look more "mainline" in appearance.

* The Peckett B2 was later used in The Railway Kidnapping.

Titan's MSR/ fictional M&GN number (14) is a reference to 'St John'/ 'The Lady Armaghdale'. During it's time as 'St John' under the MSC, it was numbered '14'.

Despite being built in Yorkshire, Titan has a Country Durham accent. This could be either from the fact he served in a colliery up there for all his service life before coming to the MSR or as a reference to George and Robert Stephenson, the pioneers of modern railways, who came from County Durham.