English railway battery powered shunter (switcher) from 1917

Battery-electric locomotive, North Staffordshire Railway (NSR), Bo, now in the National Railway Museum collection was built 1917 for T. Bolton & Sons and withdrawn from service 1963. No. 1 is one of only two battery electric locomotives to be employed by a main-line railway company. The other was built by Midland Railway in Derby in 1913 for shunting at Poplar docks.

The engine was designed to be able to contend with the narrow internal railway of Thomas Bolton & Sons Ltd. Copper Works; the locomotive worked at Bolton’s Oakamoor Works for all of its working life, from 1917 to 1963.

When No. 1 started work in 1917 it replaced three horses, although two horses were still used and stabled at Bolton’s Copper Works until about 1941. On one charge, No. 1 could run for up to six hours and haul a load of more than four times its weight at 11 mph [18 km/h].

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