lb-manning-wardle

The Lynton and Barnstaple Railway Manning Wardle locomotive is Lew (E190), a 2-6-2T built by Manning Wardle & Co. of Leeds in 1925 as the last locomotive delivered to the Lynton & Barnstaple Railway, joining the fleet just ten years before the Southern Railway closed the line in 1935. Lew was the most powerful locomotive the L&BR ever operated and represented a late attempt to improve the line's motive power capacity for the tourist trade on the Exmoor narrow-gauge line.

After the L&BR's closure Lew was sold and eventually made its way to Brazil, where it worked on a Brazilian narrow-gauge railway until being repatriated to the United Kingdom many decades later as part of the effort to collect surviving L&BR material for the restoration project. Lew is preserved in the UK and is associated with the Lynton and Barnstaple Railway Society's ongoing project to restore a section of the original Exmoor line, giving this late Manning Wardle the prospect of eventually returning to active service on the railway it was built to serve.