2253 Omaha, USATC S160 2-8-0
A USATC S160 2-8-0 in operational service on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway, and the first full-size British steam locomotive to be converted to oil firing since the end of main-line steam.
2253 was built by the Baldwin Locomotive Works of Philadelphia in 1943 and shipped to Britain that May, one of around 800 S160s run in on British metals to be readied for the invasion of Europe. It was loaned to the LNER and worked military freight from Neville Hill depot at Leeds. In September 1944 it was returned to the United States Army Transportation Corps and sent across to France, later working for the Belgian national railways at Aarschot. It was afterwards sold to the Polish State Railways, where it ran for decades as TR203-288, long outliving the war it was built for.
The locomotive came back to Britain in 1992 and spent a short period in traffic on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway before being sold to Peter Best. It was cosmetically restored and put on display at Locomotion in Shildon, and later returned to full working order by Northern Steam Engineering. It steamed again in 2019 in a lined maroon livery with Transportation Corps U.S.A. lettering on the tender, and in May that year was named Omaha in memory of the D-Day veterans who landed on Omaha Beach, among them the owner's father.
Since returning to steam it has worked widely on hire, including spells at the Dartmouth Steam Railway and the Churnet Valley Railway and a guest appearance at the Severn Valley Railway's autumn gala, before returning to the North Yorkshire Moors Railway in 2024.
In June 2026 the North Yorkshire Moors Railway completed its conversion from coal to oil firing, work carried out by the railway's own engineering department with the American alternative-fuel specialists FMW Solutions. It is believed to be the first conversion of its kind on a full-size British locomotive since the end of main-line steam, undertaken against the rising cost and falling availability of good steam coal, and with the additional benefit of allowing the engine to run during the summer fire bans that increasingly curtail steam on the moors. The railway has trialled cold-pressed rapeseed oil as a fuel.
Notable history
One of about 800 USATC S160s worked in on British railways during 1943 and 1944 in preparation for D-Day, and one of only a handful of that number to return to Britain in preservation. Its Polish career as TR203-288 lasted far longer than its wartime service, and it is the survivor of the class most closely associated with the Normandy landings by name.
