Early Stourbridge Locomotives - Archive Photos

All of these photos are from Stourbridge Public Library archives (now Dudley MBC archives). Not being an expert on such things, if anyone wishes to comment on these images please e-mail me See below for comments. The Agenoria ran locally for many years on the Shutt End line.

Thanks to the library for the loan of the photos, there are a lot more in there, many of which must be of considerable interest historically.

From Ian Grant www.lostlabours.co.uk:

"Since looking at the pictures of Agenoria that you've posted on www.stourbridge.co.uk I am now totally convinced that they were definitely all taken at Round Oak Steelworks in the same photographic session, except of course the last two of Agenoria dismantled. The image I used on my site has Round Oak in the background with a driver, the same shot almost as your 3rd image, with the same driver and the extra workmen. So are they from Bradley & Foster, or far more more likely from Round Oak? In every image Agenoria has exactly the same mechanical positioning of all its running gear, wheels, pistons, beam etc. Round Oak is quite a mature site in the images and was only reachable by Agenoria after 1865, with the linking of the Pensnett railway to the Shut End railway & so that gives us a definitive earliest possible date for these images. My guess is that all these images were made to record the retirement of Agenoria from the Earl of Dudley's railway in the 1870's. It appears that some of the images have been deliberately taken to show different backdrops of the Ironworks, after all the Earl was donating the engine to the Science museum, and even in the 1870's would have been after publicity!"

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