IT WAS 33 years ago this month that the 130-years-long age of steam on the railways finally ran out of puff -- its end in East Lancashire being marked by packed nostalgia-trip 'Farewell to Steam' excursion trains out of Blackburn. But as that climax approached with the increasing encroachment of diesel power on the realm of the old coal-fired engines, it only served to swell the fame of this little workhorse (right) though it never travelled more than 400 yards at a time.

Pictured here in 1962 at the sidings at Daisyfield, Blackburn, with one of the then-new diesel units in the background, the 25-ton locomotive, Appleby, which served the nearby flour mill of Joseph Appleby and Sons, had by then become something of a tourist attraction.

Indeed, that year one rail enthusiast hitch-hiked all the way from Scotland to see the engine and a party of 17 others travelled from Hampshire to photograph and admire it. And Appleby's -- part of the Joseph Rank milling empire since 1928 -- had a long list of people seeking the acquire the engine's nameplate when it finally reached the scrapheap, although the company had no plans then to retire it.

For what made the black and red-liveried saddle tank loco special was that, by 1962, it had become the only one of its type still working. Built in 1895 at the Atlas Works of Peckett and Sons in Bristol, Appleby was numbered 568, had 2ft 6in wheels with an 0-4-0 arrangement and worked at a pressure of 80-80lbs per square inch.

But despite its compact size, the engine, acquired by the Blackburn millers about 1906, was capable of hauling as much as 100 tons as it travelled the 400-yard track from the Daisyfield sidings taking filled with grain to the mill's loading bays. It came to the end of the line in 1968 -- the same year that steam powered expired on Britain's railways -- when the flour mill, which opened in 1872, ceased production, with the loss of 90 jobs.

The mill was converted into a £2million business centre in 1990 after being acquired by Lancashire Enterprises as a flagship regeneration scheme in the Leeds and Liverpool Canal Corridor Project.