2857 suffered a severe valve failure on the evening of Friday 7th August 2012. On approaching Arley in the ‘up’ direction the valve events started to become uneven. Upon reaching Arley the driver (Duncan Ballard) examined the locomotive. No external defects were found during this examination and so he continued on his journey. On leaving Bewdley the locomotive was found to be very ‘off-beat’ and Duncan decided he was going to fail the locomotive on arrival at Kidderminster. However he never got there before total failure of what is now known to be the Left hand front valve head. On his approach to Kidderminster Duncan opened the regulator and all that was heard was a continuous roar up the chimney. The train continued rolling until the locomotive could no longer move the train and stopped, resulting in the train being rescued by the 08 diesel shunter.

It is fair to say that Duncan took all the correct options open to him at the time, with this being a very quick deterioration in locomotive performance.

After towing the dead loco back to Bridgnorth the SVR stripped the valves and examined the pistons to ascertain what had happened. The left front valve head had smashed, damaging all components for that valve head. The rear valve head was intact and free from damage, as were the right hand valves and both pistons.

The cause of failure remains rather open to conjecture. The only part found to be missing from the valve head was the taper pin that goes through the nut holding the front valve in place on the spindle. This may have worked loose resulting in the nut becoming loose, allowing the valve head to travel up and down the valve spindle until the valve head smashed. No evidence could be found of the taper pin coming out of its hole before or during the events, so all that could be done was to surmise as to the causes. All the other taper pins were found to be secure.

A new valve was manufactured in the Bridgnorth workshop in commendably quick time and 2857 returned to traffic on Monday 20th August 2012.