THERE’S something endearing about Thomas the Tank Engine.

Those big porthole ‘eyes’, the sturdy tank, and perky little chimney give him a playful puppy-dog look.

You just couldn’t cut him up for scrap, could you?

Such is the story of Fry’s Sentinel 7492, a survivor from the 1920s now enjoying a happy retirement at the Avon Valley Railway.

The March gathering of Thornbury History and Archaeological Society were lucky to have Eric Miles along to tell the story.

Egbert Cadbury, of the chocolate family, was a bit of a railway enthusiast.

In 1921 he was put in charge of relocating Fry’s chocolate manufacturing from Union St in Bristol to a brand new green-field site near Keynsham called Somerdale Garden City. In 1928 Cadbury decided he needed his own tank engine for his railway he ordered locomotive 7492 from the same works.

Now the story leaps forward to 2004, when Eric was made redundant from the factory and decided to write a book about Somerdale.

As he did so he became intrigued by the fate of 7492 and decided to try and find out if it still existed.

The company (now Cadbury’s) sold the engine in 1964 to a scrap merchant in Fishponds.

The scrap merchant’s two sons were keen to cut up the engine but he formed an attachment to it and kept it on display until 1970.

It was then sold to someone in Somerset, and a few years later to a buyer in Suffolk.

Here the trail ran cold until Eric was lucky enough to find a photograph of the engine being loaded by a crane onto a truck.

He traced the 7492 to a garden in Essex. It was 2010 when Eric negotiated to buy the engine on behalf of Avon Valley Railway with generous funding from Cadbury’s.

Later that year Sentinel 7492 made a sentimental journey to visit once more the Somerdale factory, on route to the Avon Valley Railway at Bitton.

Fry’s Sentinel 7492 can now be seen at Bitton looking smart and Bristol fashion, thanks to Eric’s dogged detective work and persistent pursuit of his goal.

Our April meeting is on Tuesday 11 at 7.30pm in St. Mary’s Church Hall, to discuss the ‘Know your Place - West of England’ project.