R & W Hawthorn Leslie & Co., Works Number 3865 built in 1936.
This small locomotive was built at the Forth Banks Works of the highly successful shipwrights Hawthorn, Leslie & Co. and appropriately was purchased by the Admiralty Dockyards for shunting stores and equipment supplying Royal Navy ships. Delivered new to the Royal Navy dockyard in Singapore, the locomotive incorporates an insulated double roof for working in high temperatures. In common with 80,000 allied servicemen the locomotive became a prisoner of war of the Japanese at the Fall of Singapore in February 1942. During the fighting in the docks the locomotive sustained bullet hole damage in its right-hand cylinder cover cladding and shrapnel damage to a boiler cladding sheet, which can still be seen to this day. The loco is known to have been used by the Japanese, often working alongside parties of allied prisoners engaged on unloading Japanese supply ships in the docks.
In December 1953, the locomotive was repatriated to the UK to continue its naval service at Chatham Dockyards in Kent. The loco was numbered “Yard No.440” and this brass plate is still carried on the loco.
Early dieselisation of the yards led the locomotive moving into preservation during 1972. Purchased by two founder members in October 1978 and moved to Rutland, SINGAPORE became the first working steam locomotive in the collection.
An overhaul and return to steam was carried out between 1996-1998 funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and the locomotive was registered as a national war memorial to the courage, sacrifice and comradeship of Far Eastern Prisoners of War 1941- 1945 following a reunion with its fellow FEPOW comrades. The locomotive went on special memorial display in central London in 2005 to mark the 60th anniversary of the end of the Second World war.
In its custodianship of this war memorial locomotive the museum are grateful for the support of the NFFWRA (National FEPOW Fellowship Welfare and Remembrance Association) and COFEPOW (Children of Far East Prisoners of War) organisations.