A long-held dream has become a reality for volunteers at the Groudle Glen Railway.

Brown Bear, a replica of one of the line’s original locos, has made its debut in the glen after six years of fundraising and construction.

She arrived in the island last week on board the Ben-my-Chree and has been undergoing steam trials ahead of her launch at next week’s Isle of Man Transport Heritage Transport Festival. In its original guise the Groudle Glen Railway operated with two steam locomotives, Sea Lion of 1896 and Polar Bear of 1905, both built by Bagnalls of Stafford.

Polar Bear is now permanently based at the Amberley Chalk Pits Museum in Sussex but makes occasional visits back to the glen.

However, the railway’s volunteers have long wanted two Bagnall locomotives based here permanently and so put in plan an ambitious £50,000 fund-raising project to replace Polar Bear with a replica built to the original 1905 design.

Continuing the theme of naming locomotives after the animals that once inhabited the Victorian zoo at the railway’s Sea Lion Rocks Terminus, the new locomotive has ben named Brown Bear.