A LOCOMOTIVE named after an Oscar-winning Mel Gibson film is on its way to the Cotswolds.

Gloucestershire Warwickshire Steam Railway is to welcome the British Railways Standard class 4 4-6-0 no.75014, named Braveheart, to it’s fleet for the first three months of the season.

The engine is expected to arrive at Toddington, Gloucestershire, in early March and will remain on the line until after the Cotswold Festival of Steam, May 12 to 14.

Richard Johnson, Chairman of GWSR Plc said: “This will be a very welcome three-month addition to the GWSR’s locomotive fleet and we are very grateful to the Dartmouth Steam Railway & Riverboat Company for lending their locomotive to us. 

“It fills a gap left following the withdrawal of Great Western 2-8-0T no. 4270 on expiry of its boiler certificate in January this year and before the under-overhaul 1905-built 2-8-0 no. 2807 returns to service later in the year.

“75014 is in fact, an entirely appropriate engine to be on our railway as during the 1950s and 1960s, other members of the class regularly worked over our line and in the wider Cheltenham and Gloucester areas.”

No. 75014 was completed by British Railways at Swindon works in December 1951, where all 80 members of the class were built between 1951 and 1954.

It was allocated to a variety of London Midland and Western Region depots before eventually being sold in 1967 to Woodham Brothers’ scrap dealers.

The engine languished in their Barry, South Wales yard until 1981 when it was purchased by a consortium of preservationists from the North Yorkshire Moors Railway. 

Here, the engine was restored to main-line standard and it then spent some years working the ‘Jacobite’ service between Fort William and Mallaig in the Scottish West Highlands – the line over which the ‘Hogwarts Express’ scenes were shot for the Harry Potter films. 

In 2000, the engine was named Braveheart in recognition of the Mel Gibson film of the same name, which was also shot in the West Highlands.

Braveheart won five awards at the 68th Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

Then, in 2002, the locomotive was sold to the Dartmouth Steam Railway where it is now based.

GWSR train services start up from March 4 at weekends, running from Cheltenham Racecourse, through villages such as Winchcombe, en route to Broadway.