RAIL enthusiasts building a full-size £137,000 steam locomotive hope to have the engine on the tracks by the end of the year after it passed safety tests.

Based at Shildon Engineering’s site, on Shildon’s Hackworth Industrial Estate, County Durham, the group of 20 volunteers who make up the Merlin Locomotive Group has spent nearly ten years on the project.

They recently steamed the loco’s boiler to make sure it worked safely.

The Merlin team now plans to complete the works, which gained £40,000 of Heritage Lottery funding, by the end of the year.

David Heaton, vicechairman of the group, said: “We’re very proud to be at this stage and it’s great to have seen the locomotive appear from the pile of parts that we once had.

“There is a final steam test and when that has been passed, the rest of the pieces can be fitted to the engine and it should take us about two months.”

Merlin was built for the Bristol United Gas Works in 1939. It was later sold to the Vale of Teifi Railway, in Wales, and then to the Gwili Railway, near Carmarthen, Wales, where it was named Merlin.

It was bought by Locomotion: The National Railway Museum at Shildon in 1997.

The volunteers later agreed to take ownership of the loco and hope to run it on heritage railway lines.