Lovingly restored diesel shunter returns to service

A diesel shunter is returning to service today after two years of restoration by enthusiasts in Cornwall.

The engine called Denise had been extensively vandalised when it was given to the Bodmin and Wenford Railway by a china clay company.

Denise was surplus to requirements, graffitied and vandalised but following the two years of painstaking renovation - in the workshops at Bodmin General - she will be returned to traffic in its original English China Clays livery

She'll be a highlight of the railway's annual steam gala this weekend.

She is 56-years-old and was named after girls in the English China Clays office.

During her working life Denise has pulled and pushed hundreds of thousands of tonnes of china clay from the quarries to the driers and on the docks.