The 'Manor' class was designed by C.B.Collett and introduced in1938, the lightest of the 4-6-0 mixed traffic locomotives on the Great Western Railway. Twenty locomotives of the class had been built before the war intervened.
7820 'Dinmore Manor' was the first of the batch of ten built at Swindon in 1950, being completed on November 20th and allocated to Oswestry. In December 1953 it was transferred to Chester and twelve months later moved again, this time to Laira, Plymouth. Here its main work was banking and piloting on the Devon banks, but also had its red letter days including at least one trip to Paddington and an excursion to Portsmouth in 1958.
7820 was moved to Truro in November 1959 and on to St. Blazey in 1960 and on again in September of the same year to Cardiff. In 1963 'Dinmore' was moved again, this time to Shrewsbury and shortly afterwards to Oxley, Wolverhampton, before being withdrawn from service in November 1965.
7820 arrived at Dai Woodham's scrapyard in May 1966 and left thirteen and a half years later. It had originally been reserved for the West Somerset Railway, who then opted instead for three small prairie tank locomotives. So Dinmore went to the Gwili railway in south Wales. Unable to finance its restoration, the locomotive was put up for sale and bought by the Dinmore Manor Fund and arrived at Bishops Lydeard in March 1985. It was another five years before shares were advertised and sold to finance the restoration at Tyseley Locomotive Works, Birmingham, with members carrying out much of the unskilled, labour intensive work. 7820 steamed again in the summer of 1995 and went into service between Minehead and Bishops Lydeard in September of that year.
The 'Manor' class could have been designed for the preservered steam railway, moderately sized, but able to handle eight heavily loaded coaches of the high season. 7820 proved popular among both crews and passengers and was used on high profile occasions including a recording of BBC television's 'Antiques Roadshow' in June 1996 and for the visit of HRH the Duke of Edinburgh in November 2002.
Dinmore Manor's boiler certificate expired in July 2004 and was withdrawn to await a major overhaul. The locomotive had covered 78,635 miles during its nine years on the West Somerset Railway.
