ONE of the last steam locomotives in use at the end of the steam era on the railways visited Cornwall recently.

As some of the final embers of the railway steam age glowed, the locomotive, numbered 44871 and originally 4871, had been used on the Carlisle to Manchester leg of a farewell special in the summer of 1968.

The locomotive, which carried the name Sovereign for a while, had been built more than two decades earlier for the London Midland and Scottish Railway at Crewe in 1945.

On Sunday, August 18, the 44871 pulled the Railway Touring Company's charter from Bristol Temple Meads to Par.