On 15th of October 2006 -for the first time after 1959- The Jokioinen Railway locomotive number 5 ran on its own power on the tracks of Jokioinen Railway.

The locomotive which was transported from Wales to Finland in the beginning of October was fired up on Saturday evening and the full operating pressure of 13 kg/cm2 was reached on Sunday morning. During the previous weeks the locomotive had undergone modifications to be able to run on Jokioinen Museum Railway. For example an original steam brake system was rebuilt and couplers changed.

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On Sunday the first test run was made to Jokioinen. JR 5 pulled easily a four passenger car test train over there and back. In the afternoon JR 5 got to real work by pulling a 8 car mixed train from Minkiö to Humppila to take some of the rolling stock in the winter car shed.

The locomotive crew for test trains was engineer Juha-Pekka Viitanen and fire man Georg von Pfaler. The locomotive performed well on the test runs.

The JR 5 locomotive was sold to Great Britain in 1972 and later rebuilt to operating condition at the Welshpool & Llanfair Light Railway, where it was given a name "Orion".

Video clips of the test train on the home page of Teemu Virtanen...