FOR three decades, the Sentinel steam locomotive was a familiar sight to factory workers as it shunted goods in and out of Fry's Somerdale factory.

But back in 1956 the faithful old workhorse was retired and replaced with a diesel shunter, and in 1964 the steam loco was sold for scrap.

Workers at Fry's – later Cadbury's – at Keynsham thought they would never see the old engine again.

But for the past three years, one former Fry's employee has been hunting down the Sentinel.

With remarkable persistence, former Fry's engineer and amateur historian Eric Miles has tracked down the "lost" piece of our region's industrial heritage.

Now the 75-year-old from Kingswood is preparing to see his detective work pay off, with the engine returning to Bristol next month.

"I remember riding on the footplate of the little engine as an apprentice at Somerdale in the 1950s," Eric says.

"We all used to love the little engine, and it was a familiar part of factory life, with the driver – an old chap called Gladstone Graham Hendy – using it to move raw goods into the factory directly off the Great Western Railway line, and then moving wagons on to the mainline for distributing the chocolate around the country.

"It had been in constant use at the factory since 1929, so it was very familiar to everyone in Keynsham.

"I used to flag the Sentinel down sometimes to catch a sneaky lift up to Keynsham station – though I would always be told off if any of the management spotted me doing it.

"It was never quite the same after they replaced it with a diesel shunter – it just didn't have the same sort of character."

After retiring, Eric developed an interest in the history of the factory – later publishing the book The Somerdale Story.

But he continued to wonder what had happened to the old shunter.

"Nobody had ever been able to prove to me for certain that the shunter had actually been scrapped, and I just had a funny feeling that it would be rusting away somewhere in a private collection," he says.

So three years ago, Eric set about writing to collectors across the country to try to track the engine down.

"After a while, even my wife was asking me why I was bothering trying to track down an engine that had reputedly been scrapped in the 1960s," he laughs.

"But then I had a stroke of luck. I spotted a photograph of the Sentinel in a book by Russell Leitch called Railways of Keynsham.

"It showed the engine in Surrey in the 1970s, so I knew then that she had survived the scrappers' yard."

Spurred on by the discovery, Eric prepared to drive to Surrey to try to find the exact location in which the picture had been taken more than three decades earlier in the village of Beckton.

"But then I got even luckier," Eric says. "I was talking to my cousin, who is a traction engine enthusiast, and he recognised the location of the picture, because he had bought a traction engine from the same collector years before.

"He was simply able to go and find the address and the contact number for me. I made the call, but it turned out the collector had died 20 years ago, and his wife had sold the Sentinel to somebody from Essex.

"The family sent me pictures of the loco being moved, but they didn't have details of who had bought it.

"So I contacted the haulage firm whose lorry was on the pictures, and amazingly the chap there remembered moving the loco and was able to give me details of the buyer.

"It turned out the Sentinel had been sitting in the back garden of a bungalow in an Essex village for the past 19 years."

Eric made contact with the collector and arranged a visit.

"I couldn't believe it when he took me to the bottom of his garden and revealed the Sentinel to me after the best part of 50 years.

"He had covered it with a Nissen hut and planted trees all around it. But despite a bit of rust, the engine itself was in remarkably good shape.

"As we chatted the chap said he would be happy to sell it to a preservation trust, because it was far too big to keep hidden in a shed outside his bungalow.

"So I suggested handing it over to the Avon Valley Railway at Bitton."

Upon returning to Bristol, Eric contacted the trust that runs the heritage line and, after talking to management at Cadbury's, was also able to negotiate a "generous" financial contribution from the firm to bring the loco back to Bristol.

The undisclosed sum was used to purchase the engine and preparations are now under way to crane the loco out of its shed and bring it back to Bristol on a low-loader lorry.

"We don't yet have exact dates sorted out but at some point in August we think it should get back to Keynsham – and it is hoped that we will be able to display it for a few days at Somerdale.

"Then it will be taken to Bitton, where volunteers will start work on restoring the engine to her former glory – with the ultimate aim of getting her running again on the Avon Valley Railway – fully liveried up once again with "Fry" and "Somerdale" on her.

"For me," Eric says, "it will be quite an emotional sight to see her raised from the dead."