Nipa entered service in September 2013, with a few trials starting in May 2013. She is a petrol powered hydrostatic driven shunting engine, based on the same chassis as Skipper (from the same supplier).
Her power unit is what remains from the sale of destiny (a never finished GP40 style engine). Nipa is named after her joint owners first two initials N.I. and P.A. thus the name
Nipa. Most of her parts other than the chasis are made from spare items either lying around the railway or from the owners home. Thus she has been relatively cheap to construct.
Nipa is intended to be the Winter work ballast train, to stop our lovely shiny front line diesels being damaged from heavy duty winter work, and over the winter 2013/14 she did all the winter work services meaning none of the shiny Mardykes were used. She has also pulled
passenger trains, but she is not powerfull enough to cope with a full SNBR 5 carriage train, and thus she is unlikely to see much in the way of use.
Her body design is inspired by "harold" at the FR, although she has definitely ended up looking a lot different, however that was the inspiration.
Nipa was a "back ground" project for her owners, who between them do most of the track work, carriage work and other essential tasks at the railway, and both are presently building other engines
as well. That said Nipa was completed in short order.
Nipa's is now painted in a black livery with yellow trim, and after proving her worth over the winter of 2013 is likely to see some cosmetic improvement and maybe a roof. Nipa is considered the
ugly duckling of the fleet, but her main purpose is to be the winter works engine, with the knowledge that bumps and scrapes are expected with this type of work. Despite the industrial nature Nipa has already been invited to other railways, and is expected she
will going out on visits during 2014.
In 2015 Nipa went to Fancott Railway on loan along with 2 coaches to help run the service after a large fire destroyed all the engines and coaches at Fancott.
