A steam locomotive built in Belgium in 1900, shipped to a Spanish coal mine, worked there for almost seventy years and then lost to public view inside a private English collection, is running again at Pairi Daiza. The Belgian animal park renamed it on September 9, 2026, and put it under steam in front of visitors that weekend.
The engine is now called Reine Elisabeth, Queen Elisabeth, after the Belgian queen who lived from 1876 to 1965. Pairi Daiza had been calling it La Couillet since it arrived, after the works that built it.
Where did the locomotive come from?
It left the workshops of the Société Métallurgique de Couillet, near Charleroi, in 1900, carrying construction number 1318. At the turn of the twentieth century the Charleroi basin was one of Europe’s significant centers for building locomotives and rolling stock, with mining, steel, metalworking and railway construction feeding each other in the same region. Belgium had opened the first public railway on continental Europe, and went on to become one of the world’s leading locomotive-building nations.
No. 1318 was one of three identical 9.5-tonne locomotives with three driving axles, ordered for the industrial railway of the mining company Hulleras de Sabero in the province of León, Spain. There it was numbered 3 and named Olleros, after a village on the line. For almost seventy years it hauled trains along a 600-millimeter narrow-gauge railway linking the mines at Las Quemadas, Sotillos and Herrera with Olleros de Sabero and the processing plant at Vegamediana. The line stopped operating in 1969.
Fifty years out of sight
The locomotives were headed for scrap when the Spanish operation closed. The British railway enthusiast Peter Rampton bought them and brought them across the Channel into his private collection. They were shown at a handful of open days in the early 1970s, and then Rampton closed the collection to visitors and they effectively vanished. A few photographs survived. Among British enthusiasts the hoard became known as Collection X.
After Rampton died in 2019 the collection, more than thirty-eight locomotives, passed to the Vale of Rheidol Railway, a heritage line in Wales. One of them was the small engine built in Hainaut in 1900.
Four years of restoration
Pairi Daiza negotiated with the Vale of Rheidol Railway for the locomotive’s return, and in December 2022 the Couillet 1318 came back to Belgium, 122 years after it left. The park announced then that it would be fully restored at the Museum of Old Machines and Technologies in the Czech Republic, working closely with the Pairi Daiza Steam Railway team. That work took almost four years.
The park’s stated reason for the new name is a railway connection as much as a royal one. In 1923 Queen Elisabeth left Brussels aboard the Belgian royal train bound for Egypt, traveling by rail to Genoa before continuing to Alexandria, and became one of the first prominent visitors to the recently opened tomb of Tutankhamun.
Pairi Daiza now runs six historic locomotives on its steam railway. The park presented the Reine Elisabeth under steam on September 12 and 13, and said it will shortly join the others in regular service. The park frames the restoration as heritage work of the same kind it applies to the totems, temples and rice barns on its grounds, and points out that the engine has returned to Hainaut a few kilometers from where it was built.
The announcement, with the full history, is on the park’s news pages: The Belgian steam locomotive La Couillet is running again at Pairi Daiza. For another European park putting a restored piece of its own history back in front of visitors this year, see Tiergarten Schönbrunn’s Engelstor.
Quick answers
- What is the Reine Elisabeth at Pairi Daiza?
A steam locomotive built in 1900 by the Societe Metallurgique de Couillet near Charleroi, carrying construction number 1318. Pairi Daiza renamed it Reine Elisabeth on September 9, 2026, after the Belgian queen who lived from 1876 to 1965. The park had been calling it La Couillet.
- Where had the locomotive been?
Spain, then England. It was one of three 9.5-tonne locomotives ordered for the mining company Hulleras de Sabero in the province of Leon, where it was numbered 3 and named Olleros and worked a 600-millimeter narrow-gauge line for almost seventy years until operations ceased in 1969. The British enthusiast Peter Rampton then saved the locomotives from scrap into a private collection that he later closed to the public.
- How did it get back to Belgium?
After Peter Rampton died in 2019 his collection of more than thirty-eight locomotives passed to the Vale of Rheidol Railway in Wales. Pairi Daiza negotiated the locomotive's return and it arrived in Belgium in December 2022, 122 years after it left.
- Can visitors see it running?
Pairi Daiza presented it under steam on September 12 and 13, 2026, and said it will shortly join regular service on the Pairi Daiza Steam Railway, which now runs six historic locomotives.
