GEORGE and Robert Stephenson’s iconic Liverpool & Manchester Railway 0-2-2 Rocket will make an historic return to one of the cities it was built to serve after an absence of more than 180 years.

The remains of the much-rebuilt 1829 loco, which famously won the Rainhill Trials and paved the way for steam locomotive development for the next 140 years, will be exhibited at Manchester’s Museum of Science & Industry (MOSI) from September 22 until April 21 next year.

Not only will this see Rocket back in Manchester, but actually on the site of the Liverpool & Manchester’s Liverpool Road terminus that MOSI now occupies.

MOSI director Sally MacDonald said: “This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see this iconic symbol of the Industrial Revolution in the city where it sparked ‘railway mania’.”

Rocket will move to Manchester directly after its June 22-September 9 appearance at Newcastle’s Discovery Museum, as part of the Great Exhibition of the North, tickets for which are now on sale.

■ MOSI will undergo a change of identity from September, becoming the Science & Industry Museum, to align it with the Science Museum Group’s revamped identity policy that has also seen the National Railway Museum become simply the Railway Museum.

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