A history of the East Coast Main Line 9781785002878, 1785002872

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A History of the East Coast Main Line

A History of the East Coast Main Line ROBIN JONES

THE CROWOOD PRESS

First published in 2017 by The Crowood Press Ltd Ramsbury, Marlborough Wiltshire SN8 2HR www.crowood.com This e-book first published in 2017 © Robin Jones 2017 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978 1 78500 287 8 Frontispiece: The greatest racehorses of the East Coast Main Line: the last line-up of all six surviving Gresley A4 streamlined Pacifics, including the pair repatriated temporarily from North American museums, took place at the Locomotion Museum in Shildon, County Durham, in February 2014. Pictured left to right on the evening of 19 February are Nos 60007 Sir Nigel Gresley, 60008 Dwight D. Eisenhower, 60009 Union of South Africa, 4489 Dominion of Canada, 4464 Bittern and 4468 Mallard, the world steam railway locomotive speed record holder. (Fred Kerr) Title page: On 30 September 2015, in the waiting room on Platform 2 at Grantham, the official unveiling took place of the spectacular stained-glass window depicting world steam railway speed record holder Mallard, created by local artist Mike Brown. (Author)

Dedication To Vicky and Ross, who both began their careers travelling on the East Coast Main Line.

Acknowledgements Special thanks to Brian Sharpe, Dennis Butler and the A1 Steam Locomotive Trust. All pictures credited ‘CCL’ are published under a Creative Commons licence. Full details may be obtained at http://creativecommons.org/licenses. Pictures credited ‘AUTHOR’ were taken by the author. Pictures credited ‘AUTHOR’S COLLECTION’ are non-copyright pictures from the author’s personal collection. All pictures taken inside the National Railway Museum were taken with the permission of the NRM.

Contents Introduction Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter

6

Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14

The Great Route to the North before the Railway Beginnings North of the Border Heading North from Newcastle London to Leeds and York Bridging the Biggest Gaps: The Aberdeen ‘Extension’ Sturrock: Shrinking Distance through Speed The Singular Racing Days After the Goldrush: Britain’s First Atlantics The New Golden Age of Steam The Duck that Downed the Eagle What’s in a Name? King’s Cross – The True King of Termini Leamside: The Forgotten Main Line When Diesels Reigned Supreme!

Chapter 15 Chapter 16

Beeching, Serpell and Electrification Reach for the Stars: The Selby Diversion Chapter 17 Scotsman’s Modern-Day Successors Chapter 18 A New Steam Star for the TwentyFirst Century Chapter 19 The National Railway Museum: Jewel in the East Coast Crown Chapter 20 Gresley’s A4s: Demise and Regathering Chapter 21 The Return of the King Chapter 22 The East Coast’s Darkest Days Index

A 2010 Department for Transport route diagram of the East Coast Main Line from King’s Cross to Aberdeen and its principal connections.

Introduction Steam hit the national headlines in a big way in 2016, with the return of the legendary Flying Scotsman to the nation’s railways after a lengthy absence, during which it underwent a major rebuild costing a phenomenal £4.2 million. Thus not only was it already the world’s most famous steam locomotive, but its overhaul under the auspices of owner the National Railway Museum also made it the world’s most expensive one. The fact that we live in an age of celebrity culture was no more apparent than when the great Brunswick green behemoth returned to the tracks in triumph and began hauling passenger trains again. It is a gross understatement to say that crowds turned out everywhere it went: there were numerous instances of people trespassing on the lines to get a closer view, and on its official comeback trip from London King’s Cross to York on 25 February it had to be halted twice because onlookers were straying on to the electrified main line in complete disregard of their own safety. In fact the rail authorities stopped publishing its timings in a bid to deter trespassers, operators cancelled or rerouted two of its planned trips for fear that onlookers would stray on to the line side, and British Transport Police published photographs taken from a helicopter following at least one of its trains in a bid to identify and apprehend offenders. In short, ‘Scotsman’ frenzy had gripped the nation: here was a train that had become almost too famous to run.

Flying Scotsman is, for many people, the defining icon of the steam age, and its exploits both in the steam era and its years in preservation never fail to enthral. Yet there is a far bigger story surrounding Sir Nigel Gresley’s masterpiece – not just concerning the locomotive, but also the route on which it staked its immortal claim to fame: Britain’s East Coast Main Line. In 1706, the English Parliament passed the Union with Scotland Act, and the following year, the Union with England Act was passed by the Parliament of Scotland. The legislation brought to a conclusion a merger between two once-hostile countries, which had in effect begun with the death of Elizabeth I in 1603, when King James VI of Scotland inherited the English crown from his double first cousin twice removed, and a ‘union of crowns’ took place, with both countries sharing one monarch for the first time. From 1 May 1707, the English Parliament and its Scottish counterpart united to form the Parliament of Great Britain, based in the Palace of Westminster. History recorded that the union took Great Britain to new political heights. The following century the union of England and Scotland was further reinforced, not by further treaties, but by a 393-mile (632km) trunk railway. It reduced the journey time of five days or more between London and Edinburgh by stagecoach to just a few hours. In those days, such a feat was considered by ordinary folk as we might today regard daily commuter shuttles to a moon base and back: simply mind-blowing. In the incessant drive by the railway companies operating over this trunk route to cut travelling time between the two capital cities, world transport technology jumped forwards in leaps and bounds, with Britain leading the steam era pack by a long way. There was open rivalry, firstly with the West Coast Main Line, which ran from London to Scotland on the opposite side of the country, and secondly with Germany, and this spurred on landmark developments in locomotive and infrastructure technology, leading to the golden age of steam in the Thirties. In 1934 the London & North Eastern Railway A3 Pacific No. 4472 Flying Scotsman became the first in the world to officially break the 100mph (160km/h) barrier. Four years later another masterpiece was

designed by the company’s chief mechanical engineer Sir Nigel Gresley: the streamlined A4 Pacific No. 4468 Mallard, which set a world speed record of 126mph (203km/h) on Stoke Bank in Lincolnshire, snatching the crown off Nazi Germany. That world speed record has yet to be broken, and almost certainly never will be.

The great gateway to the East Coast Main Line: the frontage of King’s Cross station, as seen in the early LNER period. LONDON TRANSPORT MUSEUM

So not only did the East Coast Main Line make history by facilitating an ever-faster link between two capital cities, it also provided an international stage for Britain’s engineering marvels, inspiring many generations of schoolboys and adults alike. That was to continue after the end of the steam era on British Railways, with diesel and then electric traction setting a series of new records over the route. We now look forward not only to yet another generation of modern trains being introduced, but also the prospect of regular 90mph steam operation again, as highlighted in Chapter 18. This volume not only tells the story of how the London-to-Edinburgh line became the

world’s fastest steam railway, it also looks at how its proud and unique heritage is today appreciated and celebrated more than ever before. Both the route itself, and the locomotives and trains that ran over it, were a colossal inspiration to a country that in the 1930s was emerging from depression – and they are still a monumental source of national pride today.

CHAPTER 1

The Great Route to the North before the Railway The Romans literally laid the foundations of much of what later became known as the Great North Road, the great stagecoach route linking London to Edinburgh. Renowned for the quality of their road building, they turned primitive trackways that had existed for centuries before they invaded in ad44 into major highways. Indeed, historians have said that what became the route of the Great North Road was trodden not only by ancient Britons but also by Phoenician traders. Ermine Street is the modern name for one such great highway they built from Londinium to Lindum Colonia (Lincoln) and Eboracum (York), although we don’t know what the Romans called it. Its purpose was military, and it supplied the great frontier of the Roman Empire that was Hadrian’s Wall, which stretched from the Solway Firth to the mouth of the River Tyne and kept the warlike Picts out of what is now England. The Romans tried to push even further north, and in ad142 the Emperor Antoninus Pius ordered the building of a ‘Hadrian’s Wall lite’, the far more basic turf ramparts that were the Antonine Wall, a barrier between the Clyde and the Forth. However, the Romans grew tired of the colossal effort and expense incurred in trying to subdue southern Scotland, and withdrew to Hadrian’s Wall. One of three suspected Roman roads in Scotland crossed the River Tweed at Tweedmouth, near the future Berwick-on-Tweed.

The muddy surface of the Great North Road at Highgate was riddled with ruts because of the sheer volume of traffic using it. Turnpike trusts came into existence to address such problems.

Unfortunately the splendid roads that the Romans built fell into disrepair after they abandoned Britain in ad410, and many of them disappeared. The principal route from London to York and on to Edinburgh was for centuries afterwards a combination of decaying Roman roads and pothole-ridden muddy trackways. Tudor statutes placed responsibility on each parish to maintain all its roads, but while it helped local residents, it did little to aid long-distance travellers. By the seventeenth century, trade in and out of London had increased to the point where horses and carts were causing so much damage to highways on an hourly basis that the parishes could not keep up with their statutory obligations. The city fathers saw that the only realistic way forwards was to have one Roman-style ‘super highway’ into the city, the maintenance of its stone surface funded by payments from passing traffic. Accordingly, an Act of Parliament in 1663 gave local magistrates powers to install tollgates on a section of the Great North Road. The length between Wadesmill in

Hertfordshire and Stilton in Huntingdonshire became one of Britain’s first toll roads. In the first three decades of the eighteenth century, many stretches of the main roads leading into London became controlled by turnpike trusts, and by 1825 around 1,000 turnpike trusts controlled 18,000 miles (29,000km) of highway in England and Wales.

At Lolham Bridges, north of Peterborough, the East Coast Main Line is bisected by the Roman road King Street, which left Ermine Street, later the Great North Road, near the River Nene at Ailsworth Heath and the Roman settlement of Castor, and ran into South Kesteven, rejoining Ermine Street south of Ancaster, another Roman town. King Street is believed to date from the reign of the Emperor Hadrian (117–138). An East Midlands Trains local DMU service is seen crossing King Street on 29 May 2014. Part of it is very much in use as a road today. AUTHOR

The Great North Road became a primary route used by mail coaches between London, York and Edinburgh. The earliest

surviving record of stagecoach travel dates back to 1685 and was from London to the coaching ‘capital’ of Stamford in Lincolnshire, where horses were changed and establishments offered travellers rooms for the night – the equivalent of a modern-day motorway service station. The fare for the two-day journey to Stamford from the George Inn at Aldersgate was £1, a fortune that only the well-to-do could afford. The journey to York took another two days.

Traditionally, the start of the Great North Road is Smithfield Market in St John Street in Clerkenwell. AUTHOR

The Great North Road was held to start at Hicks Hall in London’s Smithfield. However, after the building of the General Post Office in 1829, stagecoaches switched to the route that a century later became classified as the A1. The new route followed Aldersgate Street and Goswell Road before joining the traditional route at the Angel, Islington, which became a key staging post. By the early eighteenth century the Angel was the largest coaching house in a row of several sited along Islington’s High Street. Improvements to the road carried out by turnpike trusts reduced the journey time

between London and Stamford to just a day by 1770, and the fare was duly cut to 16s. Yet it would still take at least four days to travel between the capitals.

A mail coach caught in a snowstorm. THE POSTAL MUSEUM

Royal Mail coaches made their Great North Road debut in the 1780s. York was the first terminus of the stagecoach route from London, but a new route running from Doncaster to Ferrybridge, Wetherby, Boroughbridge, Northallerton and Darlington provided a more direct way to Edinburgh, the ultimate destination. However, the less populated sections of the Great North Road had a less-thanperfect reputation as they were the haunt of highwaymen and footpads who targeted rich travellers. The coaching trade reached its height in 1830, when forty mail coaches and thirty passenger-carrying services passed through Stamford each day. But the end of prosperity for Stamford and other coaching towns was fast approaching. On 15 September 1830 the world’s first inter-city steam railway opened: the Liverpool & Manchester Railway. It was a seminal

moment in global transport history for two major reasons. First, it ended the debate as to whether the steam locomotive was just a novelty, and horse-drawn wagons and cable haulage of coaches along railways were still state of the art. Yet the Liverpool & Manchester was an instant success and sparked off a series of trunk railway schemes that would soon carve up the countryside and shrink the travelling time between major towns and cities, bursting the bubble of the stagecoach town and operators’ prosperity wherever they were laid.

The opening of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway on 15 September 1830 was a watershed moment in world transport history. It laid down the blueprint for other trunk railways such as the East Coast Main Line, and sounded the death knell for turnpike roads and stagecoach services.

Second, George and Robert Stephenson’s Rocket, winner of the Rainhill Trials in 1829, a competition held to find the best form of traction for the Liverpool & Manchester, was itself a watershed in the evolution of the steam locomotive: its several innovations placed it

apart from the early engines that had appeared before, and laid down a blueprint for other engineers to follow. The final stagecoach from London to Newcastle left in 1842, and the last from Newcastle to Edinburgh in July 1847. Railways were to supersede the Great North Road, but did not kill it off: in 1921, well into the motor-car age, it was designated by the Ministry of Transport as the A1, the first A road in Britain. Yet within two decades, the great trunk railway that ran all but parallel to it from London to Scotland would become the world leader, at least in terms of steam technology.

A woodcut of highwayman Dick Turpin leaping London’s Hornsey toll bar.

The George was one of England’s most important coaching inns, situated at the point where the Great North Road entered Stamford, the key point on stagecoach and mail coach routes between London and the North, and long described as the finest stone town in England. AUTHOR

Another historic Stamford coaching hostelry was the Millstone Inn, its advertisement for good stabling etched into its stonework. AUTHOR

The name of this Stamford inn harks back to the stagecoach era. AUTHOR

A contemporary sketch of Olive Mount cutting on the then new Liverpool & Manchester Railway.

CHAPTER 2

Beginnings North of the Border The early decades of the twenty-first century have seen the planning of an often controversial high-speed rail network designed to further reduce the travelling times between London, Birmingham and Scotland. Government planners are able to sit down and work out the ideal choice of route before drawing up detailed plans to build it. However, that is not how the East Coast Main Line came into existence: this happened by the joining together of the main lines of three separate railway companies – the North British, North Eastern and Great Northern railways. While each may have harboured longterm ambitions to link the two capitals, their immediate concern was to serve towns and cities in their ‘territories’. Many people are surprised to learn that, unlike the Great North Road, the beginnings of the construction of what became the ECML lay not in London, but in Edinburgh, a fact that should leave Nicola Sturgeon and her Scottish nationalists beaming with pride even if they did lose the Scottish independence referendum in September 2014. For it was the Scots who led the way in creating what would one day be the world’s fastest steam railway! The ECML had its roots in several early schemes to link Scotland’s two major cities, Edinburgh and Glasgow, and the one that finally took off was that of the Edinburgh & Glasgow Railway. Three years after the company’s formation, and following a long struggle to win approval, finally on 4 July 1838 it received parliamentary authority to build Scotland’s first inter-city line. The first passenger services between Edinburgh Haymarket and Glasgow Queen Street ran on 21 February 1842, and 1,600 people a

day were carried during the first ten months of its service. A big drawback of the line was that the Haymarket terminus lay on the western side of Edinburgh, and to begin with city residents did not want it to come any further in towards the city centre. Geographically, in the steep narrow valley between Edinburgh’s medieval Old Town and the eighteenth-century New Town once lay a freshwater lake, the Nor Loch. However, by the early nineteenth century as the city expanded, Nor Loch had become an open sewer, and was drained. By 1820 it was dry, and much of the land was used to build the sprawling landscaped park named Princes Street Gardens. In the mid-1830s the Edinburgh & Glasgow had unveiled plans to build the railway across the gardens to a station at North Bridge, but local residents were outraged and had challenged the Act of Parliament that had authorized the building of the line – hence the Haymarket compromise. However, by 1842 when the line opened, public opinion had changed, as many of the properties in Princes Street had become hotels or shops, all of which would benefit from additional customers being brought in by train. In 1844 the railway and landowners agreed that the line could be built, provided that it ran through a cutting shielded by walls and embankments, and that compensation was paid. Three stations appeared in the valley in the 1840s. The North British Railway opened its North Bridge station, the Edinburgh terminus, on 22 June 1846, followed by the Edinburgh & Glasgow’s general station on 17 May 1847, the same day that the Edinburgh, Leith & Newhaven Railway opened its own Canal Street terminus, otherwise known as Edinburgh Princes Street. The three stations were so close together that from 1854, a collective term for them, Edinburgh Waverley, was used, after the through Waverley route to Carlisle opened. The name originated from the Waverley novels by Sir Walter Scott. From the outset, there was through running between the Edinburgh & Glasgow and the North British railways.

Ancient seat of power: Edinburgh Castle dominates the city below. The building of the great railway that was to link the two capital cities began in Scotland, not London. AUTHOR

A contemporary print of Edinburgh Waverley in 1800. AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

The western (Glasgow) approach to Edinburgh Waverley station today. The North British Hotel on the skyline opened in 1902. AUTHOR

The coat of arms of the North British Railway.

In 1846, the North British Railway’s chairman John Learmonth, seeing the completion date of his railway fast approaching, held discussions with a group of Edinburgh businessmen who spotted a business opportunity. They wanted to see a railway built to the fishing port of Dunbar 30 miles (50km) away, so that the majority of the fresh catch could be brought efficiently into the capital each day. These entrepreneurs formed a committee to promote such a scheme, under the title of North British Railway. However, the necessary investment proved hard to find, as other Edinburgh

businessmen did not believe that the Dunbar scheme would generate sufficient profits, if any at all. So the North British Railway raised the bar and drew up a scheme for a much longer line, to Berwick-on-Tweed across the border – and this time a note was struck with investors, mostly in England. They could see the colossal advantage of having a railway that might just one day link the two capitals in a fraction of the time taken by stagecoaches, and certainly much faster than the sea route between Leith and London. Unlike the case of the Edinburgh & Glasgow Railway, the North British had little difficulty in obtaining parliamentary consent, which happened on 4 July 1844. Building work began shortly afterwards, though not on the cross-border line, but on the first branch, which ran for 4½ miles (7km) from Longniddry to Haddington. In order to reduce the expense of building the main line, the bustling market town of Haddington had been bypassed so as to avoid major engineering works across hilly terrain.

Dunbar in East Lothian was the target of the original advocates of a railway running eastwards from Edinburgh. It is the halfway point between Edinburgh Waverley and Berwick-upon-Tweed, with a distance of around 28 miles (45km) each way. AUTHOR

Dunbar station proudly lays claim to its position on the first railway to cross the border between Scotland and England. Today, Dunbar’s platform is located on a loop adjacent to the main through lines. AUTHOR

The line from Edinburgh to Berwick was built by twelve different contractors within two years. In engineering teams it was a fairly simple project by comparison with many other lines, following gentle contours to Dunbar, and beyond there taking circuitous routes around hills rather than tunnelling through them, in order to comply with budgetary restraints – no nature-defying Isambard Kingdom Brunel box tunnels or Maidenhead bridge-like feats here. In fact the name ‘East Coast Main Line’ is misleading, as is that of its West Coast counterpart. In the case of the former, it is only in Scotland and part of Northumbria that the railway runs anywhere near the sea, and ‘Eastern Side of Britain Main Line’ might be a more apt title. One significant engineering feat came at Cocksburnpath, where an 11ft (3m) high, six-span stone bridge provided a crossing of the Dunglass burn, with large embankments on each side, unfortunately prone to waterlogging. Near the summit, the topmost ridge was pierced by the 267-yard (244m) Penmanshiel Tunnel.

In addition to the geophysical difficulties here, there were big problems with the army of navvies who built the line, carving out the route with picks and shovels. The labour force consisted of Irish Roman Catholics and Scottish Protestants, on opposite sides of the cultural fence. The navvies were paid in tokens, which could only be redeemed at the railway contractor’s shop, where the purchase of whisky was heavily promoted. Needless to say, the approach of pay day sparked fear and dread amongst local residents. In October 1844 religious differences did indeed cause a riot, to the extent that all work on the railway was brought to a halt, and the ensuing bad feeling between the factions lasted over a year. While the North British Railway promised and delivered multiple benefits, there were those who had their doubts about it, and were opposed to it from the outset. One man, God-fearing James Blackadder, was so worried that the Scots would be corrupted by the heathens south of the border who would travel northwards using the line that he went to the trouble and expense of taking out newspaper advertisements warning fellow countrymen of the latest desecration of the Sabbath in England: the running of trains on Sundays. Over the course of history few places have experienced the conflict between the Scots and English to the same extent as Berwick-on-Tweed. A glance at the map shows that the town nowadays lies a few miles over the border, to the north of which lies its namesake, the Scottish country of Berwickshire; it is significant that Berwick Rangers FC plays in the Scottish league, rather than for English football. Both Berwick and its castle changed hands more than thirteen times during the conflicts between 1147 and 1482, when Richard Duke of Gloucester, the future Richard III, finally captured and kept it. However, Berwick was never formally ‘annexed’ by England, although the 1707 union ended the dispute as to which country owned it. The castle was built in the twelfth century by the Scottish king David I, and because of the persistent conflicts became of prime strategic importance; however, in the sixteenth century new battlements were built to protect the town, and the castle faded in importance; indeed parts of it were dismantled and its stone used for other building work.

An even greater sacrilege, and one that would probably not be permitted in today’s heritage-conscious age, occurred in 1847 when the castle’s Great Hall was demolished to make way for – yes, you guessed, the North Berwick Railway. The railway had reached Berwick the year before, but had run into a temporary terminus until the permanent one was ready – and to make way for it the castle had come tumbling down as had never happened before, during all those years of conflict. Only its west wall survived, to become the boundary of the now-defunct goods yard. Although the permanent station was not yet complete, on 18 June 1846 there were mass celebrations as the first trains ran over the completed North British Railway. A pair of maroon-liveried trains using a total of fifty out of the company’s 146 carriages and nine engines took invited guests from Edinburgh to Berwick and back. Scheduled services began four days later, with five trains each way between Edinburgh and Berwick; from Berwick, Newcastle was reached by stagecoach, a service that was still very much alive. The ‘express’ journey stopped only at Dunbar and took ninety minutes, as compared to a local stopping train that took two-and-a-half hours.

The original castellated Berwick-on-Tweed station. NETWORK RAIL

This section of wall is all that remained of the castle, which was knocked down to make way for Berwick station. AUTHOR

The station plaque that highlights the place of Berwick Castle in Scottish history. AUTHOR

The first-class carriages were broadly based on the stagecoach, with enclosed compartments. However, the accommodation for other classes was better than that on most other railways of the day, in that enclosed carriages with windows were also provided for secondclass travellers, while third-class passengers not only had benches to sit on, but a roof to shelter them. These carriages were in sharp contrast to the open, seatless coaches on the Edinburgh & Glasgow. Locomotive builder Hawthorn of Newcastle provided twenty-six double-framed 0-4-2s, followed by six 2-2-2s and fifteen 2-4-0s, while freight – comprising Lothian coal traffic and borders agricultural produce – was handled by an increasing number of 0-6-0s. Soon after the railway’s opening, the longstanding problem of whisky reared its head again. Despite the 1707 union, Scotland still retained many laws that did not apply in England (as is still the case

today), one of which was customs controls: when asked if you had ‘something to declare’, this included ‘colonial liquor’, because the same restrictions applied when you crossed from Scotland into England as when you crossed from France into Britain. A month after its opening, the North British Railway ran the first-ever excursion for 400 people from Glasgow to Berwick, joining forces with the Edinburgh & Glasgow, with the train also stopping at Edinburgh and Dunbar. All went well until it crossed over the border and arrived in England. Ready and waiting were excisemen who pounced on the passengers and searched their baggage, seizing Scotch wherever it was found. Both staff and passengers found themselves arrested for whisky smuggling. Railway officials were furious because the customs officers had delayed their services, while the excisemen in turn said that they were being obstructed from enforcing the law. Common sense finally prevailed when the law was eventually changed to allow Scotch as well as Scots to be carried across the border. We saw earlier how the North British Railway had cut costs by taking its line round topographical obstacles rather than tunnelling through them. But these economy measures taken during construction caught up with the company on 30 August 1846, when the engine of a train carrying North British Locomotive Superintendent Robert Thornton ran into floods near Linton. The locomotive and leading coach derailed and plunged down a bank, and it was very lucky that nobody was killed. The rain continued incessantly through September, and sections of trackbed together with bridges and embankments along the coastal section were washed away; 19 miles (30km) were left impassable.

Queen Victoria made her first visit to Berwick-on-Tweed in September 1849, the royal party arriving by train from Balmoral. The train was late, but she did get to hear the loyal addresses delivered as the highlight of mass celebrations in the town. Afterwards, she travelled on to Howick where she spent the night as a guest of Lord Grey. ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS

The triumphal arch erected for the first visit of Queen Victoria to Berwick. ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS

Berwick-on-Tweed station as it is today. AUTHOR

As had happened throughout Britain with the coming of the railway, the local stagecoach services had been wound up, so there was no other replacement transport service available, and the company had to search quickly for any form of other horse-drawn transport that could be found at short notice. Even ordinary carts were pressed into service to carry passengers and goods between the two halves of the line that were left operational. The section of line around the cliffs north of Berwick was seen as a particularly notable example of shoddy workmanship. However, the damage was rectified stage by stage, but it was not until the close of the Victorian age that major work to bring the line fully up to standard was undertaken. Once their line was repaired and trains began running again, North British directors asked why the Leith to London ships were still carrying twice as many passengers as the railway. The answer was that the ships provided a ‘one stop shop’, whereas the railway passengers still had to break their journey and use stagecoaches for part of the way. The obvious remedy was for the railway route to continue beyond Berwick, and that is what happened, thanks to a separate company.

CHAPTER 3

Heading North from Newcastle

With the success of the Liverpool & Manchester, thoughts turned towards linking central Scotland with the industrial north-east of England, and on 1 March 1839 a scheme to build a Great North British Railway from Newcastle to Edinburgh was unveiled, the English part having been designed by George Stephenson. The Smith-Barlow Commission was set up by the government to determine the best route, but dithered to such an extent that it became irrelevant. However, lack of finance halted the Great North British Railway before it got off the ground.

George Stephenson, the ‘Father of the Railways’, planned the first railway to link his native north-east to Scotland.

A marble bust of ‘Railway King’ George Hudson in the National Railway Museum at York. AUTHOR

Meanwhile the so-called ‘Railway King’ George Hudson was building a network in the north of England, centred on two of his companies, the York & North Midland Railway and the Great North of England Railway, which aimed to reach Gateshead. When the North British Railway was formed, Hudson contributed £50,000 in the hope

of gaining control of that railway too, once he had built a line from Newcastle to Berwick, and so he drew up plans for one. There was one big stumbling block, and that was the refusal of former Prime Minister Earl Grey, a major landowner north of Alnmouth, to allow a railway to cross his estate. His son Viscount Howick also took up the cudgel to keep the railway out, and proposed a deviation route to keep the line out of sight of the family home. However, the cost was considered prohibitive for the railway, and George Stephenson and then Hudson tried in vain to persuade him to accept the original plans. By this time the proven advantage of the railway network was such that whereas at one time Parliament would have been swayed by such arguments, by the 1840s they generated far less sympathy amongst MPs. Seeing this, Hudson decided to press ahead with the original route. But Howick was not to be defeated, and decided that the promotion of a rival railway would be the best way to block the Newcastle & Berwick. He planned a rival line, the Northumberland Railway, that would avoid the family estate altogether, taking a westward course. Not only did Howick hire Isambard Kingdom Brunel to engineer the line, he also opted for his atmospheric system. How different the East Coast Main Line would have looked, if that option had won the day! And might Brunel’s 7ft 0¼in broad gauge have gained the advantage over George Stephenson’s 4ft 8½in gauge, long considered as standard gauge? In September 1844 Isambard and Daniel Gooch joined other eminent engineers of the day to witness a demonstration by inventors Samuel Clegg and Jacob Samuda of an atmospheric train on the 1½ mile (2.4km) long Dalkey & Kingstown Railway, which linked Kingstown Harbour with the Dublin & Dalkey Railway. Clegg, a gas-lighting pioneer, and Samuda, a marine engineering expert, had patented the atmospheric system of propulsion on 3 January 1838. Their method consisted of a cast-iron tube laid between the rails and sealed by airtight valves at each end. A piston linked to the bottom of a carriage was pushed past the valve into the tube, and stationary steam engines on the side of the railway pumped air out of the tube, generating a vacuum ahead of the piston. The greater pressure of

the atmosphere behind the piston would force it along the tube and pull the carriage with it, without the need for a locomotive. One of the biggest complaints concerning steam trains, especially in the days of roofless carriages, was that they showered passengers with hot water and cinders. By contrast, here was the world’s first ‘green’ transport system: clean, silent and fast. Since there was no engine, the trains would be lighter and more efficient, and the tracks could be built more cheaply. Hilly terrain could be tackled without having to bring in extra locomotives and crews, because all that would be needed would be another pumping station close by. The atmospheric system offered all the benefits that electric traction gives in modern times. Indeed, Great Western Railway engineer Isambard’s immense enthusiasm for the atmospheric system was shared by none other than Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel, who wanted to see all railways converted to the method. After the Dublin & Kingstown Railway came the London & Croydon in 1846, eventually running 7½ miles (12km) from Croydon to New Cross in London, and in 1847 the 1.4-mile (2.2km) Paris & St Germain Railway from Bois de Vezinet to St Germain in Paris. The fourth atmospheric line would be the South Devon Railway.

Brunel’s broad-gauge South Devon atmospheric railway at Dawlish, with the vacuum pipe between the rails and one of the line’s great Italianate pumping houses on the right. ELTON COLLECTION, IRONBRIDGE GORGE MUSEUM TRUST

After completing the successful Bristol & Exeter Railway in 1836, Isambard now looked to take his 7ft 0¼in broad-gauge network all the way to Penzance. However, his early surveys of possible routes for a continuation of the main line to Plymouth showed a seemingly endless number of gradients, which could be difficult for steam trains of the day, even if Dartmoor and its foothills were bypassed. Yet because atmospheric traction did not depend on the adhesion of heavy locomotives to the rails, he could economize on earthworks and allow such steep inclines. Isambard concluded that to boost power on the heavy gradients, with atmospheric propulsion all you would have to do would be to increase the diameter of the vacuum pipe, add a second pipe, or just build another or a bigger pumping station. The South Devon Railway received its royal assent on 4 July 1844. Isambard was appointed as engineer, and recommended the adoption of a proposal from Clegg & Samuda to install atmospheric

propulsion over the whole length of the 52-mile (84km) route from Exeter to Plymouth – even though his otherwise loyal locomotive superintendent Daniel Gooch argued that a locomotive would run the Kingstown line more cheaply, and joined forces with Robert Stephenson to argue the case against the new system. Yet enticed by Isambard’s promise of huge savings by using the Clegg & Samuda system, the South Devon directors unanimously approved his plan. In an expression of the grandeur that typified Isambard Brunel’s style of architecture, nine huge Italianate engine houses were built at 3-mile (5km) intervals along the railway from Exeter to Teignmouth and on the proposed branch to Torquay.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel, as painted by his brother-in-law, John Callcott Horsley, in 1857.

Brunel was undoubtedly an engineering genius, and in a poll television viewers voted him the second greatest Briton of all time after Sir Winston Churchill. Sadly, the atmospheric system – dubbed ‘the Atmospheric Caper’ by locals – was riddled with problems from the outset. Initial tests had shown that the planned 12in (30cm) vacuum pipe needed to be replaced by one of 15in (40cm) diameter. Accordingly the pumping engines already installed along the route had to run faster than their design speed in order to maintain the vacuum. Isambard was either inexcusably unaware of, or deliberately withheld from the South Devon directors the details of the difficulties – difficulties that caused the London & Croydon Railway to close after just a year. This first section of the South Devon Railway opened on 30 May 1846, using steam engines at first, while the vacuum tube and leather and metal valve continued to be laid. Two public atmospheric trains ran over the line from 13 September 1847, and from 10 January 1848 services were extended to Newton Abbot, with some freight being carried too. Yes, high speeds were indeed achieved as Isambard had predicted – 68mph (109km/h) with a 28-ton load, and 35mph (56km/h) with 100 tons – but the 20-mile (32km/h) journey from Exeter to Newton Abbot with four stops took a slow fifty-five minutes due to one train having to wait for the other to pass, as the route was still single track. Still, at the outset the trains became popular with passengers – apart from those in third class who were asked to get out and push when they broke down. Brunel may have been light years ahead of his time, but the raw materials with which he had to work were not. The hinge of the airtight valve and the ring around the piston were both made of leather, an organic material that was totally unsuitable for the purpose, as had just been proved at Croydon. The solution was to

employ a large team of men to continually run a sticky sealant on the valve to make it airtight. The sealant then proved useless after exposure to the air, so a new compound using cod-liver oil and soap was tried, without much better success. This compound, along with the natural oils in the leather, was sucked into the vacuum pipe, and the leather dried and cracked in the sun, wind and salty air. Famously, it was also gnawed by rats. Air leaked into the pipe through the cracks in the leather and so the steam pumps had to work much harder and burn more coal to keep up the pressure in the pipe. But no other suitable flexible material was available in the mid1800s. A telling letter from an ordinary member of the public to the railway’s directors opened a few eyes. It said that it cost 37 pence to run an atmospheric train for a mile as opposed to 16 pence for steam. With the South Devon shareholders having lost nearly £500,000 on the scheme, and faced with a £25,000 bill to replace the entire valve after less than a year, the directors voted to turn their line over to locomotive haulage as from 10 September 1848. Isambard faced angry shareholders at a meeting in Plymouth, and finally admitted that he had been wrong about atmospheric propulsion. His South Devon Railway as a traditional steam line proved hugely successful, and it is now part of the West of England main line. Three years before the South Devon atmospheric line failed, in May 1845 the House of Lords Committee considered the merits of the Newcastle & Berwick Railway and the Northumberland Railway, and decided against the Northumberland Railway. It would cost more to build as a single-track line than the double-tracked Newcastle & Berwick, it had not been planned to link with other railways in Newcastle and Gateshead, and it would not have sufficient capacity to cope with the soaring demand for rail travel. With defeat looming for the Northumberland Railway, its promoters withdrew it, and the Newcastle & Berwick received its Act of Parliament on 31 July 1845, with an authorized capital of £1.4 million. One trade-off in the Newcastle & Berwick winning support was the inclusion of Morpeth on the main line; original plans envisaged a branch to the market

town, though the down side of this change was the sharp reverse curve there. In order to link the connecting railways from the south to the Newcastle & Berwick, the River Tyne needed to be bridged. In order to gain support for the scheme it was agreed to build the bridge in Newcastle itself, and accordingly, what became known as the High Level Bridge was built. Taking the tracks from the south into Newcastle Central station, the bridge and the station accounted for a third of the overall cost of the Newcastle & Berwick.

Robert Stephenson’s High Level Bridge at Newcastle is the earliest major example of a wrought-iron tied arch or bowstring girder bridge. Originally part of the East Coast Main Line, today is carries only local services to Sunderland. AUTHOR

Designed by Robert Stephenson, the bridge stands 131ft (40m) above the water and spans 1,337ft (407.5m). There are six spans over the river and four on land, and it has been described as an improved version of Stephenson’s Britannia Bridge over the Menai Strait. Single-carriageway road and pedestrian walkways occupy the lower deck of the spans, and the railway the upper deck. Rail traffic began using it on 15 August 1849, but it was officially opened on 27

September of that year by Queen Victoria. She agreed to return the following year and open Newcastle Central station.

Robert Stephenson’s frontage of Newcastle Central station. AUTHOR

The opening of the more functional King Edward VII Bridge in 1906 did away with an East Coast Main Line bottleneck. AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

The track layout emanating from the bridge had problems in that trains entering Newcastle Central station from the south had to be reversed back across the bridge when returning in that direction. Furthermore, locomotives needed to switch ends before a train could head north towards Edinburgh. These problems were solved in 1906 with the opening of the King Edward VII Bridge 500 yards (457m) upstream, after which the High Level Bridge, which had made through trains from London to Edinburgh possible, was relegated to local traffic use. Newcastle Central was designed by John Dobson, hailed in his time as the most famous architect in the north. It has been described as the finest station in England, with its three great arched roofs built in a curve on an 800ft (244m) radius to form a train shed. Dobson displayed his original plan for the station at the Paris Exhibition of 1858, where it won an award. The station was built in collaboration with Robert Stephenson; it had a neoclassical-styled frontage and was completed in 1850, and was officially opened by Queen Victoria on 29 August 1850. The façade portico, designed by Thomas Prosser, was added thirteen years later. The train shed was extended southwards in the 1890s, with a new span designed by William Bell. In November 1844, the Newcastle & Berwick Railway bought out the Newcastle & North Shields Railway and incorporated its line from its Newcastle terminus at Carliol Square to Heaton, a considerable saving on construction costs. However, as the railway pushed northwards to meet the North British, viaducts were needed across the River Blyth at Plessy, the River Wansbeck north of Morpeth, the River Coquet south of Warkworth, and the River Aln near Alnmouth. The 14½-mile (23km) section from Newcastle’s Heaton Junction to Morpeth opened on 1 March 1847. It was followed closely by the 19¾-mile (32km) northernmost section from Tweedmouth near Berwick south to Chathill on 29 March. The central section between Morpeth and Chathill proved a far more difficult nut to crack; it was unstable during construction, with a moss bed and unstable embankment near Chevington. However, it was permitted to open on 1 July 1847.

Newcastle Central station was famous for its complex set of diamond crossings to the east, which provided access to the High Level Bridge and northbound East Coast Main Line. It was hailed to be the greatest such crossing in the world, and was the subject of many early 1900s hand-coloured postcards such as this one. After the steam age, the crossing became simplified. The opening of the Tyne & Wear Metro led to the demise of many heavy-rail suburban services and the closure of the bay platforms from which they operated on the north side of the station, making the crossing redundant. Much of the crossing was removed in 1988–9 during remodelling and resignalling work as part of the ECML electrification project. AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

Thus the Newcastle & Berwick Railway reached the south bank of the River Tweed 3 miles (5km) south of the border in March 1847. The completed new line connected the town of Berwick to the Brandling Junction Railway at Gateshead. Yet the landmark of through running from the North British Railway was not passed for another eighteen months, and then only by using a temporary bridge. Robert Stephenson was called in to design a permanent structure, and came up with a twenty-eight-arch brick but stonefaced structure 2,162ft (659m) long and standing 124ft (38m) above

water level. Now Grade 1 listed, it has been immortalized as one of wonders of the ECML and nowadays is often floodlit at night.

The Royal Border Bridge at sunset on 6 June 2013. CHRIS COMBE

On 29 August 1850, Queen Victoria opened the Royal Border Bridge, otherwise known as the Berwick viaduct, even though the border was still some distance away. It was the last link in the east coast route from London to Edinburgh, although it was completed later than the line itself.

The coat of arms of the York, Newcastle and Berwick Railway.

Robert Stephenson designed the splendid bridges that crossed the Tyne and the Tweed, as well as Newcastle Central station.

The next stage was to link York and Newcastle, and in 1835 the great George Stephenson surveyed a route for a railway from York to Newcastle, as the Great North of England Railway scheme. Supported by Edward Pease of the Stockton & Darlington Railway, which in 1825 had become the first public railway in the world to use steam locomotives, the Newcastle–Darlington stretch of the line received royal assent in 1836, and the York–Darlington section a year later. The original aim had been to construct the Newcastle–

Darlington section first, but instead, work started on the southern part of the line at Croft. Accordingly, the York to Darlington section opened on 30 March 1841. By then the company had exhausted all its funds, and so another needed to be formed to build the stretch from Newcastle to Darlington.

The famous British Railways sign denoting the border between England and Scotland on the East Coast Main Line. CALLUM BLACK/CCL

In April, Hudson announced that he intended to build a line from Darlington to the south of Durham. From there, he said, existing lines would complete the route as far as Gateshead. In December 1841, the Newcastle & Darlington Junction Railway came into being, with Hudson as its chairman. He infuriated the Stockton & Darlington Railway by turning down its request to incorporate part of its route in the new line.

York is one of the most important railway stations on the UK network because of its role as a key junction approximately halfway between London and Edinburgh. The first York station was a temporary wooden building in Queen Street outside the walls of the city, opened in 1839 by the York & North Midland Railway, and giving the city access to the West Riding, Midlands and London by linking it with the Leeds & Selby Railway (opened in 1834) and the North Midland (opened in 1840). The first station was superseded in 1841, inside the walls, by what is now known as York Old Station. It was built on a site previously occupied by the city’s House of Correction and the nursery garden of Thomas Backhouse, one of the Y&NMR promoters, and designed by Hudson’s friend George Townsend Andrews. Eventually, the big problem caused by through trains between London and Newcastle having to reverse out of the old station to continue their journey led to the present through station being built outside the walls. The old station is illustrated by a sketch of 1861.

Darlington station, also known as Darlington Bank Top, was originally a basic affair that was rebuilt in 1860 to handle its soaring patronage. This station was itself rebuilt within twenty years, when the North Eastern Railway built a stylish new station with a three-span train-shed roof. These improvements included a new connecting line from the south end of the station to meet the original Stockton & Darlington route towards Middlesbrough at Oak Tree Junction. Queen Victoria was said to have expressed the view that Darlington deserved a better station. The new station was finished on 1 July 1887, after which Darlington became a busy junction with routes to Bishop Auckland, Saltburn-by-the-Sea, Richmond, Barnard Castle and Penrith via Stainmore Summit diverging from the East Coast Main Line. AUTHOR

The York to Newcastle railway crossed the Stockton & Darlington via a flat crossing at Parkgate Junction. In the following decades this would become hugely problematic as traffic levels increased. Construction of this vital last link in what would become the East Coast Main Line began in 1842, and the Newcastle & Darlington Junction Railway opened on 19 June 1844. In 1845, the company leased the Great North of England Railway and became known as the York & Newcastle Railway in 1846. Hudson’s name is synonymous with the period of UK transport history known as the Railway Mania, where a plethora of schemes to link towns, cities and industrial regions emerged in a comparatively short space of time, though not all of them were built by any means.

Born in Howsham, Yorkshire, in 1800 as the son of a tenant farmer, in 1821 Hudson inherited the estate of a great uncle and used the money to springboard himself to national fame and fortune. In late 1832 he became treasurer of the newly formed York & Leeds Railway Company, which never built its proposed line. Two years later he became the chairman and biggest shareholder in the York & North Midland Railway, and the following year became Lord Mayor of York. By 1844 Hudson controlled a thousand miles of railway lines, and later became Conservative MP for Sunderland. To his empire was added the Eastern Counties Railway, of which he also became chairman after buying it. Gratuitous honours and rich rewards were bestowed on Hudson, who was widely acclaimed as a shining example of the new breed of entrepreneur produced in a wave of mid-nineteenthcentury prosperity. However, all was not as it seemed. The term ‘cooking the books’ was first used to refer to George Hudson, and has since been immortalized in the English language. After the company’s share prices declined in value in 1847, he was found to have falsified the books of the Eastern Counties Railway, and was exposed as a fraudster. Hudson was also said to have used unscrupulous methods to add the Great North of England Railway to his vast portfolio of lines. Hudson became embroiled in scandal, and was ruined by the disclosure of fraud and the discovery of his bribery of MPs. By 1850 his influence on the railway sector had vanished. A villain and a rogue maybe, but nonetheless Hudson did so much to make a key section of the East Coast Main Line happen, and we cannot but thank him enough for that today. In so many ways he remains a hero, despite his ignominious downfall.

This bell, cast in 1886, originally hung in the clock tower at the Victoria Road entrance to Darlington Bank Top station. Out of use for many years, it was recovered and displayed inside the station. AUTHOR

The exterior of Newcastle station in 1850. ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS

North Eastern Railway R class (LNER D20) 4-4-0 No. 2019 heads out of Newcastle. Designed by locomotive superintendent Wilson Worsdell, sixty of these locomotives were built at nearby Gateshead Works between 1899 and 1907. Withdrawals of the type began in 1943, but British Railways inherited forty-nine. The last was withdrawn in 1957, and no examples were preserved. AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

CHAPTER 4

London to Leeds and York George Hudson’s investments and dealings had played a crucial role in opening a railway route from Edinburgh to York, just as other promoters were looking to push northwards from London to York. The first prospectus of the London & York Railway was issued on 3 May 1844, and the plans included a main line from London to York, a loop line from Peterborough to Bawtry via Boston and Lincoln, and a branch from Doncaster to Wakefield. The London & Birmingham Railway and the Midland Railway, which then enjoyed a monopoly of the existing traffic from London to Leeds and York, staged an all-out opposition to the scheme. But despite their efforts, the Great Northern Railway Act 1846 finally received royal assent on 26 June 1846. Under the banner of the Great Northern Railway, the company aimed for Leeds and York as its initial main targets. The Peterborough to Gainsborough section of the loop line was the first length of the GNR to be built. Because it crossed flat fenland, it was decided that it would be quicker and cheaper to build, and would start bringing in returns sooner. The GNR decided not to build the loop line north of Gainsborough because it had been refused parliamentary powers for a branch from Bawtry to Sheffield, and instead came to an arrangement with the Manchester, Sheffield & Lincolnshire Railway (later the Great Central Railway) to run over its line from Lincoln to GNR metals at Retford. The first section of the GNR opened on 1 March 1848: this comprised the Grimsby to Louth section of the East Lincolnshire Railway, a separate undertaking that the GNR leased from the outset. The first section of track wholly owned by the GNR to be

opened was the 3-mile (5km) stretch from Doncaster to Askern Junction, on 1 October 1848. At Askern Junction, the GNR line linked to the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway route from Knottingley. The East Lincolnshire line between Louth and Boston also opened on 1 October 1848. On the 17 October, the loop line between Werrington just north of Peterborough and Lincoln via Spalding opened. Because the GNR main line from London had not yet been built, its trains used the Midland Railway’s line to access Peterborough from Werrington Junction to Peterborough. On 4 September 1849 the GNR began running trains from Lincoln to Retford and on to Doncaster via the Manchester, Sheffield & Lincolnshire route. And so the GNR gained its desired foothold in Leeds. It obtained agreed running rights over the Lancashire & Yorkshire from Askern Junction to Knottingley and on to Wakefield, and also from Knottingley to Methley on the Midland Railway. The Midland then permitted the GNR to run from Methley to Leeds. Once Leeds was in the bag, the next target would be York. The York & North Midland Railway allowed the GNR to run trains over its line from Burton Salmon to York, and also over a new line from Knottingley to Burton Salmon, in return for the GNR agreeing not to build a line from Selby to York. The Knottingley to Burton Salmon route opened in June 1850.

Striking North from the Capital

Amongst William Cubitt’s greatest works for the GNR as engineer-in-chief is the stupendous forty-arch viaduct that carries the East Coast Main Line over the River Mimram south of Welwyn North station. Known as Welwyn or Digswell Viaduct, he designed it in the style of a Roman aqueduct, ironically echoing the Roman roads that earlier we saw linked the north and south of Britain centuries before the railways. Towering 100ft (30m) above the river and 1,560ft (475m) long, it was opened on 6 August 1850 by Queen Victoria – who was too nervous to travel over it: she alighted from her train at one end and took a horse carriage across the valley to rejoin it at the other. Because it was built to carry only two tracks, it is now a bottleneck on the ECML, and there have been calls for another viaduct to be built alongside it. AUTHOR

As well as Welwyn Viaduct, William Cubitt designed and built Nene Bridge, which takes the East Coast Main Line across the river at Peterborough. It is one of two cast-iron bridges that Cubitt designed for the route; the other is near Huntingdon and was rebuilt in steel in the 1930s. Nene Bridge was erected by pioneer railway engineer Thomas Brassey; it has three spans, each 66ft (20m) wide and with an 8ft 6in (2.6m) rise. The ribs of the bridge bolt together at mid-span, a design that allowed construction with minimum disruption to river traffic. Today the bridge carries the two ‘up’ tracks of the ECML and has been strengthened by adding steel bracing and reinforcing the spandrels. When the route was widened to four tracks, a Whipple-Murphy truss bridge was installed alongside it to carry the ‘down’ tracks. AUTHOR

While it was all well and good for the GNR in the East Midlands and south Yorkshire, the most important section, the one out of London, would be its greatest challenge. William Cubitt, a Norfolk millwright, was appointed as GNR engineer-in-chief. Cubitt had earned a reputation in civil engineering, and had not only invented a new kind of windmill sail but the treadwheel that was notoriously used in Victorian prisons. He had also been chief engineer at Ransomes in Ipswich, an engineering firm that later built steam-operated railway cranes, and also worked on the South Eastern Railway. He was the

chief engineer of the Crystal Palace erected for the Great Exhibition in 1851. At the GNR, Cubitt’s resident engineer for the company’s London District was George Turnbull, who was born near Perth, and trained under none other than Thomas Telford. Turnbull had built Middlesbrough Dock, which was later bought by the Stockton & Darlington Railway, and in 1843 he had engineered the railway tunnel through Shakespeare Cliff between Dover and Folkestone. Turnbull oversaw the building of the first 20 miles (32km) of track leading north out of the city, including Copenhagen, Tottenham, South Barnet, North Barnet and South Mimms tunnels, and the many bridges along the way. At first, the GNR main line started from a temporary terminus at Maiden Lane north of the Regent’s Canal. Officially named ‘The London Temporary Passenger Station’, it was surrounded by fields, brickworks and a fever hospital, and opened on 7 August 1850 in time for the Great Exhibition. Indeed, much of the GNR, now long since surrounded by urban development, ran through rolling countryside within minutes of leaving the London terminus.

The loop line between Peterborough and Lincoln carried the first trains up the Great Northern Railway’s section, which was to become the East Coast route. Spalding station opened on 17 October 1848, but within four years this route was superseded by the direct line via Grantham. Occasionally the Spalding line has been used as a diversionary route when engineering works are in place on the ECML. AUTHOR

BR Britannia Pacific No. 70013 Oliver Cromwell powers through Spalding with a rail tour in 2009. AUTHOR

The entire GNR main line from Maiden Lane to Peterborough via Biggleswade and Huntingdon opened on the same day, and a great banquet was held in Newcastle Central station to celebrate the occasion of the opening of a fast through-route from London to Edinburgh. Indeed, the celebrations were richly deserved, for the occasion was the birth of the East Coast Main Line much as we know it today. In August 1851, Victoria and her consort Prince Albert travelled from Maiden Lane to Scotland via the GNR, boosting its soaring popularity. Each day, eight trains left London for the north, via Peterborough and the Lincolnshire loop. First of all, a 6am service ran all stations to Knottingly, and then express to York. It was the only one that carried third-class passengers, and took eleven hours and four minutes to reach Doncaster. At 7.40am there was the ‘Scotch Express’ that ran to York, where connections would be made for trains to Edinburgh. It took seven hours and ten minutes. At 10.30am, there was an express to Leeds and York. The noon train

ran all stations to Hitchin, the 2pm all stations service to Doncaster (taking eight hours and ten minutes), and the 5pm all stations to Peterborough. There was a 6pm express to Leeds and York, and an 8pm train running all stations to Hitchin. Between London and Peterborough there were stations at Hornsey, Colney Hatch and Southgate, Barnet, Potters Bar, Hatfield, Welwyn, Stevenage, Hitchin, Arlseley and Shefford Road, Biggleswade, Sandy, St Neots, Huntingdon and Holme. From Peterborough, the line followed the already built GNR route to Spalding, Boston and Lincoln to Retford. However, it was blatantly obvious that this was a long-winded way of reaching York, greater than that of the rival Midland Railway’s route from London to York: the missing link between Peterborough and Retford had to be completed and fast – though within a century the epithet ‘fast’ would add more than a touch of irony.

The name of the company that built the southern section of the East Coast Main Line from London to York is remembered in the name of the Great Northern public house directly opposite Hatfield station, 18 miles (29km) north of King’s Cross. The station opened, like the other on the first section of the GNR, on 7 August 1850, and was once the junction for a line to St Albans Abbey, closed as early as 1951, and another to Dunstable town, axed under Beeching in 1965. The closure of the line to Dunstable meant that it was one of the biggest towns in England without a direct rail connection. AUTHOR

Before then, in 1848 Turnbull became involved with the planning of a terminus that would become one of the most famous of all major stations in the world: King’s Cross, the great cathedral of steam, the full story of which is told in Chapter 12.

Bypassing Stamford with Stoke Bank

The great gradient of Stoke Bank pictured today, looking northwards from Swayfield. AUTHOR

William Cubitt’s son Joseph was appointed as engineer-in-chief for the Peterborough to Retford line. The route follows the Midland Railway’s line from Peterborough to Leicester as far as Helpston, and from there turns northwards to climb the great limestone ridge that extends in a south-west to north-east line across England from the Mendip Hills and southern Cotswolds to the Lincolnshire Wolds. However, the new railway completely missed out the great coaching town of Stamford, which was served only by the Midland line. This created a local furore, so much so that in 1847, the parliamentary election in Stamford was fought over the GNR route. While there were those who clamoured for the GNR to come through Stamford to replace the coaching trade that was being killed off by the railways, the Midland Railway petitioned against it. That company was backed by local landowners the Earl of Lindsay and the Marquess of Exeter, who did not want the far busier steam railway anywhere near their estates. A compromise solution was

reached by building a 4-mile (6km) Great Northern branch to Stamford from Essendine to the north-east of the town. Supported by the second Marquis of Exeter, this short line opened on 1 November 1856. From Tallington, for over 18 miles (29km), the new GNR line was to rise slowly up the limestone ridge, the start of which became known as Stoke Bank – much, much more of which will follow in the chapters ahead. The 1-in-178 climb from Corby Glen for the 3 miles (5km) to Stoke summit is the steepest on any part of the route north of Holloway, and it comprises the only major gradient on the Great Northern’s part of the ECML. Situated about 100 miles (160km) from King’s Cross, at 345ft (105m) the summit is the highest point on the entire London to Edinburgh route. The 880-yard (805m) Stoke Tunnel takes the line through part of the ridge as it begins the descent from the summit; beyond that, as the route descends into the Trent valley, the gradient is 1 in 200. The line descends into Grantham, which acquired importance both as the halfway point between London and York, and as the junction for the GNR branch to Nottingham.

The flat crossing at Newark is now one of only two on the national network, the other being at Porthmadog in North Wales where the 2ft-gauge Welsh Highland Railway bisects the Cambrian Coast Line. A1 Peppercorn Pacific No. 60163 Tornado is seen crossing it while heading northwards on the East Coast Main Line with a Steam Dreams’ ‘Cathedral’s Express’ Christmas special on 6 December 2008. BRIAN SHARPE

At Newark-on-Trent, the GNR crossed its rival the Midland on the level. Today, the flat crossing, a type that was once more commonplace, is now one of only two surviving on the national network, the other being on the Cambrian Coast Main Line at Porthmadog in Snowdonia, where the 2ft-gauge Welsh Highland Railway crosses the Network Rail line. The GNR opted for the flat crossing rather than a bridge not only to save money, but because the River Trent also had to be crossed a short distance beyond. Past Newark, the railway parallels its predecessor the Great North Road, then at Dukeries Junction the GNR bisected the Manchester, Sheffield & Lincolnshire Railway.

The façade of King’s Cross station at its opening in 1852. ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS

Just before Retford, there was, until 1965, a second flat crossing, where the GNR crossed the Sheffield & Lincolnshire Junction Railway; earlier this had taken the first GNR from the Lincolnshire loop line from Peterborough via Boston and Lincoln. Today, Retford has high-level platforms serving the ECML, and low-level ones for the Manchester, Sheffield & Lincolnshire Railway’s Sheffield-toLincoln line, which was lowered in 1965 to pass beneath the ECML. The missing link between Peterborough and Retford was completed in 1852, the same year as the new King’s Cross terminus opened.

The Leeds ‘Branch’

Queen Victoria visits the Great Northern Railway’s Leeds station in November 1858. ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS

While most people regard the ECML as simply being the great line from London to Edinburgh, its ‘branch’ from Doncaster to Leeds is, in many ways, of equal importance. The Leeds, Bradford & Halifax Junction Railway opened between Leeds and Bowling Junction near Bradford on 1 August 1854. By exercising its running powers both over this line and a section of the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway, the GNR obtained access to Bradford and Halifax. The West Yorkshire Railway opened its direct line from Wakefield to Leeds via Ardsley in 1857. As the GNR already had running powers over this line, it abandoned the aforementioned Midland Railway route via Methley. The West Riding & Grimsby Railway, which linked Wakefield and Doncaster, was jointly owned by the Manchester, Sheffield & Lincolnshire Railway and the GNR. Its main line was opened in February 1866, and gave the GNR a new direct line to Wakefield from Doncaster, and onwards to Leeds, Bradford and Halifax over the tracks of the former West Yorkshire Railway, which the GNR acquired in 1865. Elsewhere, the Manchester, Sheffield &

Lincolnshire Railway agreed for the GNR to run a London-toManchester service via Retford over its line through the town, and GNR trains also ran to Huddersfield via Penistone from 1859. However, when the GNR finished the final section of the Lincolnshire loop line in 1867, with a junction with the new main line at Black Carr, the need for GNR trains to run over the Manchester, Sheffield & Lincolnshire to Retford line disappeared. The GNR main line from London ended in what was described as ‘a ploughed field’ at Shaftholme, a hamlet 2 miles (3km) north of Doncaster. There it had an end-on junction with the North Eastern Railway, a company created on 31 July 1854 by the amalgamation of the York, Newcastle & Berwick, the York & North Midland, the Leeds Northern and the Malton & Driffield Junction railways. It was the NER that comprised the key middle section of the ECML. The opening of a new direct line from Shaftholme Junction to York via Selby in January 1871 saw the end of regular express trains using the Askern route from Shaftholme to Knottingly, the branch to Burton Salmon, and the York & North Midland Railway’s line from Normanton to York. Once the ECML had been completed, this direct line was a first stage in ‘ironing out the kinks’ to create a faster route. Incidentally, the first part of the GNR to open, its original main line running south from Grimsby to London via Boston and Peterborough, closed in 1970, with only the section from Grimsby to Louth retained for goods until 1980. A mile-long (1.6km) section between Ludborough and North Thoresby has been rebuilt as a standard-gauge heritage line, the Lincolnshire Wolds Railway. It has been said that the loss of the Grimsby-to-Peterborough line was one of the worst Beeching closures of all. When it was opened in 1848, the vast amount of traffic carried from the port of Grimsby, with its famous North Sea fishing fleet, over this route and the ECML was said to have been responsible for the rise of the traditional British fish-and-chip shop.

Today, Leeds is the third busiest railway station in Britain outside London, after Birmingham New Street and Glasgow Central, handling around 29 million passengers a year. Not only is it the terminus of the Leeds branch of the East Coast Main Line and with trains running on the scenic Settle-to-Carlisle line, it is also a major hub for local and regional destinations across Yorkshire, and is at the centre of the Metro commuter network for West Yorkshire. AUTHOR

York’s Three Stations

By 1900 York station had become one of the busiest on the East Coast Main Line, as can be seen in this hand-coloured postcard. AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

York was the original destination for GNR trains from London when the line opened in 1850: it was here that passengers could change for Scotland. The first railway station at York was opened in 1839 by the York & North Midland Railway in a temporary wooden building in Queen Street, outside the city walls. It was replaced from 4 January 1841, inside the city walls, by an Italianate-style terminus built at the junction of Toft Green, Tanner Row and Station Rise; it was designed by the company’s architect George Townsend Andrews. He also designed the neo-Tudor arch where the city walls were breached to allow the railway in, and the York Royal Station Hotel, which opened on 22 February 1853. It was the first hotel in the world to be incorporated into a railway station. With the arrival of other lines, York became a primary point on the ECML. However, through trains were obliged to reverse out of the station to continue their journeys, and so a new station was built and opened in 1877, this time outside the city walls again. It was designed by NER architects Thomas Prosser and William Peachey, and with its magnificent train-shed roof, it was at the time the biggest station in the world, having thirteen platforms. On 28 May the following year, a new Royal Station Hotel was opened, also designed

by Peachey. It became the flagship hotel of the North Eastern Railway and was managed directly by the company. The redundant old station and hotel were converted into offices, while the tracks remained in use as carriage sidings. In February 2010, the City of York Council announced that it intended to convert the old station into its new, 150,000sq ft (14,000sq m) headquarters.

An interior view of York station in 1890. AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

The North Eastern Railway measured ten of its routes from York, including its line to Newcastle. At York station, a market known as the ‘Zero Point’ was set up for the purpose. AUTHOR A replica was erected by the North Eastern Railway Trust to mark the 150th anniversary of the formation of the company on 31 July 1854. AUTHOR

A plaque at York station records its history. AUTHOR

The North Eastern Railway produced these very attractive tile maps of their system, for mounting at major stations. Several survive today. AUTHOR

CHAPTER 5

Bridging the Biggest Gaps: The Aberdeen ‘Extension’ The term ‘East Coast Main Line’ is generally held to be the route from King’s Cross to Edinburgh Waverley and Leeds. However, the ‘northern extension’ route to Aberdeen, which broadly follows the eastern seaboard, is often grouped into the same category, if only in referring to through services from London, such as those run by Virgin Trains East Coast today. By the mid-1860s, the North British Railway was running main-line trains to Berwick, Carlisle, Glasgow and Aberdeen. The winding and circuitous route to Aberdeen followed the tracks of the Edinburgh & Northern Railway, later the Edinburgh, Perth & Dundee Railway, which ran from Burntisland on the northern shore of the Firth of Forth. That company ran services between Burntisland to Tayport, from where a boat took passengers to Broughty Ferry for onward travel to Dundee and Aberdeen. Launched on 3 February 1850, the crossing from Burntisland to Granton was the world’s first railway ferry. The Edinburgh, Perth & Dundee Railway became part of the North British on 29 July 1862. The Aberdeen route involved two ferry crossings of major river estuaries, those of the Forth and the Tay, beyond which the 28 miles (45km) into Aberdeen were achieved by way of running rights over the Caledonian Railway’s line from Kinnaber Junction. While the North British route was shorter, it was much less attractive when compared to the Caledonian line, which

went round the head of both estuaries. If the North British wanted to compete on the route, the only answer was to bridge both inlets. It was not exactly a new idea. In 1854, engineer Thomas Bouch had approached the Edinburgh & Northern Railway about building a bridge over the Tay, but the money was not there. Bouch went on to design parts of Edinburgh Waverley station for the North British, and he also built bridges on the North Eastern Railway’s Stainmore route across the Pennines, which effectively linked the east and west coast routes. He had also helped to develop the caisson, a watertight structure for use in bridge pier building and ship repairs, and also the roll-on, roll-off train ferry. In 1869, the Tay Bridge scheme was revived as a separate undertaking, with Bouch not only working on it as designer and overseer, but also designing a bridge over the Forth. The North British Railway (Tay Bridge) Act received royal assent on 15 July 1870, and the foundation stone was laid on 22 July 1871. Bouch drew up a lattice-grid design, combining cast and wrought iron. The finished bridge was 88ft (27m) above water level and consisted of eighty-five spans, and at 1 mile and 1,705 yards (1.6km and 1,559m), at the time was the longest in the world.

LNER A3 Pacific No. 60103 Flying Scotsman crosses the Forth Bridge with Steam Dreams’ ‘Fife Circle’ evening dining train on 15 May 2016. FRED KERR

The first locomotive went over on 26 September 1877 carrying local VIPs and senior railway officials, and following a Board of Trade inspection in February 1878, the bridge was passed for use by passenger traffic, subject to a 25mph (40km/h) speed limit. The first fare-paying passengers were taken over the bridge on 1 June 1878. At a stroke, the North British seized 84 per cent of the Edinburgh to Dundee traffic, and the bridge was widely hailed as a wonder of the world. Queen Victoria crossed it in 1879, and knighted Bouch. However, on 28 December 1879, the east coast of Scotland was battered by a Beaufort force 10/11 gale, blowing almost at right angles to the bridge. At 7.13pm, a six-coach train from the south headed out on to the bridge – never to be seen again. The bridge had taken the full force of strong side winds and the central section had collapsed, taking the train with it. All the passengers on board, some of them having travelled from King’s Cross, died. It was estimated that seventy-four or seventy-five people lost their lives, but the exact number was never established. A Court of Inquiry

concluded that the bridge was ‘badly designed, badly built and badly maintained’. Bouch was primarily blamed for the collapse in not making sufficient allowance for wind loading. There was also evidence that the central structure had been deteriorating for several months before the disaster, with indications that joints had loosened. Bouch’s reputation was irredeemably shattered, and the design of the Forth railway bridge was quickly transferred to Sir Benjamin Baker and Sir John Fowler. They produced a cantilever design, the first bridge in Britain to be constructed entirely from steel. Ironically, during the construction of the 1.6-mile (2.6km) Forth Bridge, ninety-eight workers were killed and more than 450 were injured, a higher death toll than was sustained in the Tay Bridge disaster.

Crowds congregate to view the stricken Tay Bridge at 10am the day after the collapse, but would-be rescuers could find no survivors. ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS

A new steel Tay Bridge was built by the North British Railway, 59ft (18m) upstream of the original, under the direction of William Henry Barlow, who had engineered the Midland Railway’s London extension and designed London St Pancras station. Building started

in 1882, and the new, stronger bridge was opened on 13 July 1887. Bouch died a few months after the public inquiry, his health ruined. The engine that had crashed into the river with the collapsed bridge, 1871-built North British 4-4-0 No. 224, was eventually recovered, rebuilt and returned to service, and remained in use until 1919. Nicknamed ‘The Diver’, superstitious drivers declined to take it over the replacement bridge. The Forth Bridge was opened on 4 March 1890 by the Prince of Wales, the future Edward VII. It was the longest single cantilever bridge span in the world until 1917 when the Quebec Bridge in Canada opened. The main crossing comprises tubular struts and lattice girder ties in double cantilevers, each connected by 345ft (105m) ‘suspended’ girder spans resting on the cantilever ends. It has two 1,710ft (521m) main spans, two side spans of 680ft (207m), and fifteen approach spans each 168ft (51m) long. Standing 151ft (46m) above high tide and its superstructure weighing 50,513 tons, it used nearly 55,000 tons of steel, 23,704cu yd (18,122cu m) of granite and 6.5 million rivets. Far from being owned outright by the North British Railway, whose fortunes again were greatly boosted by its opening, four companies had a stake in it. While the North British stumped up 35 per cent of the cost, the Midland Railway contributed 30 per cent, and the remainder came from ECML operators the North Eastern Railway and the Great Northern Railway.

North British Railway 1871-built, Thomas Wheatley inside cylinder 4-4-0 No. 224 was recovered from the estuary after the Tay Bridge disaster, and returned to traffic. On that dreadful night No. 224 had stood in for the regular engine, Drummond 0-4-2T Ladybank. AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

The replacement Tay Bridge still gives sterling service today. BILL BOYD/CCL

The Forth Bridge, one of the greatest engineering marvels of the Victorian age, illuminated at night. MAGNUS HAGDORN/CCL

On 16 October 1939 the first Luftwaffe attack on Britain in World War II took place over the Forth Bridge, when a dozen Junkers 88 Nazi bombers attacked the nearby Royal Navy base at Rosyth. Three Navy vessels were damaged with the loss of sixteen crew members. The incident also saw the first German planes to be shot down over Britain during the conflict, thanks to the RAF 603 City of Edinburgh Spitfire squadron. Members of the German bomber crew whose plane came down at Port Seton were rescued and made prisoners of war. The attack was recreated in the 1940 General Post Office documentary Squadron 992, which made it out that the bridge had been the target, not the naval base. So it is often tempting to think of the East Coast Main Line not merely as a route to get from A to B, but as a meandering cross-section of British history.

Part of the plans for the Forth Bridge. NETWORK RAIL

Class 43 High Speed Train power car No. 43206 pulls into North Queensferry station on the northern side of the Forth Bridge on the Fife Circle Line, 11¼ miles (18km) from Edinburgh Waverley, on 29 June 2015. FRED KERR

Inside today’s Aberdeen station, which was built between 1913 and 1916 as Aberdeen Joint station. It replaced an earlier structure of 1867 of the same name, on the same site, when the lines from the south terminated at the adjacent Aberdeen Guild Street. Aberdeen’s first station had been a previous terminus to the south at nearby Ferryhill. As a result of the Railways Act 1921, which grouped most railway companies into the ‘Big Four’, Aberdeen was shared by the LNER and the LMS, each company running the station for a year and then handing its administration to the other company. That ended at nationalization in 1948. The train journey from Aberdeen to King’s Cross is 523 miles (842km) and takes nearly seven hours. Aberdeen is the busiest station in Scotland north of Edinburgh and Glasgow, and is currently managed by Abellio ScotRail. BERNT ROSTAD/CCL

Aberdeen station’s forecourt and taxi rank, with the Station Hotel to the rear right. There are twenty stations on the East Coast Main Line ‘extension’ from Edinburgh to Aberdeen. STANLEY HOWE/CCL

Owned by Network Rail Infrastructure Limited, the Forth Bridge is still the world’s second-longest single cantilever span. Floodlighting was installed in 1991, and a fourteen-year restoration was completed in 2011, costing £130,000,000: this involved painting the bridge with 55,000gal (250,000ltr) of glassflake epoxy resin, as used on North Sea oil rigs. The bridge is not expected to need repainting for at least twenty years.

CHAPTER 6

Sturrock: Shrinking Distance through Speed The first locomotive superintendent of the Great Northern Railway was Benjamin Cubitt, who was appointed in 1846. Born in Norfolk in 1795, he served an apprenticeship as a millwright under his aforementioned elder brother William; in 1822 he took charge of the Leeds engine and machinery building works of Fenton, Murray & Wood, where he stayed for ten years. He then joined the Rothwell & Company engine and machinery works at Bolton, but left after ten years to head the joint committee that looked after the rolling stock of the Brighton, Croydon and Dover railways. When those three companies separated, he became the locomotive engineer of the newly formed GNR. Benjamin Cubitt prepared temporary locomotive and carriage repair workshops for the GNR at Boston, and ordered carriages for the East Lincolnshire Railway and the GNR from Walter Williams of London. He ordered fifty 2-2-2s from Sharp Roberts & Company of Manchester, twenty 2-2-2s and fifteen 0-4-2s from R. & W. Hawthorn of Newcastle, five 0-4-0s from William Fairbairn & Sons of Manchester, and six 0-4-0s from Bury, Curtis & Kennedy of Liverpool. However, before he could make any significant mark on the company, he died in London on 12 January 1848, aged fiftythree, having never seen a GNR train run. The brothers, incidentally, were not related to Lewis Cubitt, who also came from Norfolk and who designed King’s Cross.

As his successor, the GNR appointed Edward Bury as locomotive engineer in February 1848. Born in Salford in 1794, he was the son of a timber merchant and was educated at Chester. After becoming a partner in a Liverpool steam sawmill, in 1826 he established his own iron founding and engineering business, next to the Liverpool & Manchester Railway’s workshops. Bury hoped to build locomotives for the line, but George Stephenson was having none of it. Bury moved his works to new premises in Love Lane, Liverpool, under the title of the Clarence Foundry and Steam Engine Works. He built his first locomotive, Dreadnought, an 0-6-0 that he had hoped to enter into the Rainhill Trials of 1829, but it wasn’t finished in time. He managed to sell one engine to the Liverpool & Manchester Railway, but in 1836 became locomotive contractor on the London & Birmingham Railway, for which his firm built half of its original fleet of ninety engines. In 1842 his firm became Bury, Curtis & Kennedy, after taking new partners on board. It seemed that a glittering career awaited him on the GNR, for he impressed so much that in June 1849 he was made its general manager. However, the following year he resigned after it was alleged that he had placed a small order for ironwork with his own firm, rather than another one that had offered a lower bid. The next superintendent was Archibald Sturrock, a thirty-four-yearold Scot recruited from the Great Western Railway, where he had briefly been works manager at Swindon under Daniel Gooch in broad-gauge days. He came with a glowing letter of recommendation from none other than the great Isambard Kingdom Brunel – a real door opener if ever there was one. For the GNR, it was third time lucky in a big way. Born at Petruchie in Angus on 30 September 1816, Sturrock was appointed in 1850. He oversaw the opening of the GNR main line, and not only established the company’s reputation as a premier line for passengers, but sowed the seeds of the speed revolution, which would shrink the travelling time between London and Edinburgh and ultimately set in motion a major transport revolution. During his sixteen years with the GNR, Sturrock designed several classes of passenger and goods locomotives to meet the line’s evergrowing needs. At the time, locomotive boilers were usually

pressurized to no more than 100lb/sq in – but Sturrock thought differently. He was not content to continue the GNR policy of buying engines from outside contractors, but wanted to design and build his own. His first engine, and others that followed, had a working pressure of 150lb/sq in. He was a great believer in large fireboxes and grate areas to produce easy-to-fire, free-steaming boilers. Ahead of his time in many ways, Sturrock was very much influenced by contemporary Swindon designs, even though he would have to adapt them from 7ft 0¼in to 4ft 8½in gauge. However, he was told by the GNR board that his main task was to produce locomotives that could fill one primary objective on the railway as it pushed northwards: speed. Speed was of the essence if the most was to be made of the new, fast, direct link between the two great capital cities, the trains taking just hours to do what the stagecoaches had done in days. Sturrock and most of the GNR board wanted to build his locomotive workshops at Peterborough. By then it had become clear that the GNR’s first locomotive and carriage repair shops at Boston in Lincolnshire would be quickly outgrown as traffic increased. However, Edmund Denison, the MP for the West Riding of Yorkshire, who had supported the building of the GNR and became its chairman in 1847, championed Doncaster and not Peterborough as the home of any new company workshops, and in 1851 won the day. The works were established on 24 July 1852, and 700 staff were transferred to them from Boston. By December that year, the works, later to become known as ‘The Plant’, had 949 men working there.

Sturrock’s 4-2-2 No. 215, considered by many to be his greatest achievement, was designed to show the directors of the Great Northern Railway that an eight-hour journey from London to Edinburgh was possible.

Until it built its first locomotive in 1867, Doncaster was concerned with repairs and maintenance. When Sturrock came to the GNR, it had 150 locomotives. By 1866, 282 had been built to his designs – but it was not until the following year that Doncaster turned out its first locomotive. Sturrock also produced some outstanding coaches that were all but exclusively used on Anglo-Scottish expresses, and even produced a demonstration 4-2-2, No. 215, which he hoped (in vain) could run from King’s Cross to Edinburgh in eight hours, claiming it could reach 75mph (120km/h). However, despite the board’s desire for faster trains, nobody at the GNR was interested in No. 215 at the time, and it was 1885 before such a schedule was introduced. Because of the flimsy rails of the GNR, Sturrock was also involved in early experiments with steam tenders, a form of booster engine that could be used to start a heavy train or maintain low speed under demanding conditions. One of his 0-6-0 types had a tender powered by two 12 by 17in (30 by 43cm) cylinders, in addition to two 16 by 24in (40 by 60cm) locomotive cylinders. It was a means of producing a more powerful engine but not a heavier one. However, the type proved unreliable, and unpopular with firemen, and the concept was eventually discontinued. Some believe that it may have contributed

to Sturrock parting company with the GNR in 1866, when he retired, supposedly after marrying into wealth. During his retirement in Doncaster, Sturrock helped found locomotive builder the Yorkshire Engine Company in Sheffield, and became its chairman for several years. He died in London in 1909.

A Sturrock 7ft 2-2-2 Single, built by Kitson for the Great Northern Railway in 1860. TONY HISGETT/CCL

Sturrock’s Great Northern Railway 0-4-2T suburban tank engine built in 1865. TONY HISGETT/CCL

The Great Northern Railway’s original locomotive works in Boston today. BRIAN SHARPE

Sturrock 2-4-0 express passenger locomotive No. 266, built in 1866. AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

The East Coast Joint Stock During Sturrock’s time in office, the beginnings were made of what eventually became through-running services by a single company

from King’s Cross to Edinburgh. The Great Northern Railway, the North Eastern Railway and the North British Railway, the three main operators of the East Coast Route, had, along with the connecting Edinburgh & Glasgow and Scottish Central railways, reached agreement over sharing traffic on the route, especially with regard to through services and to eliminate the need for passengers to change trains. At first, each company provided their own carriages for through services, but in the summer of 1860, the GNR, NER and NBR decided to set up a common pool of carriages for the purpose, and this was achieved the following year. Thus in 1861 the East Coast Joint Stock fleet came into existence, originally with fifty coaches. By 1873, the number had increased to eighty-nine. The previous year, thirty-six coaches had been allocated to services running between King’s Cross and Edinburgh, seventeen to services between King’s Cross and Glasgow (Queen Street) and twenty-four to services between King’s Cross and Aberdeen. The ECJS paved the way for the GNR to run its first Special Scotch Express in 1862, with simultaneous departures at 10am from King’s Cross and Edinburgh Waverley. At first, the whole journey took ten and a half hours, including a thirty-minute stop at York for lunch. However, because of improvements in all aspects of railway technology, including in 1870 the addition of the Stirling singles (described in the next chapter), this speeded up to eight and a half hours by the time the first ‘Race to the North’ took place in 1888. From about 1870 the service became known colloquially as the ‘Flying Scotsman’, and in the following century the Flying Scotsman became the most famous named train in the world. In 1900 it received a major facelift: dining cars were added, carriages were heated, and corridor connections meant that it was possible to walk between vehicles. The availability of lunch on board halved the stop at York, although the total journey time remained at eight and a half hours.

East Coast Joint Stock teak coach No. 12, built at York in 1898, and now part of the National collection, on display in the National Railway Museum at York, a short hop from the line on which it ran. AUTHOR

The East Coast Joint Stock crest. AUTHOR

This third-class six-wheeled teak coach was built at Doncaster Works in 1889 for the East Coast Joint Stock to a standard GNR design, and used for services between King’s Cross and Edinburgh. With the introduction of Gresley bogie carriages, No. 1470 was relegated to secondary and branch line duties. In the British Railways era, it was used as departmental stock as No. DE940482 at Boston motive power depot and later Hitchin. It was donated to the Quainton Railway Society, operator of Buckinghamshire Railway Centre, by a private owner in 1971. Traces of the original East Coast Joint Stock livery were found during its first restoration there. AUTHOR

CHAPTER 7

The Singular Racing Days The name ‘Patrick Stirling’ in railway circles immediately conjures up an image of the Stirling single – a class of 4-2-2s with distinctive 8ft 1in driving wheels and domeless boilers, which set the pace both on the East Coast Main Line and on the national network in general. Sturrock had been told by the Great Northern Railway that it wanted speed, and Stirling’s foremost priority when he was appointed as its locomotive superintendent in 1866 was to deliver it in the biggest way possible. From the outset he wanted a new generation of locomotives that would combine power with speed, and that were able to ride the continuous gradients on the company’s King’s Cross to York line.

Great Northern Railway Stirling single No. 1 on the turntable inside the Great Hall of the National Railway Museum at York. Part of the National Collection, after withdrawal from traffic in 1907, it was first preserved at King’s Cross shed after being displayed at an exhibition in Wembley in 1909, and then at Doncaster Works. In 1925, the LNER gave it a new boiler so it could run in the 1925 Stockton & Darlington Railway centenary cavalcade, and the following year it entered the new railway museum set up at York by the LNER. AUTHOR

A Scot like Sturrock, Stirling was born in Kilmarnock in 1820, into a family with an accomplished track record in steam engineering. Four years earlier, in 1816, his father, the Reverend Robert Stirling, invented the first practical example of a closed cycle air engine, which later came to be known as Stirling engines. James Stirling, his brother, was also a locomotive engineer, and Patrick’s son Matthew became chief mechanical engineer of the Hull & Barnsley Railway. Patrick Stirling’s working life began with an apprenticeship at Urquhart Lindsay & Company’s Dundee Foundry. He later became foreman at Neilson’s Locomotive Works in Glasgow, and in 1851 was appointed as superintendent of a short line between Bowling and Balloch, which later became part of the North British Railway. In 1853 he became locomotive superintendent of a much bigger outfit, the Glasgow & South Western Railway, where he stayed for thirteen years. Yet the best by far was still to come.

A Stirling 4-2-2 hauling a train of six-wheeled coaches. TONY HISGETT/CCL

He was determined to seize the opportunity presented to him at the GNR, and set out to take it to the cutting edge of transport technology. One of the first things he did was to borrow a Great Eastern Railway single wheeler and study it under tests, and the net result was that in 1868 he designed two types of 2-2-2, both with 7ft 1in driving wheels. This was a major step forwards to the Stirling single, the first of which emerged from Doncaster Works in 1870, followed by another fifty-two. This locomotive underlined the GNR’s reputation for speed more than anything else that had run between London and York before.

Contemporary drawing of a Stirling express passenger locomotive. AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

Stirling single No. 1008, in sparkling condition; this photograph is possibly taken shortly after it was built at Doncaster. TONY HISGETT/CCL

GNR 4-2-2 No. 1001 prepares to depart from Peterborough station. A total of fiftythree Stirling singles were built at Doncaster between 1870 and 1895. TONY HISGETT/CCL

The first Stirling single – or ‘eight-footer’ as they became nicknamed – was simply numbered No. 1. Designed specifically for high-speed expresses, they could haul 2,750-ton trains at an average speed of 50mph (80km/h), and lighter trains at 85mph (137km/h). One of them, No. 775, ran 82 miles (132km) from Grantham to York in one hour sixteen minutes at an average of 64.7mph (104km/h), and for many years they were the fastest engines in the world. Their prowess made Stirling a giant amongst engineers in terms of reputation, and turned the GNR main line into one of the most popular routes in Britain. The GNR differed from other major British railway companies, in that it made no bones about the speed of its expresses, whereas others fought shy of the public concern about trains at high speed. In addition to the legendary ‘eight-footers’ for which he is best remembered, Stirling also designed 2-2-2s for express passenger duties, 2-4-0s and 0-4-2s for branch passenger train and mixed

traffic, 0-4-4Ts for suburban passenger trains, 0-6-0s for freight and 0-6-0Ts for shunting.

Abbots Ripton: Game-Changing Tragedy

The immediate aftermath of the Abbots Ripton crash of 1876. ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS

Until 21 January 1876 the GNR could boast a dazzling safety record. But on that day, disaster struck in a big way. During a blizzard, the ‘Special Scotch Express’ running from Edinburgh to London collided with a coal train at speed at Abbots Ripton, a station 4½ miles (7km) north of Huntingdon. The coal train had been running in front of the ‘Express’ and was scheduled to be shunted into a siding at the station so that the faster train could pass. However, both trains had been delayed by the weather conditions. The signalman at Holme, the next station north of Abbots Ripton, intended to allow the coal train into sidings there so that the ‘Express’ could pass, and set his signals for this

manoeuvre. But the coal train did not respond to the signals, and carried on towards Abbots Ripton, where the scheduled shunting movement took place. This was almost achieved when the ‘Express’ ran into the coal train at speed, smashing several wagons. The engine of the express came off the rails and toppled on to its side, its tender and two carriages blocking the ‘down’ line. The guard of the ‘Express’ walked back up the ‘up’ line towards Wood Walton, laying detonators on the rails to warn any further trains to stop. The coal-train engine ran light to Huntingdon to seek assistance, while the shocked signalman repeatedly tried to use the speaking telegraph to contact Huntingdon station. When he did get through, the signalman there declined to accept any message which did not start with a code indicating the time it was sent, and saying he was busy. The Abbots Ripton signalman was indeed in trouble because a thirteen-coach express train running in the opposite direction, to Leeds, hit the wreckage of the first crash minutes later. Thirteen passengers were killed, and fifty-three others and six train crew members were injured. The GNR had been using the block system, which everyone had believed would prevent such accidents. It was established that the original cause of the crash was that too much reliance was placed on signals and block working, and this allowed high-speed running even when the weather conditions were too severe for it. The inadequate braking performance of the second express, and its crew’s failure to implement emergency procedures promptly, were blamed for the second crash. The accident sent shock waves through the rail industry, alarming other companies that relied on the block system. The GNR’s lower quadrant semaphore signals also played a part in the tragedy. An investigation discovered that the weight of snow on the semaphore arm, and snow and ice on the wires by which the arm was moved, prevented the signals from showing danger, after signalmen had pulled the levers. On a clear day there was no problem, but in blizzard conditions signalmen could not see their signals. As a result, the ‘Express’ had passed a series of signals that had been set to danger but were showing clear.

A court of inquiry criticised Holme’s stationmaster for not halting the ‘Express’, the Wood Walton signalman for not using detonators or a handlamp to stop the train, and the delay of the Huntingdon signalman in answering his Abbots Ripton counterpart. Its report recommended that signals were improved so that they worked correctly in frost and snow, and that they gave an indication to the signalman if they were not operating properly. Furthermore it recommended that signals should not normally be set as clear, but at danger, so that if they were to stick in bad weather, they would not wrongly show clear. The GNR responded by changing to a new type of semaphore in the form of the ‘somersault’ signal. The main feature of the type was that the pivot about which the arm moved was at the middle of the arm, so that any accumulation of snow should not significantly affect its balance. In the wake of the Abbots Ripton disaster, the modern practice of the ‘normal’ position for signals being ‘danger’ was adopted everywhere. The inquiry also called for better braking systems, after hearing that the Leeds express had not been fitted with continuous brakes. Later accidents elsewhere led to continuous braking on passenger trains becoming mandatory. Therefore appalling as the Abbots Ripton disaster was, the vital lessons learned from it have since saved untold numbers of lives.

‘Races to the North’

The rival East and West Coast routes at the time of the ‘Races to the North’. THINCAT/CCL

By late Victorian times, train travel had become an accepted part of everyday life, and completing a journey that had once taken several days by stagecoach in just a few hours was the norm. However, the major railway operators began to look at how that journey could be made more attractive, by speeding it up even further. The great age of railway building had bequeathed Britain with two major but rival trunk routes from London to Scotland, the East and West Coast main lines, the latter comprising the London & North

Western Railway and the Caledonian Railway. The competition between the operators of both routes to reach Scotland in the quickest time intensified as steam locomotive technology developed, and the Forth Bridge gave the fierce rivalry an extra impetus. The ‘Races to the North’ is the name that historians have given to the events that took place during the two summers in late Victorian times, when companies actually agreed to race public passengercarrying trains. The first such event was staged in 1888, and it involved daytime trains from London to Edinburgh. In late 1887, the East Coast companies decided to allow thirdclass travel on the Flying Scotsman express. The West Coast partners responded by speeding up the 10am ‘Scotch Express’, from 2 June 1888. The East Coast companies responded by accelerating their service from 1 July 1888. While the West Coast took an hour from its ten-hour journey time, the East Coast reduced its nine-hour journey by thirty minutes. In retaliation the West Coast also cut off thirty minutes, then the East Coast again reduced its times by half an hour, only for the West Coast to follow suit. The East Coast then decided to run its trains as fast as the locomotives could go. Both sides tried to keep the racing secret, and passengers were unaware that they were taking part, but news soon filtered through to an eager press, short of stories in the summer months. On 8 August 1888 the West Coast matched the East Coast’s eight-hour schedule, and both sides kept it up for a week, until 14 August, when the East Coast cut its time to seven hours forty-five minutes. Responding, the West Coast ran its London to Edinburgh service in seven hours thirty-eight minutes, with an average speed of 52.3mph (84.2km/h). A truce was declared the next day, with the East Coast settling for seven hours forty-five minutes and the West Coast eight hours. However, on 31 August the East Coast partner recorded an average speed of 52.7mph (84.8km/h) on a trip from King’s Cross to Edinburgh. That September, the races were deemed to be over, and both sides went back to their July timetables, the West Coast taking eight hours thirty minutes and the East Coast taking eight hours fifteen minutes. The second series of ‘Races to the North’ was staged in 1895, with night expresses racing between London and Aberdeen, the

finishing post being Kinnaber Junction, 38 miles (61km) south of Aberdeen, where the Caledonian Railway and the North British Railway routes merged. This latest flare-up of rivalry began when the East Coast partners cut fifteen minutes off the 8pm service from King’s Cross on 1 July, and the West Coast took ten minutes off its 8pm service. Small gains indeed, and maybe unworthy of mention by themselves, but on 14 July, the West Coast’s London to Aberdeen journey time dropped forty minutes to eleven hours, and the company launched a mass publicity campaign to promote it. Its great rival could not stand and watch, and eight days later announced that it would speed up the 8pm Aberdeen East Coast express, reducing the schedule by fifteen minutes to ten hours forty-five minutes, so it would arrive at 6.35pm, ten minutes before the rival train. On the approach to Kinnaber Junction, the routes of the rival lines ran on either side of Montrose Basin, and journalists covering the races for the leading newspaper of the day saw at first-hand the trains racing each other to the Granite City. Reporters were positioned at all the stations en route, to telegraph in their accounts of the night, and excited crowds thronged the platforms to glimpse the spectacle. One race ended with both trains reaching Kinnaber Junction at the same time. Sportingly, the Caledonian signalman let the rival North British train through, and it reached Aberdeen in eight hours forty minutes from King’s Cross, as compared to the standard twelve hours twenty minutes of the timetable before the races began. On 20 August, Stirling single 4-2-2 No. 668 headed the East Coast express and travelled the 105.5 miles (170km) from King’s Cross to Grantham in one hour forty-one minutes with an average speed of 62.7mph (100.9km/h). An engine change saw sister No. 775 take over, and complete the 82 miles (132km) to York in one hour sixteen minutes, with an average speed of 64.7mph (104km/h). The overall 393-mile (632km) ECML trip was completed in six hours nineteen minutes at an average speed of 63.5mph (102km/h), while the extended run to Aberdeen, making a total of 523 miles (842km), took eight hours forty minutes, with an average speed of 60.4mph (97.2km/h).

LNWR 2-4-0 No. 790 Hardwicke, star of the 1895 Races to the North, on display inside the Locomotion museum at Shildon. AUTHOR

On the night of 21/22 August, the East Coast’s 8pm express arrived at Aberdeen at 4.40am, setting a new record; after this the East Coast partners announced that they would cease racing. However, not to be outdone, it was again the turn of the LNWR to show its mettle. On 22 August, a storming run by Francis Webb’s ‘Improved Precedent’ or ‘Jumbo’ express passenger 2-4-0 No. 790 Hardwicke took two hours and six minutes to cover the 141 miles (227km) from Crewe to Carlisle with an average speed of 67.1mph (107.9km/h), setting a new speed record in the ‘Races to the North’. The train, which comprised only three carriages and left out the stop at Stirling, reached Aberdeen at 4.32am. However, the racing bubble burst early in the morning on Monday 13 July 1896, when the 8pm Highland Express from Euston to Glasgow, hauled by LNWR locomotives No. 2159 Shark and No. 275 Vulcan, derailed at the Dock Street points to the north of Preston

station in the middle of the night. Because of a sharp curve at the north end of the station by the goods yard there was a 10mph (16km/h) restriction, but neither driver had taken a non-stop train through Preston before, and they took the curve at 40–45mph (65– 70km/h), with disastrous consequences. The drivers fought valiantly to keep the train upright and brought it to a halt in record time, but both engines and the landing coaches were badly damaged. The train was lightly loaded, but one passenger was killed.

A Great Northern Railway mail train of the late Victorian era. ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS

In 1938, the LNER re-steamed GNR No. 1 to haul a ‘Scotsman’ train of the 1870s, comprising seven East Coast Joint Stock six-wheeled coaches as part of publicity surrounding the introduction of new streamlined trains, as outlined in Chapter 10. This aerial view shows it passing Knebworth. Around the same time, No. 1 also became the first preserved locomotive to be hired for a private main line rail tour, when the Railway Correspondence & Travel Society booked it. LNER

The death toll was small in comparison to other significant railway accidents of the time, but nonetheless it prompted widespread public anger at ‘speeding’ trains, and the concept of risking passengers’ lives in pursuit of company prestige. Indeed, so great was the rekindled public concern at trains running at too high a speed that when the Great Western Railway’s No. 3440 City of Truro allegedly and unofficially became the first in the world to break the 100mph (160km/h) barrier, reportedly reached 102.3mph (164.6km/h) with the ‘Ocean Mails’ on Wellington Bank in Somerset in May 1904, the company kept quiet about it for many years afterwards. Furthermore, disgruntled passengers on the racing trains complained that they were arriving at Aberdeen much earlier than the scheduled breakfast time of 7am, and had to wait on the empty station before connecting trains arrived. Taking public opinion on board, the East and West Coast rivals reached an agreement on speed limits.

The Two Great East Coast Workshops

Two locomotive building works will forever be synonymous with the rapid strides in transport technology that were accomplished on the East Coast Main Line: Doncaster and Darlington. Doncaster Works has always been known as ‘The Plant’. In the 1870s, under Sturrock’s successor Patrick Stirling, it began building new coaches, and the first sleeping cars were outshopped there in 1873. Doncaster built Britain’s first dining cars in 1879, and the first corridor coaches followed three years later. This volume is devoted to the story of how the ECML became a byword for speed, and to cut a long story short, most of the groundbreaking locomotives classes that ran over it and wowed the world were built at Doncaster. They included not only the Stirling Singles, but as we shall see in subsequent chapters, the Ivatt Atlantics and the Gresley Pacifics, including No. 4472 Flying Scotsman and the streamlined A4s. An LNWR apprentice under Francis Webb at the time of the second ‘Races to the North’ was a young Herbert Nigel Gresley.

Back at the head of a rake of teak coaches: Stirling single No. 1 on display at the Doncaster Works open day in July 2003. In the early 1980s, No. 1 returned to steam, and briefly ran on the Great Central Railway and the North Yorkshire Moors Railway. In 2010 it starred in a critically acclaimed stage production of Edith A. Nesbit’s children’s classic The Railway Children at the redundant Waterloo International platform. By then long since out of ticket, it could not move under its own power, and so it was moved into position when needed by a Class 08 diesel, while a fog machine produced smoke effects. AUTHOR

Jumping a track or two in our narrative, during World War II, Doncaster turned out Horsa gliders for the D-Day airborne assault. In British Railways days it produced the new BR standard all-steel Mk1 carriages. Steam building ended in 1957, followed by carriage building in 1962. However, the works were yanked into the modern age with the building of a diesel repair shop. Under British Rail Engineering Limited, new diesel shunters and 25k electric locomotives were built, along with Class 56 and 58 diesel-electric locomotives. Celebrations were held in July 2003 to mark ‘The Plant’s’ 150th birthday. Sadly, in 2008 the main locomotive repair shop was demolished to make way for housing. The Stockton & Darlington Railway opened Darlington Works in 1863. The first new locomotive was built at the works in 1864, to an S&D design. However, it wasn’t for another four years that North Eastern Railway designs were turned out. At the works, known

locally as North Road Shops, 120 of Sir Vincent Raven’s Q6 0-8-0s had been built by 1921, followed by fifteen examples of the more powerful Q7 0-8-0s. After the Grouping, it built Gresley’s K3 2-6-0s, V2 2-6-2s, K4 2-6-0s and A1 Pacifics. Steam building continued until after nationalization, with BR Standard Class 2 tanks being turned out. However, despite being enlarged in 1954, rationalization of the BR Workshops Division in 1962 resulted in the works being run down and then closed four years later. The site is now occupied by a Morrisons supermarket – but as we shall see in Chapter 18, express passenger steam locomotive building for the ECML in Darlington did not die forever.

Details from a driving wheel of Stirling single No. 1. AUTHOR

Class 66 No. 66122 passes Doncaster Works on the East Coast Main Line. DEREK HOSKINS/CCL

CHAPTER 8

After the Goldrush: Britain’s First Atlantics While Britain gave the steam locomotive to the world, it was always willing to accept innovation from beyond our shores. ‘Atlantic’ is the American term for locomotives with a 4-4-2 wheel formation, and it was Henry Alfred Ivatt who introduced the first of this type to the UK, with his Klondike in 1898. Ivatt’s career began at the age of seventeen with an apprenticeship to the LNWR’s John Ramsbottom at Crewe. He became head of the Chester District before joining Ireland’s Great Southern & Western Railway in 1877, and became its Southern District locomotive superintendent. In 1895 he replaced Patrick Stirling as Great Northern Railway locomotive superintendent. Stirling, aged seventy-five, died ten days later. Towards the close of the century, with the Races to the North having ended, and with the development of dining facilities on board for both first- and third-class passengers, the company’s emphasis switched from raw speed to quality amenities. Furthermore, the GNR was soon faced with extra competition linking Manchester to London via Nottingham and the East Coast Main Line. The Manchester, Sheffield & Lincolnshire Railway finished its London extension to Marylebone in 1899, and became the Great Central Railway, providing serious fresh competition. Despite the prestige delivered by the performances of the Stirling singles in previous decades, the GNR’s passenger locomotive fleet was by then blatantly lagging behind the state of the art locomotives, and the once-renowned singles could not handle the faster speeds

and heavier loads that were required. Ivatt started out by modifying Stirling’s E1 2-4-0 and D54 4-4-0 types that were carrying some of the biggest boilers in Britain – but for him, they were not big enough. He extended the locomotive frames and added a pair of carrying wheels so he could make the boilers even bigger, increasing their length from 10ft 1in (3.07m) to 13ft (4m). Furthermore, revisiting accidents that had befallen the Stirling singles because of poor track, Ivatt walked the whole 156-mile (251km) length of the GNR and was appalled at its condition. Thus he rebuilt the Stirling singles with larger boilers and cylinders, and eventually produced a new class of singles – the last to be made. They had similar front ends to the Stirling singles, and shared their driving wheel size. Classed as A4, all were withdrawn in 1917. However, before he joined the GNR, he had been looking into the possibility of a 4-4-2, and in February 1897, the board agreed that he should build an experimental one: a year later, No. 990 became the first Atlantic 4-4-2 locomotive built in Britain. Nicknamed ‘Klondike’ after the 1896 gold rush in the Klondike region of the Yukon, the name stuck for the rest of the class that followed it out of the works. The name ‘Atlantic’, used to refer to a 44-2 wheel arrangement, may have originated from the use of such locomotives on the 70mph (113km/h) express trains of the USA’s Atlantic Coast Line in 1895. The arrangement was the natural development of the 4-4-0, with the additional trailing truck not only supporting a larger firebox but improving the riding. In June 1900, No. 990, the first of what was to become the LNER C2 class, was named Henry Oakley.

Ivatt C1 Atlantic No. 251 (LNER 2800), part of the National Collection, on display at Barrow Hill roundhouse during the East Coast-themed Giants of Steam event on 7 February 2014. This locomotive marked the start of the big engine policy on the East Coast Main Line. Built at Doncaster in 1902 and the sole survivor of the class, it was withdrawn in 1947 and earmarked for preservation, three years before the last C1 was taken out of traffic. In 1953, it and GNR C2 No. 990 Henry Oakley were used for two weekends of tours in 1953 as part of the centenary celebrations of Doncaster Works. Under the ‘Plant Centenarian’ banner, they double-headed a trip from King’s Cross to Doncaster. In 1957, No. 251 entered the railway museum at York. AUTHOR

The first Atlantic tender locomotive built in Britain, GNR No. 990 Henry Oakley, stands on display in the Great Hall of the National Railway Museum at York on 30 April 2016. It is named after railway administrator Sir Henry Oakley (1823–1912), who spent most of his working life with the Great Northern Railway; he joined the GNR in 1849, and rose from the company secretary’s chief clerk to general manager. After leaving the GNR in 1898, he became chairman of the Central London Railway, one of the new underground lines. THOMAS’S PICS/CCL

GNR Atlantic No. 990 Henry Oakley on display at Bressingham Steam Museum. AUTHOR

A contemporary handcoloured postcard of pioneer C1 Atlantic No. 251. AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

Ivatt’s next development was No. 251, which appeared in December 1902. The first of his large Atlantics, later the LNER C1 class, the design was based on his Klondikes, but with the boiler diameter increased from 4ft 8in (1.4m) to 5ft 6in (1.7m). The Atlantics all had tiny cylinders, and therefore their tractive effort was less than that of the Stirling singles. However, they had better adhesion because of the extra driving wheels, and the larger boiler could hold steaming rates for longer. By the time they appeared, the GNR’s requirements were for locomotives pulling bigger and heavier trains, not faster ones. No. 251 marked the start of the GNR’s big engine policy, and therefore that of the East Coast Main Line.

Ivatt C1 Atlantic No. 4442, outshopped from Doncaster on 30 June 1908, powers through Hornsey with the ‘West Riding Pullman’ in early LNER days. DENNIS BUTLER COLLECTION

Ivatt was also the first engineer to introduce Walschaerts valve gear to the UK. Devised by Belgian engineer Egide Walschaerts in 1844, it offered the advantage that it could be mounted entirely on the outside of a locomotive, leaving the space between the frames clear. Whereas Stephenson valve gear remained the most commonly used valve gear on nineteenth-century locomotives, in the twentieth century it was largely superseded by the Walschaerts valve

gear. The age of the Atlantics resulted in the Stirling singles being assigned to secondary routes, before all were withdrawn and scrapped – apart from No. 1, which was preserved. Ivatt continued to develop his Atlantic design, his final development being the fitting of piston valves and Schmidt eighteenrow superheaters to the last ten C1s that appeared in 1910, in order that he could lower the boiler pressure and save on maintenance costs. Ivatt’s successor Nigel Gresley added 24-element superheaters from 1912 and raised the boiler pressure again, later equipping the Atlantics with 32-element superheaters. As a result, Ivatt Atlantics continued on prestige services, including the Pullman trains from King’s Cross in the 1930s. Improve on them as he did, Gresley chose not to build any more. While there may have been a lull in speed record attempts since the Races to the North, the C1s could still demonstrate their prowess. In July 1936, after a Gresley A3 failed at Grantham, it was replaced by the station pilot, C1 No. 4404. It reached Selby in sixtyseven minutes and forty-one seconds, covering more than 60 miles (96km) at an average of 64mph (103km/h). Obsolete, maybe – useless, definitely not!

Ivatt C1 Atlantic No. 282 hauling the Great Northern Railway’s Flying Scotsman from London to Edinburgh, as depicted in an early Tuck’s oilette postcard. The Atlantics were introduced on this train from 1897. AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

A Great Northern Railway letter stamp. AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

The cover of a Great Nothern Railway timetable of 1904. AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

The first of the ninety-two C1s to be withdrawn was No. 4459 in late 1943. No. 251 was taken out of traffic in 1947 and preserved. In 1953 it was steamed for a series of specials celebrating the centenary of Doncaster Works, and again the following year. Henry Ivatt died in Sussex in 1923. Seventeen C1 Atlantics just about scraped into the British Railway era. The last in traffic was No. 294 (BR 62822), which on 26 November 1950 hauled a train one way from King’s Cross to

Doncaster to mark the end of the class. On board was the postwar chief mechanical engineer of the LMS, Henry George Ivatt, son of the Atlantics’ designer, who was given one of the builder’s plates. Waiting to greet the train at Doncaster was preserved C1 No. 251. The return trip to London was hauled, aptly, by A1 Pacific No. 60123, H. A. Ivatt.

North Eastern Atlantics and Pacifics The North Eastern and North British railways also introduced Atlantics to the ECML, to satisfy demands for faster running. In May 1910 Vincent (later Sir Vincent) Raven became the NER’s chief mechanical engineer. A firm believer in the advantages of 3-cylinder propulsion, in August that year he authorized the building of the first dozen C7 Atlantics, which became the Z class under the LNER. The first twenty were built by the North British Locomotive Company, and were used on express passenger services. Ten were built with saturated boilers and the others with superheated boilers, allowing a direct comparison. Superheating was quickly found to be superior, and it was adopted for all. At first, the C7s were used. From 1924 onwards, they were run through to King’s Cross hauling specials to the British Empire Exhibition, and football specials for the Wembley finals. The Class Zs were all were scrapped by the early 1950s. Raven developed the design into a Pacific, to counter the Great Northern Railway’s announcement that it was building a 4-6-2, as detailed in the next chapter. He stretched the C7 design by increasing the boiler diameter and cylinder size, while oil pressure was increased from 175psi to 200psi. Greater power and acceleration was urgently needed for the increasing loads on the ECML, and the NER authorized the building of the first two Pacifics at Darlington (classified A2 – not to be confused with the later Peppercorn locomotives) on 30 March 1922. Numbered 2400 and 2401, they were both delivered in December 1922. The A2 was the biggest locomotive that the NER built, but it was not regarded as its best. A total of five were built at Darlington, two by the NER and three by its successor the LNER. Only one ran in NER days.

While the performance of the locomotives was by and large adequate for the needs of their intended use between York and Edinburgh, they stopped short of their designer’s hopes to keep up with the rival GNR’s Pacifics, and were disappointing and with higher coal consumption. For their first ten years, the A2s were used between Grantham and Edinburgh, with some runs to Leeds, primarily handling heavy secondary express passenger trains on the ECML. Their limited route availability, combined with the need for new boilers, led to the Raven A2s being superseded by Gresley’s V2 2-6-2s, and they were withdrawn between 1936 and 1937. No. 2402 has the unfortunate distinction of being the first locomotive built by the LNER to be scrapped.

Raven Atlantic Class Z Atlantic No. 2210 at King’s Cross shed in 1930. The photograph was taken on FA Cup final day, 26 April 1930, when Arsenal beat Huddersfield Town 2–0. The board on the top bracket indicates the return time of 12.24pm the following day for Darlington, Wolsingham, Willington, Penshaw, Fencehouses and Wallsend. GRESLEY SOCIETY

North British Railway H class 4-4-2 (LNER C11) No. 868 Aberdonian heads a King’s Cross to Edinburgh express in 1915. Known as ‘North British Atlantics’, they comprised the heaviest, longest and in terms of tractive effort the most powerful locomotives ever built for this company. Under NBR locomotive superintendent William Paton Reid (who was awarded a CBE in 1920), a total of sixteen were built, six by Robert Stephenson & Co. and ten by the North British Locomotive Company, a private manufacturer distinct from the North British Railway. Most of the class were withdrawn during 1936–7, with none inherited by British Railways in 1948. AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

An Edwardian postcard view of a North British Atlantic at speed on the ‘Aberdeen Express’. AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

Raven A2 Pacific No. 2400 City of Newcastle on trial at King’s Cross station in June 1923. DENNIS BUTLER COLLECTION

CHAPTER 9

The New Golden Age of Steam World War I had the effect of uniting the East Coast Main Line like never before, in that the three companies that ran sections of it – the Great Northern, North Eastern and North British Railways – were placed under a single control: the state. With the outbreak of hostilities in 1914, it quickly became clear that more demands would be placed on Britain’s railways than ever before, not least on all trains carrying troops and military equipment to and from the English Channel ports, plus the huge volume of additional freight traffic needed to back up the war effort. It was deemed essential that the government took control of the railways to ensure that the interests of the country were best served, rather than those of more than 120 individual companies, and resources could be marshalled to maximum effect. State control of the railways continued until 1921, and there were many who asked if it should become a permanent fixture, with complete nationalization, taking the railways away from internal competition once and for all. That would indeed happen, after the nation’s railways again came under government control during World War II, leading to the Transport Act 1947, and the dawn of the British Railways era on 1 January the following year. However, in the aftermath of the Great War, a compromise solution was reached in the form of the Railways Act 1921, also known as the Grouping Act. It was largely devised by former North Eastern Railway executive Eric Campbell Geddes, who was by then Minister of Transport in the David Lloyd George wartime coalition government.

Geddes considered that the traditional competition between railway companies was wasteful, but thought that permanent nationalization would be beset by poor management. The middle ground was to group the railway companies into a small number of large but regional concerns. In March 1920 he produced a Cabinet paper, ‘Future Transport Policy’, which outlined his proposals for five English groups (Southern, Western, North Western, Eastern and North Eastern), a London passenger group, and separate single groupings for Scotland and Ireland.

The locomotive that began the Pacific revolution of the East Coast Main Line: Gresley’s GNR No. 1471 Great Northern (LNER 4471), as seen in a Doncaster Works manufacturer’s photograph. AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

Eventually the concept evolved into a situation whereby most of the railways were grouped into four major companies – the Great Western Railway, the Southern Railway, the London Midland & Scottish Railway and the London & North Eastern Railway, the latter having the East Coast Main Line as, by and large, its backbone. While Geddes had favoured regional monopolies, there would still be competition between neighbouring ‘Big Four’ companies, as the new groupings came to be popularly known. In the case of the LNER, the main rival was the LMS. Once the country had begun pulling out of the depression of the 1920s and early 1930s, rail transport technology began to evolve like never before. The 1930s were to become the zenith of the steam age. It was the great decade when, before the clouds of war reappeared on the horizon, express steam locomotive design was taken to dizzy new heights that back in Victorian times few would

have imagined possible. With the LNER and LMS competing for the shortest and fastest routes from London to Scotland, it was only a matter of time before the 1896 agreement was torn up – and the Races to the North were back on. What happened over those two years in late Victorian times would be seen by comparison as little more than a trial run, for the best was yet to come, not only for the East Coast Main Line, but world steam railway technology. A succession of speed records were broken on both sides. On the West Coast, the LMS had GWRtrained chief mechanical engineer Sir William Stanier. On the East Coast, cometh the hour, cometh the man – and the LNER inherited someone who would, in many people’s eyes, turn out to become Britain’s greatest steam locomotive designer of them all.

Sir Nigel Gresley (19 June 1876–5 April 1941), chief mechanical engineer of the LNER.

Herbert Nigel Gresley was born on 19 June 1876, in Edinburgh, but he was not Scottish. His father was the Reverend Nigel Gresley, rector of St Peter’s church in Netherseal, Derbyshire, where many generations of the family had lived, and his mother had merely visited the Scottish capital to see a gynaecologist. Son Nigel was sent to a preparatory school in St Leonards, Sussex, and then attended Marlborough College in Wiltshire, where he developed his abilities for mechanical drawing and was top of the form in science.

After school he joined the London & North Western Railway under locomotive superintendent Francis Webb as an apprentice. He then moved to the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway works at Horwich, at the time overseen by senior engineer Sir John Aspinall. Young Gresley’s engineering skills saw him rapidly climb the promotion ladder.

A contemporary map of the London & North Eastern Railway and its constituent parts, with the East Coast Main Line as the backbone.

He married Miss Ethel Frances Fullagar in 1901, and three years later became assistant superintendent of the carriage and wagon department of the L&YR. In 1905, the couple and their first two children moved from Newton Heath in Manchester to Doncaster, where, aged twenty-nine, he became carriage and wagon superintendent with the Great Northern Railway. After Henry Ivatt retired as locomotive superintendent in 1911, Gresley was given the job. It proved to be a monumental appointment, one that would place both the East Coast Main Line and Britain on the world map. Gresley was placed in control of armaments production at Doncaster Works during World War I. He became a lieutenantcolonel in the Engineer and Railway Staff Corps, and in January 1920 was awarded a CBE for his war work. However, the best by far was to follow. With the formation of the LNER at the Grouping of 1923, Gresley became its chief mechanical engineer and moved to King’s Cross. The Gresleys had two more children. Ethel Gresley died in August 1929, and afterwards Gresley spent time in Canada with his eldest daughter. While he was there, he visited British Columbia and drove a Canadian 4-6-2 or ‘Pacific’ locomotive. It is widely held that 4-6-2s were named Pacifics after locomotives supplied in 1902 by US manufacturer Baldwin for the Missouri Pacific Railroad. Back in Britain, Gresley bought Salisbury Hall, an Elizabethan house near St Albans with a moat in which he bred several species of wildfowl…including mallards.

Britain’s Pacific Steam Locomotives

Britain’s first Pacific was GWR No. 111 The Great Bear, here pictured in an official Swindon Works photograph. AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

The first 4-6-2 or Pacific steam locomotive built in Britain was produced as a one-off by the Great Western Railway. George Jackson Churchward, who is held to be the first of Britain’s great ‘modern’ chief mechanical engineers, designed No. 111 The Great Bear for reasons lost in the mists of time. The GWR board may have wanted to build the biggest locomotive of the day for reasons of prestige, or Churchward might have wanted to further develop his ground-breaking 4-6-0 designs such as the Star class. Indeed, The Great Bear proved that it was feasible to have a 4-cylinder locomotive with 15in-diameter cylinders which could be sufficiently fed by a standard GWR boiler. However, The Great Bear was not a success. Its size and bulk limited its operations to the Paddington to Bristol line, and its high axle loading gave it a route availability of Special Red. The behemoth also encountered problems with clearance on curves and the springing of its trailing wheels. In January 1924, after Churchward had retired, The Great Bear, which needed major boiler repairs, was dismantled and the parts used to build one of his successor Charles Collett’s Castle class 4-60s, No. 111 Viscount Churchill. Churchward made no secret of his great disappointment at Collett’s actions. Word had come that Gresley was planning to build his own Pacifics for the GNR and Churchward said: ‘What did that young man want to build it for? We could have sold him ours!’ Gresley was indeed planning to build two Pacifics for services on the ECML. Two were built at Doncaster by the GNR before the Grouping, the first, No. 1470 Great Northern, being named after the

company. It was the first of a class intended to handle express trains that were becoming too big for Ivatt’s large-boilered Atlantics. As we have seen, it was Ivatt’s Atlantics that began the GNR’s big engine policy. His C1 type was a powerful, free-steaming locomotive capable of heading the fastest and heaviest express trains, sometimes weighing more than 500 tons. In 1915, Gresley drew up plans for a longer version of the Ivatt Atlantic but with 4 cylinders, but he found his design to be unsatisfactory. He then looked at the Pennsylvania Railroad’s new K4 Pacific, the final evolution of a series of prototypes produced in 1910/11, and which were so successful that they remained as that line’s primary passenger locomotive until the end of steam in 1957. Indeed, the K4 is today acknowledged as the state steam locomotive of Pennsylvania. Gresley studied in detail the technical reports of the K4 and its predecessors, and then began drawing a blueprint for an equally modern British counterpart. The design of Gresley’s Pacifics made full use of the maximum limits of the loading gauge on the East Coast Main Line, with a large boiler and wide firebox providing a large grate area. The firebox followed GNR tradition in being a round-topped version, not the flattopped Belpaire type as used on the K4s. Heat transfer and the flow of gases were aided by a combustion chamber that extended forwards from the firebox space into the boiler barrel. Gresley’s universal 3-cylinder layout, which had been incorporated into two of his earlier designs, was a major feature of his Pacifics. After his first two Pacifics appeared in 1922, the other being No. 1471 Sir Frederick, the GNR ordered ten more. These were being built when the company became part of the LNER. Gresley’s new Pacific type became the standard LNER express passenger locomotive, and was designated Class A1. A total of thirty-one were built at Doncaster, and another twenty subcontracted to Glasgow’s North British Locomotive Company. His A1s immediately showed that they could handle bigger loads at faster speeds than the Ivatt Atlantics. During a test run, No. 1471 Great Northern hauled a twenty-coach, 600-ton train over the 105 miles (169km) from London to Grantham while recording an average speed of 51.8mph (83.3km/h) – but it burned a huge amount of coal

in the process. One big flaw was that Gresley’s first Pacifics had been designed to work on the GNR, which involved hauling trains over distances no greater than 200 miles (320km). However, with the formation of the LNER, and the three East Coast companies coming under one umbrella as a result of the 1921 Act, they were called on to work greater distances. The third A1 Pacific, No. 1472, emerged from Doncaster Works in the early days of the LNER and was first given a GNR number. However, it was renumbered 4472 and named Flying Scotsman for display at the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley, which was opened by King George V on St George’s Day on 23 April 1924. With that official naming, world history was, albeit unintentionally, made at a stroke. Flying Scotsman was displayed along with Charles Collett’s first Castle 4-6-0, No. 4073 Caerphilly Castle, which the Swindon empire claimed to be the most powerful locomotive in Britain because of its tractive effort of 31,825lb (14,436kg). In the wake of the exhibition, the LNER and GWR ran exchange trials to establish just which one had produced the more powerful locomotive. No. 4079 Pendennis Castle, which had been outshopped from Swindon Works on 4 March 1924, beat A1 No. 4475 Flying Fox. The GWR locomotive ascended the East Coast Main Line from King’s Cross to Finsbury Park in less than six minutes, a time that Gresley’s Pacifics could not match, and also boasted greater coal and water economy. In 1925 Pendennis Castle was exhibited at the second British Empire Exhibition alongside Flying Scotsman, with a notice boasting that it was Britain’s most powerful locomotive. (At the time of writing Pendennis Castle is undergoing restoration at Didcot Railway Centre, following its repatriation from Australia in 2000.) Gresley was not to be deterred from his design ambitions, and took on board everything that he learned from the locomotive trials. In 1926 a series of experimental modifications were made to A1 No. 4477 Gay Crusader, based on Swindon practice. The valve gear was adjusted to boost the performance of the Pacifics with their 180psi boilers while using less coal and water, making long-distance nonstop runs a possibility. The valve gear was subsequently designed

and fitted to No. 2555 Centenary in 1927, and the rest of the class followed suit over a period of several years. Meanwhile, a new A3 class of Pacific appeared, taking on board the tests and improvements made to the A1s. The first was No. 2743 Felstead, which was outshopped in August 1928 with a 220psi boiler, increased superheat and improved weight distribution. Another new feature was the change from right- to left-hand drive, making it easier to sight signals. A total of twenty-seven A3s were built from new, and eventually all the original A1s, including Flying Scotsman, were converted to A3s. The last A1 to be converted was No. 60068 Sir Visto in 1949.

A1 (later A3) 4-6-2 No. 4472 Flying Scotsman as it appeared at the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley stadium in 1924. AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

GWR 4-6-0 No. 4079 Pendennis Castle, the locomotive that beat Gresley’s Pacifics in the 1925 exchange trials and which spurred him on to build ever more powerful locomotives for the East Coast Main Line. AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

Gresley A1 Pacific No. 2581 Neil Gow bursts under Endymion Road Bridge in Hornsey. Built in 1924 as an A1, with Westinghouse brakes for working in the North East, it was rebuilt as an A3 (with longer travel valves) in 1943. GRESLEY SOCIETY

A1 No. 2558 The Tetrarch has just cleared Friern Barnet Road Bridge in New Southgate, a favourite spot for line-side photographers down the years. In the background is the famous Turrets public house, which closed in 2014. The vehicle behind the locomotive is a GNR composite-diner first class, with the kitchen car in the middle. Most of the seventy-nine A1/A3 Pacifics were named after racehorses – somewhat aptly in view of the performance of the class on the East Coast Main Line – Flying Scotsman being one of only seven exceptions. The Tetrarch was an Irish-bred, British-trained thoroughbred racehorse undefeated in a racing career of seven starts. DENNIS BUTLER COLLECTION

Flying Scotsman the Train Gresley’s third Pacific had been named after the company’s most famous long-distance passenger train, the Flying Scotsman. The East Coast Main Line is also referred to as ‘the route of the Flying Scotsman’. While it is indisputable that in history No. 4472 is inextricably linked to its daily performances over the line, the term refers not to the locomotive itself, but to the world’s most famous named train, which preceded the building of the A1 by more than half a century. As we saw in Chapter 6, the train had its origins in the GNR’s ‘Special Scotch Express’ of 1862, which became after a few years informally known as the ‘Flying Scotsman’. The LNER gave the train a major revamp in 1924, officially naming it the Flying

Scotsman for the first time. To add further prestige, it was decided to name one of the new A1 Pacifics after it. Because of the post-Races to the North agreement not to cut the eight hours fifteen minutes time for the London to Edinburgh journey, up to this point the speed of the train had been restricted. However, after valve gear modifications, the coal consumption of the A1 class was greatly reduced, to the point where the service could be run non-stop with just one fully laden coal tender. Also, ten special tenders were specially built for the relaunch of the Flying Scotsman service, with a coal capacity of 9 tons instead of the usual 8. Ten A1s and A3s were fitted with corridor tenders for use on the service; these allowed relief footplate crews to ride on the train and take over half way, cutting fatigue levels. No. 4472 hauled the first of its namesake trains from London on 1 May 1928. History was made: it was the first non-stop run of a scheduled service over the whole length of 393 miles (632km), a record at the time for a scheduled service, and showed the merits of Gresley’s modifications to the A1 valve gear. It was also the first of many landmark moments that would write the name Flying Scotsman indelibly into the history books. The train was first hauled by a pool of three A1s and two A3s, including Flying Scotsman.

No. 4472 Flying Scotsman on the ‘up’ inaugural non-stop Flying Scotsman service on 1 May 1928. Shortly before Hadley Wood south tunnel, the train is about to pass Greenwood signalbox, which achieved immortality in artist Terence Cuneo’s painting On the Early Shift commissioned by British Rail. GRESLEY SOCIETY

However, it is worth noting that four days earlier, West Coast rival the LMS ran the Edinburgh section of its Royal Scot all 399.7 miles (643km) non-stop from Euston on a publicity trip. In 1929, No. 4472 starred in the film The Flying Scotsman, which was set aboard its named train and featured several daring stunts performed while it was in motion. With the end of the limited speed agreement in 1932, the Flying Scotsman’s journey time fell to seven hours thirty minutes, and by 1938 to seven hours twenty minutes. Following nationalization in 1948, the Flying Scotsman ceased to be a non-stop named train, and called at Peterborough, York and Newcastle en route. When Deltic diesels replaced steam, the train became the focal point of a sizeable advertising campaign, just as it had been in 1928.

After British Rail was privatized, former East Coast operator the Great North Eastern Railway continued using the name from 1996 to November 2007, and even branded itself ‘The Route of the Flying Scotsman’. As we will see, the old ‘Races to the North’ rivalry flared up again shortly afterwards. Its successor on the route, National Express East Coast, continued using the name until November 2009, when the franchise was taken back by the government and handed to a new publicly owned operator, East Coast, as outlined in Chapter 17.

A Tuck’s oilette postcard of the LNER’s Flying Scotsman world-beating non-stop express. AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

The 10am Flying Scotsman to Edinburgh is headed out of King’s Cross by A3 Pacific No. 2795 Call Boy, in a scene from 1938. H. GORDON TIDEY

Development of On-Board Catering Facilities The new Flying Scotsman non-stop service boasted numerous innovations in dining facilities – amongst its many on-board services was even a barber’s shop. Just as the coaching inns on the Great North Road had provided refreshments and meals, so the railways that replaced the stagecoach routes had to provide catering, and ensure that standards and facilities were forever improving as the network evolved. Britain’s early inter-city railways often provided quarter-hour or twenty-minute stops for sustenance at bigger stations, the major problem being that late train arrivals would leave insufficient time for food to be served or meals eaten before the departure bell rang. However, by necessity such refreshment stops persisted until the start of the twentieth century, York being the main one on the East Coast route. Railways, however, had one big advantage here over stagecoaches: they could serve meals on board.

The GNR introduced the first restaurant car, for a maximum of nineteen first-class passengers only, on the King’s Cross to Leeds services in 1879. The catering operation of the restaurant car was leased to a contractor who supplied the food and cooked the meals in a little coke range. The drawback in those early days was that the introduction of corridor coaches was still years in the future, and dining passengers had to remain in the restaurant car throughout the journey. But with the introduction of corridor connections, most British express trains introduced restaurant cars, and by the 1920s, the old coke or coal ranges had been superseded by gas or electric cookers. It was then possible to offer menus as varied as those in any first-class hotel. Behind the scenes at the big terminal stations and at certain important intermediate places was a chain of depots, where restaurant-car chefs were supplied with their provisions. Soups, sauces and sweets, such as tarts and puddings, were made in the central kitchens in order to relieve the pressure on the on-board facilities, but joints, poultry, fish and vegetables were cooked while the train was moving. The railways also had huge bakeries to produce buns, rolls, pies and pastries, and laundries to cater for the pure white tablecloths and table napkins. The LNER ran the latest all-electric restaurant cars on the East Coast Main Line, and staff could serve breakfast, lunch or dinner to seventy-eight travellers at one sitting. A kitchen car was placed between the first class and third class restaurant carriages, forming a set of three articulated vehicles carried on four bogies, improving the steadiness of the cars. Electricity was generated for cooking and lighting by dynamos beneath the floor, connected to belts from the axles of the cars. The coaching inns of yore had been reborn as miniature palaces on wheels, as railways carried more and more passengers at faster speeds, and as far as standards of luxury went, Flying Scotsman the train raised the game to exacting new standards.

A 1928 view of the interior of the Flying Scotsman car with movable armchair seats. LNER

A LNER chef waits at the door of his kitchen car. On luxury trains, two all-electric kitchens were powered by generators on the train axles. The kitchen staff served all the passengers at their seats in two sittings (table d’hôte: first class – five shillings; third class – four shillings and sixpence), one before York and one after, on the way to Newcastle. LNER

The 100mph (160km/h) Barrier and Beyond

Flying Scotsman takes on the world: with the LNER dynamometer car behind its tender, it reached 100mph (160km/h) on the East Coast Main Line on 30 November 1934. ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS

No. 4472’s greatest claim to fame came on 30 November 1934. A four-coach test train weighing 145 tons was assembled for an outward journey from King’s Cross to Leeds, with two-and-threequarter hours allocated for the 185.8 miles (299km). The train ascended the whole of the last 10 miles (16km) to Stoke Summit at an average of 82.5mph (132.7km/h) and went over the top at 81mph (130km/h). The entire trip was made in 151 minutes 56 seconds, with thirteen minutes to spare. It would be another three decades before a similar timing was achieved on the King’s Cross to Leeds route. Two coaches were added for the return trip, making a total of 208 tons. No. 4472 reached 100mph (160km/h) just outside Little Bytham on Stoke Bank, and held the speed for another 600 yards (550m). King’s Cross was reached in 157 minutes 17 seconds, again improving on the scheduled time. Driver William Sparshatt, then sixty-one, had remarked to onlookers before he left King’s Cross earlier that day: ‘If we hit anything today, we’ll hit it hard.’ The round trip, all made by the same locomotive, saw at least 250 miles (400km) covered at the average speed of 80mph (129km/h). This

time round there was no secrecy of the type that surrounded City of Truro’s alleged 102.3mph (164.6km/h) feat in 1904. Then, City of Truro most likely did hit 100mph (160km/h), but Flying Scotsman’s achievement was the first time that it was officially recorded, not by observers measuring distances with stopwatches, but with state-ofthe-art equipment in a dynamometer car. It was also no secret whatsoever that the rivalry with the West Coast route was now back on, and fiercer and far more competitive than ever before, and for the LNER publicity machine, Flying Scotsman’s official speed record was manna from heaven. However, racing competition was now coming not only from the West Coast, but from the continent, and not only in the form of steam, but in newly emerging main line diesel traction too.

The carriage that recorded transport history in the making: the LNER’s teak dynamometer car No. 902502, which is on display inside the National Railway Museum at York. The dynamometer car was built in 1905 at York Works, and ceased operation in December 1954. When positioned behind a moving locomotive, it enabled an on-board crew to measure and record a locomotive’s speed and horsepower. Its LNER running number was 23591. AUTHOR

A pocket global positioning system device might do the job today, but in the 1930s it needed a coach packed with state-of-the-art recording equipment to record the speed records set by Flying Scotsman and Mallard on a roll of tape. The equipment survives intact inside the LNER dynamometer car in the National Railway Museum at York, but the coach interior is not open to the general public. AUTHOR

New Stages in Railway Development The resumption of racing occurred because of developments in the German Reich, namely the appearance of the Flying Hamburger, a

streamlined two-car diesel-electric railcar set that quickly became the fastest train in the world and mounted a potentially fatal challenge to the steam locomotive concept. The German state railway – Deutsche Reichsbahn-Gesellschaft – ordered the ninety-eight-seater Class SVT 877 set in 1932 from manufacturer Waggon und Maschinenbau AG Gorlitz, and it entered service on the Berlin– Hamburg line the following year. Wind-tunnel experiments were carried out as part of the blueprint for the streamlining, which followed on from the development of the high-speed inter-urban railcar Bullet two years previously. Both Flying Hamburger vehicles had a 12-cylinder Maybach diesel engine with a direct current generator directly coupled to it, driving a Tatzlager traction motor. The set reached the then-astounding average speed of 77.4mph (124.5km/h) over the 178-mile (286km) journey, decades ahead of its time. It then became the prototype for the DRG Class SVT 137 units. The German railcar set showed that diesel propulsion would sooner or later become a new stage in railway development. However, steam at that time was still more cost effective, and locomotive designers looked in depth at ways in which the aerodynamic advantages of streamlining could also be applied to steam trains. German locomotive builder Henschel-Werke subsequently produced an express steam train that could compete with the likes of the Flying Hamburger. The Henschel-Wegmann train ran non-stop express services between Berlin and Dresden from June 1936 to August 1939. Two Class 61 steam locomotives were built to haul it, one a 4-6-4T and the other a 4-6-T; both the locomotives and the coaches were streamlined. In the USA, high-speed diesel railcars were introduced on the Union Pacific Railroad and Burlington Railroad with resounding success.

The sole surviving vehicle from the Flying Hamburger, the driver’s cab, the engine compartment and the saloon, are on show inside the Deutsche Bahn Museum in Nuremberg. AUTHOR

Back at King’s Cross, the LNER watched all of these developments from afar with both increasing interest and concern, and the board decided that it, too, wanted a train that could match the Flying Hamburger in terms of speed. Gresley therefore visited the continent to ride on the German train, and he was so impressed that the LNER looked into buying one, and the manufacturers were asked to design an East Coast Flying Hamburger. However, they were not able to guarantee a higher average speed than 63mph (101km/h) between London and Newcastle, 14mph (22.5km/h) less than the German railcar, because of the heavier gradients and speed limits on the ECML. Furthermore the railcar set’s down side was that the seating was cramped, and hardly likely to attract passengers used to the spacious comfort of the LNER rolling stock of the day. LNER chief general manager Sir Ralph Wedgwood also argued that faster overall speeds could be reached and held with a train of far greater

weight, capacity and comfort using an ordinary Gresley Pacific, and so the company took up this option. Thus on 5 March 1935, No. 2750 Papyrus, then seven years old, was chosen to haul a test train, the aim of which was to demonstrate the feasibility of working a six-coach train weighing 217 tons over the 268.3 miles (431.7km/h) between King’s Cross and Newcastle, taking just four hours each way. As with Flying Scotsman’s record run, the same locomotive hauled the train in both directions. While 11.5 minutes were lost because of derailed wagons at Arksey, Papyrus completed the round trip of 536.6 miles (863.4km) at an hour average of 70.4mph (113.3km/h). Of those miles, 500 (804km) were covered at 72.7mph (117km/h) and 300 (480km) at 80mph (129km/h). Descending Stoke Bank, 12.3 miles (19.8km) were covered at an average of 100.6mph (161.9km/h), the world record for a non-streamlined locomotive, shared with a French Chapelon Pacific. Better still, the train hit 108mph (173.8km/h) on the bank – a new world speed record. The net result was that from October 1935, a daily four-hour service between King’s Cross and Newcastle was launched, with streamlined carriages seating a total of 194 passengers and including restaurant cars. Thus steam on the East Coast Main Line certainly had much life left in it – and even better lay three years round the corner.

Gresley’s LNER masterpieces were by no means limited to his Pacific types. V2 26-2 No. 4774, the fourth of the first five class members built at Doncaster in 1936, heads a Leeds–King’s Cross train approaching New Southgate in 1938. Derived from Gresley’s A1/A3 4-6-2s, but with smaller driving wheels and a shortened boiler, the V2s kept his 3-cylinder arrangement, but unusually, all 3 cylinders were part of a single monobloc casting. Between 1936 and 1944 a total of 184 V2s were built at Doncaster and Darlington works, and were used for both fast fitted freights and express passenger services. Their superb pulling power brought them into their own in a big way during World War II, hauling trains of more than twenty carriages (700 tons). A single V2 was recorded as having hauled twenty-six coaches from Peterborough to London. The V2s performed equally competently for British Railways, leaving their mark on the East Coast Main Line, the Waverley Route between Carlisle and Edinburgh, and on the Great Central main line between Marylebone and Sheffield. The entire class was withdrawn from service between 1962 and 1966. GRESLEY SOCIETY

CHAPTER 10

The Duck that Downed the Eagle Modern traction such as the Flying Hamburger was clearly outlining the shape of things to come. However, just as British Railways in its early years, mindful of post-World War II austerity, stuck with steam, ignoring the major advances in diesel and electric motive power already widely implemented in the USA, so it was in the 1930s. The general consensus was that steam was certainly not finished yet. However, the big difference in the art deco era was that streamlining was viewed as the answer. Not only could air-smoothed casings cut wind resistance at high speed, but the new stylish outlines could greatly enhance the glamour of luxury train travel.

The fastest steam locomotive on the planet: East Coast icon A4 No. 4468 Mallard inside the Great Hall of the National Rail Museum at York. AUTHOR

The plate that says it all! It was fixed to the side of Mallard in 1948. AUTHOR

The Bugatti Type 35B that won the French and Monaco Grands Prix in 1930, seen at the Monterey Historics at Laguna Seca in 2015. Its design influenced that of the streamlined casings of Gresley’s A4s. Like Mallard, it is painted garter blue, a colour of vogue for speed machines in the 1930s. SIGNAG/CCL

A depiction of a Bugatti petrol railcar of the 1930s.

At first, streamlining ‘on the cheap’ was considered, in the form of modifications to the front end of existing LNER Pacifics. Experiments were conducted using scale models with the assistance of Professor Dalby and the wind-tunnel facilities at the National Physical Laboratory at Teddington to determine a shape that would both reduce air resistance and lift the exhaust steam effectively at high speed. It was demonstrated that streamlining an A3 could save more than 40hp at 60mph (97km/h), rising to 97hp at 80mph (129km/h) and 138hp at 90mph (145km/h). Overall, a saving in power output of about 10 per cent could be made, it was shown, and these findings were later confirmed by full-size engines in service. The results were therefore very encouraging, and following the success of the Papyrus trials, the LNER gave Gresley the go-ahead to build the Silver Jubilee streamlined trains. Not only were the locomotives streamlined, but the coaches were too, liveried in matching silver with valences between the bogies and flexible covers over the coach ends. Again, Gresley tore up the rulebook regarding appearances, and won many admirers in the

process. The seven-coach train could carry 198 passengers and comprised a twin-articulated brake third carriage, a triple-articulated restaurant set, and a twin-articulated first-class carriage. The locomotive, designated an A4, had art-deco wedge-shaped streamlining inspired by an Ettore Bugatti petrol railcar that Gresley had seen in France. In turn, Bugatti’s railcar had been inspired by one of his successful racing cars! One key area as far as these tests were concerned was the lifting of smoke away from the cab. The design achieved this without deflectors. The first of the new Pacifics was No. 2509 Silver Link. Striking was not the word – at a stroke it wiped away any previous notion of what a steam locomotive should look like, and those observers who were used to traditional locomotive outlines and preferred them were left aghast. The projected timings of the Silver Jubilee required speeds of 70–75mph (113–121km/h) to be sustained up the 1-in-200 banks such as Stoke with a 235-ton load behind the tender, while on the level, the planned schedule asked for constant speeds of 85–90mph (137–145km/h). The A4s would be working their hardest at 75mph (120km/h) and above, in striking contrast to normal conditions on the heavy trains. Accordingly, a number of crucial changes from the sixty-six A3s were incorporated in the design. The exhaust was made freer by the use of 9in-diameter piston valves against the previous 8in, and the pressure drop between the boiler and the steam chest was virtually eliminated by streamlined passages, as well as by the increased fluidity of the steam itself, due to the higher boiler pressure of 250lb per square inch and a higher degree of superheat. The softer blast resulting from the freer exhaust would have created less draught in the firebox had the A3 boiler been retained, with, possibly, an adverse effect upon the steaming. Accordingly, when their immediate successors the A4s were designed, the boiler barrel was shortened from 19ft to 18ft (5.8 to 5.5m), and the consequent reduction in tube heating surface was compensated for by the use of a combustion chamber. The cylinders of the A4s were slightly smaller, with an 18½in diameter against 19in. The Silver Jubilee made the A4s an overnight success. In a test run on 27 September 1935, Silver Link, then just three weeks old,

twice reached 112mph (180km/h) and sustained an average speed of 100mph (160km/h) for 43 consecutive miles (69km) on the East Coast Main Line. This run included an average of 108.7mph (174.9km/h) over the 10.6 miles (17.05km) from Biggleswade to St Neots, including several adverse gradients. Three days later, No. 2509 made its debut on the Silver Jubilee and carried out the 536.5mile (863.2km) daily return journey for the train’s first fortnight without any mechanical problems. The critics were largely silenced. In the Jubilee year of George V, 1935, Gresley achieved multiple locomotive engineering triumphs, which led to his knighthood. Four streamlined Pacifics were built for the Silver Jubilee service: three were stationed at King’s Cross, and the fourth, No. 2511 Silver King, a spare engine, was allocated to Gateshead shed, where it acted as pilot for the ‘up’ Jubilee; afterwards it usually operated the Newcastle-Edinburgh-York-Newcastle turn, beginning with the 11.10am non-stop express to Edinburgh. In 1936 the LNER added the dynamometer car to the Silver Jubilee, increasing the load to 254 tons during trial runs between Newcastle and King’s Cross, and Newcastle and Edinburgh.

An official LNER photograph of the first A4, No. 2509 Silver Link. AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

This scale model of pioneer A4 Pacific No. 2509 Silver Link is displayed inside the National Railway Museum at York. AUTHOR

On the first run, on 27 August 1936, the newest A4, No. 2512 Silver Fox, slightly bettered the maximum speed record of the previous September by reaching 113mph (182km/h) while descending Stoke Bank. On the northbound trip on the same day Silver Link also impressed on the same incline, this time running up it. The 15.3 miles (24.6km) from Tallington to Stoke Summit were covered at an average speed of 82.7mph (133.06km/h), with the locomotive working on 18 per cent cut-off and a wide-open regulator. Both runs were made in ordinary service, but doubled up as trials to measure water and coal consumption, and to beat Silver Link’s 112mph (180km/h). The LNER did not tell driver George Haygreen beforehand that a record attempt was to be attempted on Stoke Bank. Left in blissful oblivion, he neither had enough speed on the run up Stoke Bank, nor a sufficient reserve of boiler pressure. Yet pushing hard, 113mph (182km/h) was reached, setting a British record for a steam train carrying fare-paying passengers. The results of the trial meant that the A4s were deemed to have a sufficient reserve of power, proving that a ten-coach train would be a practical proposition for a Glasgow to London service. Between Newcastle and Edinburgh, No. 2511 Silver King made an exceptional climb of Cockburnspath Bank, keeping at 68mph (109km/h) up the 1in-96 gradient. In January 1937, a fifth A4 in the form of No. 4482 Golden Eagle was turned out. It was the first in a new series built both for the new

Coronation express and also on the fastest ordinary expresses. However, the Great Western Railway had also ‘upped the ante’ with its new Bristolian service in September 1935. Ostensibly arranged to mark the 100th anniversary of the building of the GWR by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, it was also planned to start before the LNER’s Silver Jubilee at the end of the month. For the Bristolian an express train was scheduled to cover 118 miles (190km) in 105 minutes, with 69 miles (111km) to be run at nearly 80mph (129km/h) – and without a streamlined locomotive in sight. The trial train was made up of GWR 4-6-0 No. 6000 King George V hauling seven coaches, a total weight of 265 tons. When the service began on 9 September, the King maintained an overall average speed slightly higher than that of the Silver Jubilee. That is not to say that the GWR had dismissed streamlining. Experimental streamlined casings were applied in early 1935 to No. 6014 King Henry VII and No. 5005 Manorbier Castle, with the bulbous domed addition to the smokebox door, fins extending behind the chimney and safety valve cover, coverings on the outside edge of the cylinders, and a long straight splasher for each side. However, the streamlining on both engines was abandoned in stages between then and 1943. A ‘down’ Bristolian headed by non-streamlined No. 6027 King Richard I covered 90 miles (145km) at not less than 70mph (113km/h), and faced with such performances, the GWR asked if air-smoothed casings would improve speed. Streamlining was therefore left by the GWR to the rival three members of the ‘Big Four’.

A4 No. 4492 Dominion of New Zealand ascends the 1-in-200 gradient to Potter’s Bar with the Coronation. M. W. EARLEY

A4 No. 2511 Silver King hauling the Silver Jubilee showpiece streamlined train. AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

The Coronation and ‘West Riding Limited’ Named after the coronation of King George VI, the Coronation began running from King’s Cross and Waverley from 4 July 1937. It departed from London at 4pm and arrived at 10pm. The design of the train was based on the Silver Jubilee but it had a two-tone blue livery. It comprised four sets of two-car articulated units, and a Beavertail observation car with a sloping back was attached in the summer months. Like the Silver Jubilee, it was decorated in art deco style. It was made up of brake third/kitchen third, open first/open first, open third/kitchen third and open third/brake third two-car articulated sets. The train was for the most part hauled by A4s, the locomotive painted in a special garter blue livery with red wheels, a livery that later became standard for the class. Encouraged by the success of the Silver Jubilee, the LNER provided even more lavish passenger accommodation on the Coronation, bringing the weight up to 312 tons, against the previous 220 tons. The locomotives were asked to work harder, and worked the six-hour trip from King’s Cross to London without being changed. Facing cross winds, coal consumption could soar to the point where nearly all 9 tons in the tender would be needed. On one occasion, the ‘up’ Coronation ran out of coal at Hitchin. The train ran until four days before World War II, during which the coaches were stored. Streamlined services ended on 31 August 1939 due to the enactment of the Emergency Powers (Defence) Act 1939. After this, passenger services were hurriedly pruned back, as evacuation trains had begun. In the months that followed many services returned, but on the whole much more slowly than before the war, as freight was given priority. In 1948, several of the Coronation vehicles returned to service as general passenger stock, but they never ran as a full set again. The two Beavertail observation cars appeared on the West Highland lines in 1956, and are now preserved at Rothley on the Great Central Railway in Leicestershire.

An LNER postcard of A4 No. 4488 Union of South Africa, which was built to haul the Coronation between King’s Cross and Newcastle. AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

Following on from the success of the Silver Jubilee and the Coronation, the LNER introduced a streamlined service for Leeds and Bradford. Named the West Riding Limited, it began operating on 27 September 1937, with a train set in the same blue livery as the Coronation. Two new A4s were named after the woollen trade, from which the LNER aimed to attract business with the West Riding Limited. No. 4495 Great Snipe was renamed Golden Fleece, while No. 4496 was named Golden Shuttle (later it was renamed Dwight D. Eisenhower).

Stanier’s West Coast Response The LMS watched the exploits of Flying Scotsman, Papyrus and Silver Link and saw record after record being broken, and so acted to prevent them become a poor second in the London to Scotland stakes. By 1936, LMS chief mechanical engineer William Stanier had built a class of thirteen new express passenger Pacific locomotives at Crewe Works to haul the Royal Scot from Euston to Glasgow Central. They were known as the ‘Princess Royal’ class because each locomotive was named after a princess. As a response to the LNER streamlined expresses, the LMS planned a six-hour non-stop service from London to Glasgow, but needed to carry out tests to see if it was feasible. Tom Clark, the

senior driver from Crewe North shed, was selected to drive Princess Royal 4-6-2 No. 6201 Princess Elizabeth from Euston to Glasgow Central, with fireman Charles Fleet and passed fireman Albert Shaw making up the rest of his footplate crew. On 16 November 1936 the trip was accomplished in a breath-taking five hours, fifty-three minutes and thirty-eight seconds. The following day the return journey took five hours, forty-four minutes and fourteen seconds, achieving a Glasgow to London non-stop run with a 240-ton load at an average speed of 69mph (111km/h). Clark’s crew were instantly fêted as national heroes, and national newspapers ran front page headlines proclaiming ‘London – Glasgow Under 6 Hours’, ‘401 Miles Non Stop’, and ‘Railway Ambition Achieved’. Stanier knew he had to ‘up the ante’ still further if he was to compete with Gresley’s A4s, and produced the first of the new, streamlined, Princess Coronation class Pacifics, No. 6220 Coronation. In 1937 Tom Clark was chosen to drive it, and to reclaim the world steam locomotive speed record. The Coronations were an enlarged version of the Princess Royals, and at 3,300hp were the most powerful passenger steam locomotives ever built for the British main line. They matched the A4s in every respect. The first five locomotives, Nos 6220–4, were streamlined in a distinctive bulbous air-smoothed casing, and painted Caledonian Railway blue with silver horizontal lines to match the Coronation Scot train that they were intended to haul – although Stanier believed that the added weight and difficulty in maintenance because of the streamlined casing was not offset by any benefits gained at high speed.

A contemporary illustration of William Stanier’s LMS Coronation Scot, headed by streamlined Pacific No. 6220 Coronation, departing from London on 29 June 1937 on a test run that claimed a new record of 114mph (183km/h) and smashed diningcar crockery in the process. AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

Gresley’s A4s’ greatest rivals: one of three survivors of Stanier’s Princess Coronation class of 4-6-2s, No. 6229 Duchess of Hamilton, was re-streamlined in the twenty-first century and unveiled at the National Railway Museum on 25 May 2009. It remains in the Great Hall on static display. AUTHOR

On Tuesday 29 June 1937 Tom Clark reached Euston from Crewe, a distance of 158 miles (254km), in two hours, nine minutes and forty-five seconds, with the press trip preceding the launch of the Coronation Scot on 5 July. He made it back to Crewe in one hour fifty-nine minutes, and reclaimed the record with a top speed of 114mph (183km/h) just south of the town, although some experts maintain that it would have been nearer to 113mph (182km/h). History relates that Clark did not allow sufficient braking distance before entering a series of crossover points on the approach to Crewe, nor even attempted to observe the speed limit, and as the

train approached the station, the crockery in the dining car came crashing down before Clark slowed to 52mph (84km/h). The return trip from Crewe back to London was covered in 119 minutes at an average of 79.7mph (128.2km/h), making it one of the fastest ever recorded in Britain. The highlight was the 69.9 miles (112.5km) from Walton to Willesden Junction, which took forty-seven minutes one second at an average of 89.3mph (143.7km/h), with a maximum speed of 100mph (160km/h) at Castlethorpe water troughs. Accordingly, the LMS could claim the fastest start-to-stop runs over 100 and 150 miles (160 and 240km). Two days later, a press trip for the LNER’s Coronation, hauled by No. 4489 Dominion of Canada, tried to reclaim the record, but could manage only 109.5mph (176.2km/h) on Stoke Bank. The crockery incident led to the LMS and LNER reaching an agreement to end further potentially dangerous record-breaking runs for the sake of publicity. However, that didn’t stop the LNER regaining the world speed record a little over a year later, and holding it for all time.

Mallard: Steam’s Pinnacle of Speed Germany’s production of the Flying Hamburger diesel railcar set had led to its investigating whether similar speeds could be achieved with streamlined steam locomotives. The country’s Borsig locomotive works accordingly turned out three streamliners, which became Class 05.

The sole surviving example of the three Borsig Class 05 streamliners is No. 05001, which is on static display inside the Deutsche Bahn Museum in Nüremberg. The former world speed record holder, No. 05002, was scrapped in 1960. AUTHOR

The second of these, No. 05002, seized the world steam locomotive speed record on 11 May 1936, when it reached 124.5mph (200km/h) while hauling a 197-ton train on the Berlin– Hamburg line. And on 30 May 1936, No. 05002 established an unbroken start-stop speed record for steam locomotives, when, during the return leg of a Berlin–Hamburg test run, it covered the 70.1 miles (112.8km/h) from Wittenberge to a signal stop before Berlin–Spandau in forty-eight minutes thirty-two seconds, at an average start-stop speed of 86.66mph (139.44km/h). A little-known fact is that the German speed record was not set intentionally, but came about as a result of an instruction to the locomotive crew to impress a party of Nazi top brass on board a VIP trip. Deutsche Reichsbahn was mindful of Hitler’s promotion of autobahns as the transport of the future, and desperately wanted to show him what trains could still do. On board were none other than Heinrich Himmler and Reynhard Heyrich, who had a far more sinister purpose for railways than breaking speed records, as subsequent events were to show. This other purpose for Europe’s lines was the

transportation of millions of innocent people to their deaths in concentration camps, via a continent-wide rail network of evil, with Auschwitz as its hub. Indeed, it has been said that without the railways, the Holocaust would never have been possible, at least on anything like the same scale. Hitler’s Aktion T4 programme of euthanasia, primarily directed at disabled and mentally handicapped people in Germany, was ended in August 1941, with the Fuhrer taking the very rare step of bowing to outraged public opinion in his own country. However, he saw that if the Nazis wanted to step up their desired programme of exterminating any non-members of the master race, it would need to be done out of sight, out of mind of the German population, and occupied eastern Europe was the ideal setting. Mass deportation trains became the essential means to this end. The LNER wanted badly to regain that speed crown, but Gresley knew that by increasing locomotive speeds, braking distances were becoming longer. The answer lay in better braking systems, and he arranged trials of the Westinghouse system used by the LMS. On 3 July 1938, the Westinghouse team arrived at London’s Wood Green depot to find A4 No. 4468 Mallard steamed up and raring to go, coupled to the LNER dynamometer car. It had arrived at King’s Cross only the day before. Completed at Doncaster Works just five months earlier, Mallard was the first of its class to be fitted with a Kylchap double blastpipe to enhance its steaming ability – hence its selection for what would be a very special run. Behind the dynamometer car were three twin sets of carriages from the LNER’s new luxury Coronation set. Sadly, Gresley missed the trip because he was ill in bed at home, and his deputy Douglas Edge was left in charge. At the start of the trip, the true purpose of the run was kept secret from the footplate crew, led by sixty-one-year-old veteran Doncaster driver Joe Duddington. He was well renowned for running trains hard when required, and was supported by fireman Tommy Bray and traction inspector Sam Jenkins. The train left Wood Green at 11.46am. The outward northbound journey comprised a series of ordinary brake tests between 90 and 100mph (145 and 160km/h),

with LNER test inspector Denis Carling in charge of the recording equipment in the dynamometer car. The trip ended at Barkston South Junction 3 miles (5km) north of Grantham where the branch to Sleaford and Boston left the ECML. Here, Mallard and the dynamometer car were turned round, and it was only then that the true nature of the mission was revealed to all, after lunch in the consist’s restaurant car. It had been calculated that a good run from Barkston would give Mallard the chance to climb Stoke Bank at speed, with the record being attempted on the downward slope. At 2.49pm Edge offered all the members of the Westinghouse team on board a taxi to Peterborough if they didn’t want to ride on the train as it attempted a new world speed record on the way back. Every one of them refused. It was a story that could have flown straight out of the pages of a Boys Own comic. The train departed from Barkston at 4.15pm, but the crew were dismayed to find speed limits in force at Grantham due to track maintenance, and Mallard passed the station at only 18mph (29km/h). However, fireman Bray used the delay to stoke up a big fire. It later transpired that Gresley had known about the ‘dead slow’ speed restriction, but insisted that the speed attempt should still go ahead. Beyond Grantham, Mallard reached 65mph (105km/h), and accelerated up to Stoke summit where it passed the signalbox at 85mph (137km/h) – 6mph (10km/h) faster than Silver Fox when it set its record. The train entered Stoke Tunnel, and passengers were enthralled by an impromptu firework display of red-hot cinders flying from Mallard’s twin chimneys past the windows. Mallard then accelerated down the gradient of Stoke Bank, faster than any locomotive had done before, despite the official 90mph (145km/h) limit. Within minutes the speedometer reached 120mph (193km/h), beating the highest speed recorded by the LMS. One down, another to go! Duddington and Bray, however, were under no illusion that their efforts so far would not be sufficient. During one magical quarter of a mile, the needle in the dynamometer car recorded 126mph (203km/h), at milepost 90¼ between Little Bytham and Essendine. Mallard tore through Little

Bytham station, spraying hot ashes, and it was said that it shattered glass windows – and as with the earlier LMS record feat at Crewe, crockery became the victim as the train shook violently. And bang went the German record too, and for all time, as history records. Edge was asked if the crew should attempt 130mph (209km/h), but he placed safety first, and through the intercom set up between the dynamometer car and the footplate told Duddington to slow down. Yet Essendine, the only station on the ECML serving the tiny county of Rutland, was still passed at 108mph (174km/h).

Mallard and its test train including the LNER dynamometer car waiting for the off at Barkston Junction on 3 July 1938. RAIL ARCHIVE STEPHENSON

A distinctive smell then quickly dismayed the jubilant crew. Mallard’s big end had run hot, and soon afterwards at Peterborough it was discovered that the white metal had melted, nearly wrecking the locomotive. An elderly Ivatt Atlantic, No. 3290, took the train back to King’s Cross minus Mallard. Nevertheless, the dynamometer record confirmed beyond doubt that 126mph (203km/h) had been reached, for just one second, over 60 yards (55m). Edge telephoned the absent Gresley to convey the news, and within hours of the train arriving back in London, Mallard’s feat was generating global front page news. The press coined the

nickname ‘Blue Streak’ for Mallard, and afterwards all A4s became known as ‘streaks’. The footplate crew became instant schoolboy heroes, the millionaire footballers and rock stars of the day: every boy wanted to emulate them, and they became the inspiration of a generation or more. Interviewed by the BBC in 1944, Duddington talked about passing Stoke signalbox at 85mph (137km/h); he said: ‘I gave Mallard her head, and she just jumped to it like a live thing. After three miles the speedometer in my cab showed 107mph, then 108, 109, 110 and before I knew it the needle was at 116 and we’d got the record. They told me afterwards that there was a great deal of excitement in the dynamometer car. But I thought, “Go on old girl, you can do better than this” – so I nursed her through Little Bytham at 123, and in the next 1¼ miles the needle crept up further, 123½, 124, 125, and then for a quarter of a mile while they told me the folks in the car held their breath – 126mph.’ Britain had invented the steam railway engine through Richard Trevithick in 1802, at Coalbrookdale in Shropshire, and 136 years later, the country’s finest steam locomotive was proudly sitting back on top of the world. Following the dismal days of the recession of the 1930s, pride in Britain had at last been restored in a big way, thanks both to ordinary staff members as well as those in charge high up: suddenly, everyone wanted to know again.

The modest and unassuming Lincolnshire village of Little Bytham has never made much of its place on the world transport history timeline, yet it was near here on Stoke Bank on 3 July 1938 that Mallard set its all-time world steam speed record of 126mph (203km/h). Heading over the village’s viaduct in the opposite direction seventy-five years later, on 19 December 2013, is sister No. 4464 Bittern with Steam Dreams’ Cathedrals Express trip from King’s Cross to York. BRIAN SHARPE

A public house below the viaduct carrying the East Coast Main Line through Little Bytham was named ‘Mallard’ in honour of the A4 speed king. Long since closed, it is now a private residence named Mallard House. AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

The victorious Mallard crew after the 126mph (203km/h) run: left to right, driver Joe Duddington, fireman Tommy Bray, inspector Sam Jenkins, the train guard and other members; the picture was scanned from an original plate glass negative. RAIL ARCHIVE STEPHENSON

‘Victory is ours!’ One of many national newspaper headlines the day after Mallard’s feat on Stoke Bank.

In the 1990s, a sign was erected alongside the ECML on Stoke Bank to mark the exact spot where 126mph (203km/h) was recorded in the dynamometer car on Mallard’s historic run. AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

The silence from the German media and Nazi propaganda top brass was deafening. Many German locomotives of the period carried the Nazi badge of the swastika with a golden eagle mounted above. All conquering, all powerful, that eagle prided itself on taking no prisoners – yet on 3 July 1938, that merciless mighty eagle was beaten into second place by a commonplace, unassuming, harmless river and pond duck, which would hold the crown in perpetuity. That is so wonderfully British, so marvellously human: love that duck, to bits!

The Huntingdonshire village of Offord Cluny, which lies alongside the East Coast Main Line, celebrates Mallard’s heritage in its sign. AUTHOR

A4 4467 Wild Swan emerges from the smoky depths of the 529-yard (484m) Gasworks Tunnel north of King’s Cross (built so that the railway could pass beneath the Regents Canal) into the light of Belle Isle before plunging again into Copenhagen Tunnel – 594 yards (543m) – with the ‘down’ Coronation carrying 210 passengers (forty-eight first class and 162 third class) in July 1938. Here, on the difficult start from King’s Cross, the driver needs the utmost skill to cope with the climb and the slippery rails in the tunnels. It is a few minutes after the 4pm departure time, and the A4 is lifting the 312-ton train up the 1-in-105 gradient for 1½ miles (2.4km) to Holloway signalbox. With 9 tons of coal in the tender, enough to take it all the way to Edinburgh, and 5,000 gallons (22,730ltr) of water on board, Wild Swan will take the first replenishment of water at Langley Troughs – 1,799ft (548m) long – 27 miles (43km) out of London. With the train slowing to 70mph (113km), the fireman will dip the scoop into the water trough, and in ten to fifteen seconds it will have picked up 1,500 to 2,000 gallons (6,820 to 9,000ltr); this procedure is repeated another five times in the next 365 miles (587km) before it reaches the Scottish capital. Between King’s Cross and York Coronation will average 71.9mph (115.7km/h), so at the time it was the fastest train in the British Empire. Incidentally, the southern end of Copenhagen Tunnel achieved fame in the 1955 Ealing comedy The Ladykillers. GEORGE GRIGGS

The overheated bearing was quickly remetalled and Mallard returned to service within nine days. Gresley planned to attempt another new record in September 1939, but was stopped in his tracks by the outbreak of World War II. Before Mallard’s record run it had been calculated that 130mph

(209km/h) was possible with an A4, and indeed, in the years that followed, there have been anecdotal steam shed stories that some drivers have very unofficially managed it.

Gresley’s Mikados Double-headed Pacifics had been barred from the East Coast Main Line’s ‘extension’ from Edinburgh to Aberdeen because of their combined axle loading, so Gresley introduced a new kind of locomotive that had never been seen in Britain before. The steep gradients and tight curves on the route had hitherto been tackled by double-heading a pair of smaller engines on express passenger trains; however, this was a waste of resources both in terms of machines, manpower and operating costs, and Gresley therefore devised a locomotive type that was fit for purpose by itself – the P2 2-8-2, or Mikado. The LNER became the only company in Britain to run Mikados, an American type. The first 2-8-2 was built in 1884, and the name ‘Mikado’ came from a group of Baldwin locomotives supplied in 1897 to the 3ft 6in gauge Nippon Railway of Japan. The Gilbert and Sullivan opera The Mikado had been a huge hit in the USA, and the name stuck to these exports.

The first Gresley P2 2-8-2, No. 2001 Cock o’ the North, designed to haul 600-ton trains on the arduous Edinburgh to Aberdeen route, on the turntable at King’s Cross on its first day in service. A1SLT

The third P2, No. 2003 Lord President, was very different in appearance to Cock o’ the North and looked far more like an A4. AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

Gresley’s British Mikado design, which took shape on his drawing board in 1932, included four driving axles for greater adhesion while incorporating an A3-type boiler and dual chimney. The P2s were designed to haul 600 tons, and as such were the most powerful passenger steam locomotives to operate in the UK. The first to

appear was No. 2001 Cock o’ the North in May 1934. After early problems were ironed out, following a visit to the locomotive testing station at Vitry-sur-Seine near Paris for two months of trials, it entered service in Scotland. A second and slightly modified P2, No. 2002 Earl Marischal, and another four followed in 1936, each with small differences between them, and resembling their designer’s A4 Pacifics. Like the A4s, the P2s were a significant step forwards for British locomotive design. They spent their entire working lives on the Aberdeen route.

The Final East Coast Pacifics Gresley died after a short illness on 5 April 1941 at Watton-at-Stone in Hertforshire; he was buried in his family’s home village of Netherseal in Derbyshire next to his wife Ethel. He was succeeded as chief mechanical engineer by Edward Thompson, who implemented a new standardization plan, starting with a new mixed traffic Pacific, the A2/2. Thompson had no time for Gresley’s P2 Mikados despite their prowess and innovative design, and between 1943 and 1945 had all of them rebuilt as A2/2s. The P2s became in effect non-streamlined A4s with Walschaerts valve gear on the centre cylinder. Although they returned to work the Edinburgh– Aberdeen route, in late 1949 they were transferred to England and were divided between York and New England (Peterborough) sheds. They were all withdrawn and scrapped between 1959 and 1961. However, as we will see in Chapter 18, that was by no means the end of the P2 story.

Gresley’s pioneer Pacific No. 4470 Great Northern as rebuilt by Thompson leaves King’s Cross. AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

The A2/2 class also included Thompson’s version of Gresley’s V2 2-6-2s, the last four of which Thompson ordered to be built at Darlington to an A2/1 design, between 1944 and 1945. The four A2/1s worked express passenger and express goods trains. All of them were withdrawn between August 1960 and February 1961. In 1944, Thompson went ahead with the building of fifteen standard Pacifics based on his A2/2 design. These, the A2/3s, were the first new Pacifics built at Doncaster for eight years and included several innovations, including steam brakes, a hopper ashpan, electric lighting, and a self-cleaning smokebox. The first A2/3s were withdrawn from service in 1962, and the last were withdrawn in 1965. After Thompson retired he was replaced by Arthur H. Peppercorn, and the last LNER CME, a second batch of fifteen Thompson A2/3s, and a further thirteen ordered in 1945, were built to a modified design. The first Peppercorn A2, as they were known, appeared in 1948. The A2s allocated to England worked express passenger, slow passenger and parcel services. Allocated to York, No. 60526

Sugar Palm was often used to replace locomotives that failed on the ECML. In 1961 it set a speed record for the class of 101mph (162.5km/h) while descending Stoke Bank. The last three remaining A2s were withdrawn from Scotland in 1966. One of them, No. 60532 Blue Peter, has been preserved, but at the time of writing has been awaiting a £500,000 overhaul for many years. The long-running BBC television children’s programme Blue Peter helped raise money towards its first heritage era overhaul in the early 1970s. Peppercorn’s biggest class was his A1 express passenger Pacifics, not to be confused with Gresley’s original A1s, most of which by the time of Peppercorn’s appointment had been rebuilt as A3s. The few that were not had been redesignated by Thompson as A10s in preparation for the new A1. The Peppercorn A1s originated from Thompson’s rebuilding of the first Gresley Pacific, Great Northern, in 1945. The rebuild was meant to be the start of a new A1 class, but it was not repeated, and the sole class member was designated A1/1. Instead, forty-nine locomotives were built to a new design by Peppercorn. The new A1s were designed to cope with the heaviest passenger trains on the ECML and the route to Aberdeen, often comprising fifteen coaches and weighing up to 550 tons, on the level reaching speeds of up to 70mph (113km/h). Peppercorn’s A1s were also very economical in terms of coal consumption. No. 60114 was trialled between King’s Cross and Leeds in 1949, and consumed an average of 40.2lb per mile (18.2kg per 1.6km) of coal on 490-ton trains, comparing very favourably with the A4s. Like the LNER Pacifics that preceded them, they had a 3-cylinder arrangement, and were fitted with double Kylchap chimneys.

Arthur Peppercorn A2 No. 60536 stands at the east end of Edinburgh Waverley station, waiting for the arrival from Glasgow of the ‘up’ Queen of Scots, which it will work south to Newcastle. Trimbush was built at Doncaster and released to traffic in May 1948, named after the 1947 Doncaster Cup winner and initially allocated to Leeds Copley Hill. After another brief spell at New England it went to Haymarket in November 1949, where it was to remain until transferred to St Margaret’s in November 1961. It was withdrawn from York in December 1962. DENNIS BUTLER COLLECTION

Following nationalization on 1 January 1948, Peppercorn’s A1s were delivered from Doncaster and Darlington Works. They were renowned above everything else for their reliability, averaging more than 200 miles (320km/h) a day, a far better statistic than accrued by any other steam engine on the national network. No. 60156 Great Central of King’s Cross shed ran 96,000 miles (154,465km) in one year alone. They could handle any job that was given them, no matter how hard – but despite their success, they came up against the biggest stumbling block of all: dieselization. By 1966 all of them had been scrapped – but that would not be the last the network had seen of Peppercorn A1s, as is recounted in Chapter 18.

Thompson A2/3 Pacific No. 60521 heads the Flying Scotsman through Grantham in August 1958. PETER GROOM

The sole surviving Peppercorn A2 Pacific, No. 60532 Blue Peter, is passed by J72 0-6-0T No. 69023 during a gala event at Barrow Hill roundhouse at Staveley near Chesterfield on 14 April 2014. AUTHOR

Sir Nigel Gresley’s Post-War Steam Record

Ancient and modern united! GNR Stirling single No. 1 meets LNER A4 No. 4498 Sir Nigel Gresley at Stevenage in 1938. TOPICAL

A total of thirty-five A4 Pacifics were built, although one of them, No. 4469 Sir Ralph Wedgwood, originally named Gadwall, was scrapped after bomb damage in June 1942; its name was switched to No. 4466 Herring Gull. Among them was No. 4498, the 100th Gresley Pacific built, which honoured its designer, being named after him. It was originally due to be named Bittern, in line with the bird theme, until an LNER enthusiast member of the Railway Correspondence and Travel Society suggested that it should be named Sir Nigel Gresley. The name Bittern was later given to No. 4464, later No. 60019.

A4 No. 60007 Sir Nigel Gresley sets a new post-war steam speed record on Stoke Bank on 23 May 1958. P.H.WELLS/SIR NIGEL GRESLEY LOCOMOTIVE TRUST

The will by the railway companies to set new steam records vanished in the aftermath of World War II, and was totally absent from British Railways. Racing belonged to a past age. No. 4498 Sir Nigel Gresley was allocated to King’s Cross shed from new, and had a spell at Grantham between April 1944 and June 1950; before this it had become No. 60007 as part of the post-nationalization renumbering scheme. In November 1955, one unconfirmed story relates that driver Bill Hoole took No. 60007 down Stoke Bank at a speed of 117mph (188km/h) with the ‘Tees-Tyne Pullman’, well above the 90mph (145km/h) limit. However, although a civil engineer with a Hallade Track recording instrument was on board the train, the device was not designed for recording such speeds, and disciplinary action against the foot-plate crew was avoided merely because its accuracy was questioned. As express diesels arrived on the ECML in the autumn of 1958, a farewell high-speed steam trip to coincide with the Golden Jubilee of the Stephenson Locomotive Society was arranged. Sir Nigel Gresley

and Bill Hoole were chosen, and No. 60007 was given an overhaul at Doncaster Works. The civil engineer gave his consent for the speed limits to be relaxed over certain sections, and a maximum of 110mph (177km/h) was permitted down Stoke Bank. The eightcoach train departed King’s Cross on Saturday 23 May 1959, with Hoole on the regulator, assisted by fireman Alf Hancox. It was claimed that it reached 100mph (160km/h) after Stevenage on the outward journey to Doncaster. The train made a spectacular climb on Stoke Bank, reaching 83mph (133.5km/h) between Essendine and Little Bytham. On the way back Stoke summit was passed at 75mph (120km/h), rising to 99mph (159km/h) before Corby Glen, and 109mph (175km/h) by Little Bytham. It appeared as if Bill Hoole was going for the record, but those in control were concerned about the safety of the 400 passengers on board, and would not allow him to go beyond the officially sanctioned limit of the day. When the train reached 112mph (180km/h), Alan Pegler, a member of the Eastern Region board, who was also on the foot-plate, signalled to Inspector Bert Dixon that the driver must ease off at this point.

A contemporary illustration of A4 No. 2509 Silver Link with its matching Silver Jubilee train. AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

The graves of Sir Nigel Gresley and his wife Ethel in the village cemetery in Netherseal, Derbyshire, where several generations of his family were laid to rest. AUTHOR

A plaque celebrating the life of Sir Nigel Gresley adorns a wall in Edinbugh Waverley station.

The 12.3 miles (19.8km) from Corby Glen to Tallington were covered in just seven minutes six seconds at an average of 104mph (167km/h), possibly the fastest ever time between those points by a steam locomotive, beating even Mallard in this respect. Southwards, beyond Tempsford, 100mph (160km/h) was reached for the third time in the trip. The train arrived back at King’s Cross four minutes early, having taken 137 minutes 38 seconds from Doncaster, an average of 68mph (109km/h) over the 156 miles (251km).

In the case of Sir Nigel Gresley, there was no hot big end. And so a new official post-war steam record of 112mph (180km/h) was set.

CHAPTER 11

What’s in a Name? The East Coast Main Line may forever be popularly associated first and foremost with the Flying Scotsman, but that series was only one of many named trains operating over all parts of it. The Scarborough Flier or Flyer was a summer service that ran from King’s Cross to Scarborough Central and Whitby Town between 1927 and 1963. It comprised an express service from London to York, where the locomotive would be changed before the train ran on to the coast.

A4 No. 60025 Falcon with the ‘up’ Elizabethan at Doncaster station on 29 July 1960. The attachment by the nameplate is a vacuum gauge, as part of assessing the Kylchap exhaust. MIKE MOUNTFORD/A1SLT ARCHIVE

British Railways’ The Elizabethan was a daily summer service that travelled non-stop from King’s Cross to Edinburgh, launched to celebrate the new ‘Elizabethan’ era of the early 1950s. It departed from London and Edinburgh mid-morning and arrived around teatime, taking six and a half hours with an average speed of just over 60mph (96km/h). LNER A4s equipped with corridor tenders were used, allowing the crew to change over while the train was in motion. The journey needed 11,000 gallons (50,000ltr) of water, so as much as possible had to be scooped up. The service replaced the Capitals Limited, which also ran non-stop from King’s Cross to Edinburgh between 1949 and 1953. When launched, it was the longest scheduled non-stop railway journey in the world. It was the subject of a 1954 British Transport film, Elizabethan Express, which follows its journey throughout, featuring No. 60017 Silver Fox, along with many railway staff including Edinburgh Waverley’s stationmaster. The music score was composed by Clifton Parker, who subsequently wrote the music for the 1959 version of The Thirty-Nine Steps, in which an A4 also stars. The Elizabethan last ran in September 1961. None other than Mallard, then numbered 60022 and based at King’s Cross shed, worked the ‘down’ train.

Peppercorn A1 Pacific No. 60139 Sea Eagle heads out of Gasworks Tunnel near King’s Cross with the Tyne-Tees Pullman on 31 May 1957. PETER TOWNEND/A1SLT

The ‘Tees-Tyne Pullman’ was launched in 1948 and ran from King’s Cross to Newcastle Central and/or Alnmouth. Apart from the Golden Arrow, it was the first British Pullman train to operate with a bar car, called ‘The Hadrian Bar’, withdrawn in 1969. The service ceased to run in 1976. The Night Scotsman operated out of King’s Cross for Edinburgh Waverley, Dundee and Fort William from 1927 until 1987, when British Rail transferred all Scotland-bound sleepers to Euston. The King’s Cross to Harrogate Harrogate Pullman Limited appeared in 1923 and extended to Edinburgh in 1925. It was succeeded by the Queen of Scots in 1928. The latter train operated from King’s Cross to Edinburgh Waverley and Glasgow Queen Street until 1964. The White Rose ran from King’s Cross to Leeds Central and Bradford Exchange from 1949 to 1964; it was then replaced by the White Rose Pullman until 1967, using carriages from the Queen of

Scots set. The Harrogate Sunday Pullman operated between King’s Cross, Leeds and Harrogate and Bradford Exchange from 1927 to 1978. The Talisman ran from King’s Cross to Edinburgh Waverley from 1956 to 1968, and 1972 to 1989, becoming the Afternoon Talisman in 1957. A Pullman section was added between 1964 and 1965, and the service was later extended to Aberdeen. The Fair Maid ran from King’s Cross to Perth during 1957 to 1958, and was succeeded by the Morning Talisman from London to Edinburgh Waverley and Glasgow Queen Street from 1957 to 1968. A highly unusual incident on the Talisman occurred on 21 December 1959 when the ‘up’ service, hauled by A4 Pacific No. 60012 Commonwealth of Australia, became detached from part of its train near Morpeth. The remaining train carried on to Newcastle, but the stranded coaches were shunted back into Morpeth by Gresley V2 2-6-2 No. 60865, which was transferred from a ‘down’ freight. A five-coach special for the marooned passengers ran from Newcastle to King’s Cross, arriving ninety minutes late behind No. 60017. A Pullman section was added during 1964–65. The train was revived from 1972 to 1989, and extended to Aberdeen. The aforementioned streamlined Coronation operated from King’s Cross to Edinburgh Waverley between 1937 and 1939. This service, along with most other named trains, ceased to run during both World Wars, though among the few exceptions were both the Flying Scotsman and the Night Scotsman, which continued to run during World War II. The Northern Belle was a Pullman cruise train that ran from King’s Cross to Scotland from 1933 to 1939. The Northumbrian ran from King’s Cross to Newcastle and Berwick from 1949 to 1963. The Norseman was launched in 1947 to run from King’s Cross to Newcastle Tyne Commission Quay to connect with the Bergen Line or the Fred Olsen Line shipping services to Norway. A summer service, it was withdrawn in 1966. The King’s Cross to Leeds Central and Bradford Exchange West Riding operated between 1949 and 1963, initially with streamlined stock. The West Riding Pullman began running from King’s Cross to Leeds and Harrogate in 1925, but was not formally named for another two years. It was extended to Newcastle in 1929, and was

succeeded by the Yorkshire Pullman in 1935. That train operated from King’s Cross to Bradford Exchange, Leeds, Harrogate, Newcastle or Hull from 1935 to 1978 and 1986 to 1988. The streamlined West Riding Limited linked King’s Cross, Leeds and Bradford between 1937 and 1939. The Aberdonian was the night sleeper service from Aberdeen to King’s Cross, launched in 1927; it was discontinued as a sleeper in 1972, though the train itself ran until 1987. The Highlandman was a seasonal King’s Cross to Aberdeen/Fort William/Inverness/Nairn sleeper, which acted as relief to the Aberdonian from 1927 to 1939. Another sleeper train was the Tynesider, which ran from King’s Cross to Newcastle Central from 1950 to 1967. The Car Sleeper Limited ran from King’s Cross to Perth between 1955 and 1966, when it was renamed Motorail; it was the first train to carry cars and their passengers. The name Car Sleeper was also used on the West Coast Main Line. The Heart of Midlothian ran from King’s Cross to Edinburgh Waverley and Perth from 1951 until 1968, while the Sheffield Pullman operated between King’s Cross and Sheffield from 1924 to 1925, and 1958 to 1968. The Tees-Thames connected King’s Cross with Middlesborough and Saltburn-by-the-Sea between 1959 and 1961. The Highwayman – its name recalling the likes of Dick Turpin who plagued the old Great North Road, as seen in Chapter 1 – was a short-lived, reduced-fare service running between King’s Cross/Finsbury Park to Newcastle between 1970 and 1971. The Hull Pullman linked King’s Cross and Hull between 1967 and 1978, when it became the Hull Executive. The previously mentioned streamlined Silver Jubilee, which ran between King’s Cross and Newcastle from 1935 to 1939, was briefly revived in 1977.

A Tuck’s oilette postcard view of the North British Railway’s Lothian Coast Express, a summer service that ran between Glasgow, the East Coast Main Line’s short North Berwick branch, Gullane and Dunbar, from 1914 until 1933. The LNER introduced Pullman cars after 1929. AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

A3 4-6-2 No. 2574 (BR 60039), built at Doncaster in September 1934, heads the Scarborough Flier (pre-war spelling) through Scrooby in Nottinghamshire in 1937. Despite the lack of streamlined locomotive and coaches, the 1930s Scarborough Flier was renowned for its fast non-stop King’s Cross to York timing. The locomotive was withdrawn in April 1963. STEVE ARMITAGE ARCHIVE

A4 No. 60025 (LNER 4484) has just arrived at King’s Cross coupled to a Peppercorn A1 from Top Shed. It will then uncouple, run forwards into the throat of Gasworks Tunnel, then back on to the 4pm Talisman departure for Edinburgh Waverley. This train, leaving at the same time as the pre-war Coronation, will take forty minutes longer for the journey. The ‘up’ Talisman will leave the Scottish capital at the same departure time. The train appears to be the inaugural service on 17 September 1956. DENNIS BUTLER

A platform sign for the Yorkshire Pullman. AUTHOR

After 1958, the Master Cutler from Sheffield Victoria, which the LNER had introduced in 1947, was switched from the Great Central route to Marylebone to King’s Cross, using the East Coast Main Line, diesel hauled with Pullman coaches, but after 1968 it was switched again, this time to the Midland Main Line route to St Pancras. After 2008, the Master Cutler started at Leeds and ran to St Pancras via Sheffield. It is regarded as Sheffield’s premier business train.

The North Eastern operated from King’s Cross to Newcastle from 1964 to 1968. Some ECML freight trains were also named. The Blue Star Fish Special began running from King’s Cross to Aberdeen in 1958, while two years later, the Tees-Tyne Freighter began running from King’s Cross to York and Low Fell.

Thompson B1 4-6-0 No. 61282 heads the Butlin’s Express from Skegness to King’s Cross in August 1958. PETER GROOM

A4 No. 4492 Dominion of New Zealand on the ‘down’ Flying Scotsman. PETER GROOM

A4 No. 60027 heads the Elizabethan past Great Ponton near Grantham in August 1959. PETER GROOM

Gresley V2 2-8-2 No. 60821 heads the Flying Scotsman near Stoke summit in September 1955. PETER GROOM

Numerous named trains have been revived in the heritage era, often on an occasional-only basis, with tour operators often making up new and often fanciful ones of their own. On 4 June 2016, The Al Steam Locomotive Trust, builder of new Peppercorn A1 Pacific No. 60163 Tornado – more about that in Chapter 18 – ran its own version of the Scarborough Flyer from King’s Cross, stopping at Peterborough and York en route. It was the first time that the locomotive had hauled a public train to the Yorkshire resort. AUTHOR

First-class dining in the luxurious comfort of today’s Tornado-hauled Scarborough Flyer on 4 June 2016. AUTHOR

Pullman car No. 238 Phyllis, one of several built in 1928 by Metropolitan Cammell of Birmingham for use in the LNER service on the ECML. It survives today in the ownership of Venice-Simplon Orient Express at London, but is awaiting major restoration before it can run again. LNER

CHAPTER 12

King’s Cross – The True King of Termini At this point it may be pertinent to break from the linear history of the East Coast Main Line so far, and focus on that of the great London terminus, dubbed ‘the cathedral of steam’ by many generations of passengers, staff and enthusiasts alike. King’s Cross station, the permanent replacement for the original Great Northern Railway terminus of Maiden Lane (now York Way), was designed by Lewis Cubitt, another member of the great family of civil engineers, and was built during 1851–52 on the site of a former smallpox hospital. Cubitt also designed the Great Northern Hotel, which opened in 1854 to serve passengers. The area had been settled by the Romans, and was later occupied by a village known as Battle Bridge. The focal point was Broad Ford Bridge, an ancient crossing of the River Fleet, which is now buried up to 40ft (12m) beneath London’s streets and discharges its waters into the Thames below Blackfriars station. It was long held that the name Battle Bridge derived from a major battle between the Roman legions, who had a camp on this spot known as the Brill, and the Iceni tribe led by the warrior queen Boudica. An urban myth arose in the mid-twentieth century that Boudica is buried beneath a platform at King’s Cross. Although there is no firm evidence, popular mythology has it that the station was also built on the site of Queen Boudica’s final battle against the Romans, or her final resting place, said to be below platforms 9 and 10.

Blue plaque near the front entrance to King’s Cross commemorating its designer. AUTHOR

The name ‘King’s Cross’ was taken from an 1830s monument to King George IV, standing 60ft (18m) tall with an 11ft (3.5m) statue of the monarch on top, at the junction of Gray’s Inn Road, Pentonville Road and New Road (later Euston Road). The top floor of the monument was used as a ‘camera obscura’ as it offered sweeping views of the capital, while the bottom was used as a police station and later a beer shop. However, the monument was short-lived:

regarded by Londoners as a joke, it was demolished in 1845, though the name it had given to the locality survived. When the GNR built its terminus there, its officials were appalled at the rundown character of the locality. The GNR’s first goods manager, J. Medcalf, described it as ‘a long battalion of rag sorters and cinder beaters’. In the twentieth century it acquired a reputation for prostitutes, drug abusers and other miscreants, and featured many boarded-up shops.

The Biggest in its Day Cubitt’s design for the grand terminus was based around a pair of 105ft (32m), glazed semi-circular roofs side by side, 800ft (244m) long and 72ft (22m) high. To speed up building work, the ribs were fabricated on site using laminated timber; they were replaced in 1866 by more durable iron versions. Between the roofs stood an Italianate clock turret, 120ft (36.5m) tall, from which three bells chimed until 1927. About three-quarters of the roof was glazed. It was the largest station in Britain when completed, and won admiration far and wide. The main part opened on 14 October 1852. Like Euston, it had just two platforms at first, against the east and west walls, and fourteen tracks, most of which were used for storage only, and could not be accessed from platforms. This original part includes today’s platforms 1 to 8. The station was one-sided, with offices and passenger rooms situated on the west platform, which was used for departures, while the east platform handled arrivals only. There was no concourse, which was a much later development. Small turntables and capstans facilitated the movement of rolling stock without locomotive assistance. When it opened, there were twelve trains in each direction, but only three of them expresses. Horse buses linked all trains to other city termini. To the north of the station, the railway passes beneath the Regent’s Canal, the acqueduct being another feature for which GNR London District resident engineer George Turnbull was responsible. After his work on the GNR, in 1850 Turnbull was appointed chief engineer of the East Indian Railway, and designed

Calcutta’s Howrah terminus and the 541-mile (870km) line to Benares on the road to Delhi. The original arrangement at King’s Cross was outgrown within a few years. From 1840, London-bound Midland Railway trains ran into Euston, after joining the LNWR line at Rugby, leading to frequent congestion and delays. So in 1857 the Midland Railway opened a route from Leicester to Hitchin where it joined the GNR, and so could run into King’s Cross. By 1852 the Midland was carrying around a fifth of the total coal supply for London, and in 1862 it decided to build its own line into London after quarrelling with the GNR over route capacity. It had already been buying land in the parish of St Pancras, one of the city’s worst slum areas, and surveyed a 49¾-mile (80km) line from Bedford to London. A site backing on to New Road, later called Euston Road, to the immediate west of King’s Cross station was chosen, along with the name ‘St Pancras’. Nearby is St Pancras Old Church, said to have been a site of Christian worship since ad314. It is dedicated to the Roman martyr St Pancras, beheaded at the age of fourteen because he would not alter his beliefs. Largely rebuilt in Victorian times, it contains remnants of Norman features; it was superseded as the parish church by St Pancras New Church half a mile away in Euston Road. The Midland Railway directors set out to impress London, and to out-do the other city termini. Construction of the station foundations began in July 1866, but delays were caused by having to build around a graveyard in the way. The main line was due to pass over it via a girder bridge, and the branch to the Metropolitan under it in a tunnel. However, disturbance of the coffins’ interred remains was badly handled, at a time when a city-wide outbreak of cholera was traced to to the River Fleet, a notorious open sewer for centuries; it was finally covered over forever. St Pancras itself was still being built when it opened on 1 October 1866. The first train was a Manchester express for Manchester, and made the longest non-stop run in the world, 97 miles (156km) from Kentish Town to Leicester. The main train shed, completed in 1868 by the Midland’s consulting engineer William Henry Barlow with help

from Rowland Mason Ordish, had the largest single-span structure of its day at 243ft (74m). The frontage of the station is formed by the Midland Grand Hotel, widely hailed as a first-class example of Victorian gothic architecture. Work on the hotel began in the summer of 1868 and it was opened to customers on 5 May 1873. Major Midland Railway routes to Manchester, Nottingham, Sheffield and Carlisle opened and brought much traffic in and out of London through St Pancras. Sitting next door to its showpiece terminus, the GNR had a big rival.

Suburban Traffic Congestion In the 1860s, tunnels were bored linking the GNR to the east/west Metropolitan Railway’s widened lines, which opened on 10 January 1863. To serve this tunnel, a platform on the ‘up’ curve beneath York Way was built: today it handles Thameslink services. All GNR local services were then diverted to Farringdon Street, as from 1 October 1863. When the Metropolitan joined up to the London, Chatham & Dover Railway in 1866, heavy coal traffic ran from the GNR at King’s Cross to south London and beyond via Ludgate Hill and Herne Hill. From 1 January 1866, passenger trains also ran between Kings Cross and Herne Hill, and from 3 January between GNR suburban stations and Ludgate Hill, with a Hatfield to Herne Hill service starting on 1 August that year. In 1878, through services ran from Enfield via King’s Cross to Woolwich Arsenal, worked by the GNR before being taken over by the South Eastern Railway. GNR branches were opened to Enfield in 1871, High Barnet in 1872 and Alexandra Palace in 1873. By 1873 there were eighty-nine daily departures from King’s Cross, with all but twenty suburban, and most of them running on and off the Metropolitan Railway. Yet the great station still had only one departure platform. Attempts to rectify the congestion began in August 1875, with the opening of the ‘King’s Cross Main Line (Local) Station’, with short platform faces and two to the west of the terminus, occupying the site of a carriage repair shop. In 1875 a separate train shed was built with three suburban platforms, to accommodate the station’s first commuter services, and this was extended in 1895. An island

platform to the west was built in 1924. On 1 February 1878 the ‘King’s Cross (Suburban) Station’ was opened to cope with the Metropolitan traffic. The worst congestion was experienced in the double-track tunnel on the approach to King’s Cross, rather than in the station itself. Because of the problems, some commuter trains took half an hour to cover the 12 miles (19km) from Holloway to King’s Cross. One solution to the problem was to allow the north London Railway to run over the GNR suburban lines from 18 January 1875 and pay a mileage rate for doing so. The GNR claimed that by doing this, it had greatly improved the punctuality of suburban services. Another big step forwards were improvements to the approaches to the station. Additional bores for the Gas Works and Copenhagen tunnels were dug in the 1870s. The tunnels immediately north of the station had always been a bottleneck, limiting traffic movements between the stations, engine sheds and freight yards. While the new tunnels helped relieve congestion, in 1886 another double-track bore was needed for Copenhagen Tunnel, and a third Gas Works Tunnel bore followed in 1892. That year, a second departure platform opened in the main station. Around the 1870s, another landmark appeared near the station: a mock lighthouse was erected on top of a building, which in recent years is being restored. Known locally as the ‘Lighthouse Building’, it is grade 2 listed. We think of King’s Cross as a major passenger station, which today it is exclusively, but at the start it also handled massive amounts of freight. By the end of the nineteenth century it was handling a million tons of freight each year. The GNR profited heavily from the capital’s rapidly growing needs for coal, vegetables and meat, and vast quantities of sheep, pigs and cattle were shipped on a weekly basis, usually to the nearby Metropolitan Cattle Market. Also, trainloads of coal were brought in from the YorkshireNottinghamshire coalfield, and by late Victorian times, King’s Cross boasted a sizeable coal depot. In LNER days, pathing slow coal trains in between the fast expresses for which the ECML would become world famous presented a significant problem. By the 1890s the ‘Cross’, as locomen still call it, was handling 250 passenger and

freight trains a day. Two more platforms were added in 1893, and another in 1895. The last major changes to the track and platform layout of King’s Cross were made from 1922 to 1924, with the aim of accommodating the increased number of local trains terminating there instead of running through to the Metropolitan. They brought major improvements in services, but could not eradicate all the historic deficits of the layout.

The exterior of King’s Cross station in the latter half of the Victorian era. ENGLISH HERITAGE

Great Northern Railway J13 (NER J52) 0-6-0ST No. 1247 (BR No. 68846), pictured on display at the Locomotion museum in Shildon, is the sole survivor of a class designed by Henry Ivatt for shunting and short freight workings, based on the earlier domeless J14 class. Built by Sharp Stewart in Glasgow in 1899, No. 1247 became a shed pilot at King’s Cross, where it acquired the nickname ‘The Old Lady’. No. 1247 made history in May 1959 by becoming the first British Railways locomotive to be privately preserved by an individual, after it was bought by the late Captain Bill Smith RNR. The purchase opened the door for others to follow, and paved the way for much of today’s heritage steam fleet to be saved. He donated it to the National Railway Museum in 1980. AUTHOR

Development of the Tube King’s Cross had become a victim of its own success, but the rapid development of the underground railways probably did more to ease the pressure on the overburdened terminus than anything else, taking away much of the suburban traffic. In 1907, the through trains to south London ended because of lack of passengers, while the GNR began promoting suburban transport to destinations such as

Barnet, Finchley and Highgate. The extension of the Piccadilly tube to Wood Green, Bowes Park and Southgate in 1932–3 continued the trend, and another large section of King’s Cross suburban traffic was diverted when the Northern Line tube trains took over the High Barnet and Mill Hill branches between 1939 and 1941.

A 1928 depiction of East Coast trains lined up waiting to depart from King’s Cross. AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

B4 4-6-0 No. 6101 Immingham enters King’s Cross in the mid-1920s. This class, inherited from the Great Central Railway at the Grouping of 1923, was used on the Leeds service, and the then new Yorkshire Pullman. The locomotive roster was under the control of W. G. P. Maclure, the former locomotive running superintendent of the GCR who, after the Grouping, held a similar position on the southern section of the LNER. DENNIS BUTLER COLLECTION

Built at Doncaster in April 1949, Peppercorn A1 No. 60125 Scottish Union is seen backing off the bays at King’s Cross in June 1962. FOTORUS/CCL

During the 1920s, the LNER made many improvements to passenger facilities at King’s Cross, building new lavatories, bathrooms and dressing rooms under the main departure platform, and opening a Georgian tearoom and a new refreshment room. New platform barriers with illuminated blinds showing departure times were erected in the main station in the 1930s. In 1972, a very functional and supposedly ‘temporary’ single-storey extension designed by British Rail was built on to the front of the station to accommodate the main passenger concourse and ticket office, obscuring Cubitt’s Grade 1-listed façade.

Peppercorn A1 Pacific No. 60121 Silurian, with a grubby appearance that typified the closing years of the steam era, stands at King’s Cross waiting to depart with the 4.35pm Newcastle-upon-Tyne service on 18 August 1962. GEOFF RIXON

At midday on 10 September 1973, a Provisional IRA 3lb bomb exploded in the booking hall, causing extensive damage and injuring six people. The bomb was thrown without warning by a youth who ran off into the crowd and has never been apprehended. In 1991 British Rail drew up plans for a new station beneath King’s Cross, with four platforms for international trains through the Channel Tunnel and four for Thameslink trains, with some commuter trains to be diverted to St Pancras. However, this scheme never got off the ground, let alone beneath, because it was decided instead to redevelop St Pancras as an international terminus for the Channel Tunnel Rail Link. St Pancras, the close neighbour and great rival of King’s Cross, went into decline in the 1960s following the rebuilding of Euston, after which services to Glasgow were transferred there. During and after the Beeching era, efforts were made to close what was

increasingly seen as a rundown station and demolish the hotel, but a vociferous campaign to save it, led by Poet Laureate Sir John Betjeman, who had successfully campaigned to save the Euston Arch, saved the day. Nonetheless, St Pancras became very much the poor sister to King’s Cross, and with the withdrawal of many inter-city services, was blatantly under-used. Yet Cinderella was to go to the ball and stay there.

Looking down on to a King’s Cross platform in the late 1960s through the elevated trellis of the footbridge. JOHN GAY/ENGLISH HERITAGE

The frontage of King’s Cross station in 1989, showing the since removed 1972 ‘lean-to’ extension, which for decades disfigured Cubitt’s original design. ENGLISH HERITAGE

St Pancras: Gateway from London to Europe The original King’s Cross plan for the Channel Tunnel rail link involved building a tunnel from south-east London, but because of Environment Secretary Michael Heseltine’s drive for urban regeneration in east London, an alternative route was chosen. The new plan involved the high-speed line entering the city from the east, then running through 12 miles (19km) of new tunnels through Stratford and Dagenham, with St Pancras being redeveloped at its terminus. In 1964 a new company, London and Continental Railways, was formed, when British Rail was privatized, and in 1965 it was chosen

to rebuild St Pancras and take ownership of it. To accommodate 300-yard (274m) Eurostar trains, and to provide capacity for the existing trains to the Midlands and the new Kent services on the high speed link, the train shed was extended northwards by a new flatroofed shed. The Eurostar platforms were situated above those for domestic trains. The restoration work involved completely reglazing the Barlow train shed and taking back the paintwork to its intended pale sky blue. Wherever possible, the building was restored by recycling the brickwork from the original building or sourcing clay from the original quarries in the Midlands. The rebuilding cost £800 million. The station was officially reopened as St Pancras International, and the High Speed 1 service was launched on 6 November 2007 by the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh. The former Midland Grand Hotel building was refurbished and reopened to guests on 21 March 2011 with a ceremony on 5 May that year, exactly 138 years after its original opening. The full Eurostar timetable from St Pancras came into operation on 9 December 2007. The end product was widely praised and won several accolades, notably the RIBA London and English Heritage Award for a ‘Building in a Historic Context’, and the Heritage Railway Association’s Peter Manisty ‘Award for Excellence’. So what had all of this to do with King’s Cross? Those who were left astounded by the magnificence of long-dowdy St Pancras, which was now a premier gateway from London to Europe, saw that rather than close and demolish such historic structures, they could be revitalized to serve the needs of the twenty-first century, just as they had those of the nineteenth.

The Restoration of King’s Cross In 2005, a £550 million restoration plan for King’s Cross station was announced by Network Rail and approved by Camden Borough Council on 9 November 2007. The scheme involved a thorough restoration and reglazing of the arched roof of the original station, and the removal of the cramped and congested 1972 ‘lean-to’

extension, and its replacement by a 75,000sq ft (7,000sq m) open-air plaza, King’s Cross Square. The restoration of the station for Network Rail was driven by architects John McAslan & Partners, alongside a large team that included contractors Arup, Vinci and Kier, the London Borough of Camden’s conservation team, and English Heritage. The guiding principle was simple and superbly effective. Taking on board the lessons learned from St Pancras International, the brief was to design twenty-first-century passenger facilities grafted on to the fabric of Cubitt’s original train shed, rather than disfiguring or reshaping it. The project started with the restoration of the Eastern Range Building (completed in 2009), and included the transformation of the station’s main train shed and the Western Range Building, including the conservation and reinstatement of the booking hall and parcels office. Alongside this process of restoration and reinterpretation sits the all-new Western Concourse, which, with a tasteful blend of ancient and modern, has oriented the station to the west, as it was originally designed. The station’s 118-yearold wrought-iron Handyside Bridge, which featured in Warner Brothers’ Harry Potter films, was removed and replaced with a contemporary glass and steel bridge: this provides lift and escalator access to all platforms, as well as linking the main train shed with the mezzanine of the Western Concourse. Network Rail donated the Handyside Bridge to the Mid-Hants Railway, which re-erected it at Ropley. The booking hall was one of the most important spaces in the Victorian station, but had been closed to the public for decades. However, the upgrade reinstated the original booking hall as a ticketing area at the heart of the station, bringing key elements of the heritage features, including the cast-iron brackets supporting the first-floor walkway, back to life. Seven large and original York stone flooring slabs were left in situ, and are complemented by a glazed balustrade fitted between the original stone slabs, again creating a dialogue between old and new. The space known as the ‘Bomb Gap’ – legacy of a Luftwaffe direct hit during World War II – has been carefully reconstructed using a Smeed Dean Belgrave brick, which is sensitive to the character of

the Western Range Building while also subtly preserving signs of the bomb damage as part of the station’s history. The parcels office in the north-western part of the Western Range Building was originally designed to accommodate the GNR parcels business, and incorporates some highly innovative Victorian engineering. It has been sensitively restored and converted into a pub and restaurant split over two levels, the first time the public has had access to this area of the station. Throughout the project, materials have been salvaged for re-use in the project, or if that is not possible, in the adjacent King’s Cross Central development or other railway projects.

The modern Western Concourse built on to the fabric of the original station. AUTHOR

A new platform, numbered 0, was opened in 2010. To the east of platform 1, it created capacity for Network Rail to achieve a phased refurbishment of platforms 1–8. The first major phase of the project

was the new Western Concourse, the biggest transformation in the history of the station; it was completed and opened to the first passengers on 19 March 2012. Ian Fry, Network Rail programme director for King’s Cross, said: ‘This stunning addition to the station provides three times as much space as the old concourse with new shops and restaurants, better transport links, and a lighter, brighter environment for everyone to enjoy.’ The new concourse is accessed directly from the Tube, and for pedestrians from Euston Road, St Pancras Road and via new arcades on the ground floor of the Great Northern Hotel.

Let there be light! For decades, the interior of the great terminus had been considered gloomy, something that the tens of millions of passengers who used it had taken for granted for so long that nobody ever complained. However, following the replacement of the glass roofing windows with photo-voltaic panels that generate solar energy, the natural light has returned. The panels also generate 10 per cent of the station’s energy requirements. The station is pictured on 25 September 2013, when the East Coast was still the East Coast Main Line franchise holder. AUTHOR

The roof of King’s Cross station, following the total replacement of the glazing by 2013. AUTHOR

The restored clock tower above the station façade. AUTHOR

The workings of the clock from inside. AUTHOR

The re-exposed façade of the station front is now the backdrop of the new King’s Cross civic square. AUTHOR

Former King’s Cross shedmaster Peter Townend and King’s Cross divisional manager Dick Hardy with the statue of Sir Nigel Gresley on 5 April 2016. PHILIP BENHAM/GRESLEY SOCIETY

In attendance at the unveiling of the statue was the oldest surviving Gresley locomotive, N2 0-6-2T No. 1744, a type that regularly worked suburban trains out of King’s Cross, and which is owned by the Gresley Society. It spent virtually its entire working life allocated to King’s Cross shed. The N2s were designed for suburban passenger operations, and worked most of their duties out of King’s Cross and Moorgate. The sole-surviving Gresley tank engine, it was coupled to the Severn Valley Railway Charitable Trust’s Gresley-designed kitchen composite carriage No. 7960. PHILIP BENHAM/GRESLEY SOCIETY

An earlier blue plaque commemorating the fact that Sir Nigel Gresley had offices at King’s Cross. AUTHOR

By 2013, the entire station was restored and transformed. On 26 September that year, the Secretary of State for Transport Patrick McLoughlin, the Mayor of London Boris Johnson, and Network Rail chief executive Sir David Higgins, officially declared the new King’s Cross Square open. The occasion was marked by the pulling of a Victorian railway signal lever and the explosion of streamer canons. Designed by architects Stanton Williams, the square is big enough to accommodate Big Ben. Mr McLoughlin said: I have been travelling to and from my Derbyshire constituency for years, and I remember when King’s Cross and St Pancras were not places you would hang around. Now it is a destination in its own right.

The official opening of King’s Cross Square marks the completion of one of the largest station modernization projects across our national rail network, and one of the government’s top infrastructure projects. With more platforms, a redesigned concourse and improved facilities, work at this iconic station has transformed the experience of thousands of rail passengers travelling into London for the better.

One of the most famous of all locomotives to appear at King’s Cross had nothing to do with the LNER, and never ran on the ECML in the steam era. GWR Castle Class 4-6-0 No. 5972 Olton Hall, restored from scrapyard condition by West Coast Railways founding chairman David Smith, was hired to Warner Brothers to appear in its blockbuster series of Harry Potter movies. It was painted in decidedly nonauthentic bright red livery as Hogwarts Castle, the fictional locomotive that hauls the Hogwarts Express, taking junior wizards from King’s Cross Platform 9¾ to the magic school in the Highlands. It is pictured at Platform 9¾ during its last location filming stint on 27 May 2010. Author J. K. Rowling has said she was thinking of Euston when she wrote the Harry Potter novels, ‘so anyone who’s been to the real platforms 9 and 10 in King’s Cross will realize they don’t bear a great resemblance to the platforms in the book’. JAMES SHUTTLEWORTH

A ‘Platform 9¾’ sign has been erected in a section of the station concourse, and every day steady queues of Potter fans, many from as far afield as Japan, queue up to have their pictures taken beneath it. Indeed, the humble sign has made King’s Cross a must-visit tourist destination. AUTHOR

However, the project was far bigger than refurbishing a railway station: it was the key element in a £2.2 billion scheme to revitalize the entire neighbourhood. In the King’s Cross Central regeneration zone north of the station, 67 acres (27ha) of brownfield land were earmarked for 234,000sq ft (21,740sq m) of offices, retail outlets, nearly 2,000 new homes and new roads.

Today’s revamped King’s Cross is a splendid blend of old and new, and it is the same with pest control. This Harris hawk is employed by Pestiokill, a firm specializing in railway pest control, to control the numbers of pigeons on the concourse. The hawk does not attract the pigeons, but the mere sight of it is sufficient to keep them outdoors! AUTHOR

Boris Johnson said: The transformation of King’s Cross is not only beautiful but it has also triggered all sorts of regeneration, with new jobs, and huge numbers of homes being built, and businesses relocating here. What has emerged is a fantastic open space, which has led to the creation of a whole new vibrant district. It is the perfect

example of a point I have always made: if you support good transport links, the jobs and growth will follow. David Higgins added: ‘I’m confident King’s Cross will continue to flourish. This is just the beginning of a new chapter.’

The Steam Shed from where Legends were Made Of course, King’s Cross was much more than a major terminus: it was also the name of the most famous locomotive shed on the ECML. What became ‘Top Shed’, sited between Gasworks and Copenhagen Tunnels three-quarters of a mile (1.2km) to the north of the station, started out as ‘engine stables’ in 1850 when the GNR opened its main line. The original shed had twenty-five roads and an eleven-road repair shop in the centre, and a goods yard was sited alongside it. Tender-first running was eliminated in 1851, when a turntable was installed. In 1857, after the Midland Railway reached agreement with the GNR to run over its main line to Hitchin, it built its own roundhouse on the site. The GNR inherited the roundhouse when the Midland switched to its own route into St Pancras.

King’s Cross shed on 9 April 1963 sees a wonderful line-up of LNER locomotives: left to right, V2 2-6-2 No. 60862, A4 No. 60034 Lord Faringdon, A3s Nos 60108 Gay Crusader, 60044 Melton and 60061 Pretty Polly, and a further (unidentified) ‘V2’ completes this wonderful array of ex-LNER express locomotives. STEVE ARMITAGE ARCHIVE

The name ‘Top Shed’ came about because of its geographical position, to distinguish it from the passenger locomotive depot at King’s Cross station, which opened in 1934 and was briefly known as ‘Bottom Shed’, and not because it was considered superior to other locomotive depots – although the footplate crew based there liked to think it was the premier shed on the 393-mile (632km) line. King’s Cross shed housed locomotives not only for the ECML but also for London suburban working, but Top Shed’s main claim to fame came in the Pacific era. Its crews often lodged overnight at Newcastle or Edinburgh while working expresses. Out of the class of thirty-five A4s, before World War II eleven of these were allocated to King’s Cross. The Midland roundhouse was dismantled in 1931. The steam shed’s demise started in 1958 with the arrival of four English Electric Type 4 diesel electrics to work passenger trains over the ECML. Top Shed closed on 16 June 1963, with the end of scheduled steam services in and out of King’s Cross. Its structures were knocked down shortly afterwards.

The Great Northern Railway’s original engine shed at King’s Cross.

Don’t mention the smog: King’s Cross ‘Top Shed’ as seen on a drizzly day in May 1963, with a stupendous line-up of motive power raring to go: two A4s, a Peppercorn A1, an A3, a V2 and a 9F. Only a month later this shed closed and steam was banished from the southern part of the East Coast Main Line. HUGH LLEWELLYN/CCL

CHAPTER 13

Leamside: The Forgotten Main Line When it was completed in 1850, parts of the ECML followed a very different route to the ones we know today. One such section is the Leamside line in County Durham, running from Ferryhill in the south to Pelaw in the north. The Leamside line came into existence in piecemeal fashion when several shorter routes were joined up to form a main line. The first section used by passenger trains was that from Washington to Rainton Meadows south of Fencehouses, in March 1840, having opened to freight in August 1838. This line was operated by the Durham Junction Railway, with expectations of a link to the Hartlepool Dock & Railway Company, but this failed to happen, and it left Rainton Meadows as the southern terminus of the route from Tyneside. In 1844, the Durham Junction Railway became part of the Newcastle & Darlington Junction Railway, which aimed to connect both towns in its title. The northern section from Washington to Pelaw, incorporating part of the Stanhope & Tyne Railway, was joined with the southern sections to the south, from Rainton Crossing to Shincliffe and to Ferryhill. At Pelaw Junction, the line joined the Newcastle to Sunderland route. The biggest engineering structure on the line is the stupendous ten-arch Victoria Viaduct, which spans the River Wear and was so named because the last stone was laid on 28 June 1838, Queen Victoria’s Coronation Day.

The completed route was opened to passenger traffic in June 1844, but as with many railways in Durham, mineral traffic was the main source of revenue, mainly in the form of local coal. The route was streamlined in 1849 when a more direct line between Washington and Pelaw via Usworth opened to freight, and was used by passenger trains from October 1850, doubling up as the ECML between Newcastle and Darlington, joining today’s route south towards York at Tursdale Junction. A new route from Durham to Newcastle was opened by the North Eastern Railway in 1872, and it is this section, not the Leamside line, which forms part of the ECML today. The Leamside line remained as an alternative route and for local stopping trains at the intermediate stations of Usworth, Washington, Penshaw, Fencehouses, Leamside, Sherburn colliery, Shincliffe and Ferryhill. Freight remained of paramount importance: at Washington, iron ore trains would be marshalled for the long haul up to Consett steelworks. The first passenger closure came in July 1941 with the Leamside– Ferryhill service, while once busy Leamside station was shut in October 1953 and demolished. The Beeching Report of 1963 identified the Leamside line for withdrawal of passenger trains, but conceded it had a future for freight. All regular services between Pelaw and Fencehouses, along with the short western link to Durham and the Penshaw–Sunderland section, ended in May 1964. It remained in use for freight and also as a diversionary route, last being used as such during the electrification of the ECML. However, the gradual demise of the Durham coalfield in the 1970s and 1980s led to a sharp fall in freight traffic, and the Leamside closed to all through traffic in 1991, following the closure of the Freightliner terminal at Follingsby near Washington.

In use again as originally intended: southbound Inter-City Class 125 High Speed Train set diverted from the East Coast Main Line to the Leamside line passes Usworth signalbox on 23 November 1980. ALAN LEWIS

Tyneside’s Pelaw Junction looking south. To the left, the South Shields branch veers off, while straight ahead is the Sunderland line. The Leamside line, which was part of the original East Coast Main Line until Victorian times, turns to the right. BEAMISH MUSEUM

A steam era postcard view of Washington station. BEAMISH MUSEUM

Victoria Viaduct carried the Leamside line between Pelaw Junction and Tursdale Junction over the River Wear. Commissioned by the Durham Junction Railway, the viaduct was built between 1836 and 1838 to a Thomas Elliot Harrison design based on the Roman bridge at Alcántara in Spain.

The track still in place over Victoria Viaduct in 2009.

Timber being unloaded at the Co-op Wholesale Society furniture factory at Pelaw. BEAMISH MUSEUM

Fencehouses station on the Leamside line on 27 June 1958. BEAMISH MUSEUM

The line was not ripped up, as was the usual practice in the 1960s and 1970s, but mothballed, because of its potential to serve new opencast workings. A report commissioned by the Tyne and Wear Passenger Transport Authority suggested in 2008 that the Leamside line could be reborn to provide a regional service linking the Tees Valley and Tyne and Wear regions, running from Newcastle Central. However, parts of the line have since been lifted, while others are buried by vegetation.

Parts of the original ECML, such as the Leamside section, were bypassed as early as Victorian times. Just a year before the station was closed in October 1953, racing pigeon owners prepare to load their birds on to a pigeon van at Leamside for conveyance to London. BEAMISH MUSEUM

The trackbed and ballast of the Leamside Line has been preserved for use in the event of the route being reopened. OLIVER DIXON

CHAPTER 14

When Diesels Reigned Supreme! British Railways’ 1955 Modernization Plan called for the replacement of steam across the network by modern traction, in the form of diesel and electric locomotives. By the 1950s, road transport had become the biggest challenge to the railway network in its history. Just as the railway had killed off the stagecoaches, so cars, lorries and buses were now very much in the driving seat. Britain had fallen behind other Western countries in eliminating steam in favour of diesels and electric locomotives, a process that had begun in the USA in the 1930s. With the economy crippled by post-war austerity, the newly nationalized British Railways had in 1948 opted to stick with steam, at least for the time being. Under Robert Riddles, the Member of the Railway Executive for Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, a total of 999 new steam locomotives, the twelve Standard classes, were built between 1951 and 1960, while several of the types designed and built for the ‘Big Four’ companies prior to nationalization were also turned out in sizeable numbers alongside them. Yet as the economy recovered, British Railways knew it had to do more to retain its customer base, and move forwards. The 1955 Modernization Plan, or to give it its full title, ‘Modernization and ReEquipment of the British Railways’, proposed the electrification of principal main lines. In 1956, a government White Paper stated – very over optimistically as it turned out – that modernization would help eradicate British Railways’ worsening rising financial deficit by 1962. The 1955 plan led to a ‘gold rush’ amongst locomotive designers and builders in a bid to produce new types of diesel and

electric traction. However, some of them were so unsuccessful that they barely outlived the steam locomotives they were designed to replace. The demise of steam would mean an end to the magnificent Pacifics that had dominated the East Coast Main Line for half a century. However, they were to be replaced by two of the most popular and successful forms of diesel traction ever to run in Britain: the Class 55 Deltics and the Class 125 InterCity High Speed Trains. The origins of the Deltic engine dated as far back as 1880, when the experimental Oechelhauser opposed piston, scavenge blown, twostroke internal combustion gas engine was developed in Germany. The basic principles were lightness and opposed pistons, and that no heavy cylinder head was needed at one end. By 1908, the concept had evolved into an oil fuel (diesel) compression injection engine. During the 1930s, Britain’s Air Ministry had followed the development of this type with huge interest as they were far ahead of any British diesel aero engine of the day. Sir George Nelson, chairman and managing director of English Electric, and his son, also George, looked into the possibility of using Napier’s Deltic engine, which had previously been used in ships, to power a new type of railway locomotive. The Admiralty funded further development of the type after World War II, and the first Deltic Type 18.1 engine ran in April 1950. Trials carried out in a naval vessel seized from Germany at the end of the war worked so well that the Deltic engine was fitted inside eighteen Royal Navy minesweepers.

The prototype Deltic: its design shows a profound US influence. AUTHOR

In 1954 to 1955, a prototype locomotive incorporating two of these Deltic engines was built at English Electric’s Dick Kerr works in Preston. Its distinctive front whiskers drew on the style of new American diesels, as English Electric was also thinking of the export market. A large continental-style lamp was fitted to the nose at either end. Owned by its builder, it was officially numbered DP1 (Diesel Prototype No. 1) and, liveried in a fetching powder blue livery with cream stripes, carried the word ‘Deltic’ in large capital letters on its sides, taking the name from the pair of 18-cylinder Napier Deltic engines inside it. They were each downgraded from the 1,750hp of the marine engines in minesweepers to 1,650hp, reducing the stress on the engines. The striking blue locomotive impressed in trials on the London Midland Region in October 1955, running between London and Liverpool, and also on the Settle and Carlisle line. However, the LMR hierarchy lost interest when it became clear that the West Coast

Main Line was to be one of the first trunk routes to be electrified under the 1955 plan. The Eastern Region proved more accommodating to the prototype Deltic. The region knew it had to fulfil the terms of the Modernization Plan, but nobody up until then had produced a diesel that could match, let alone better the Pacifics, and certainly not all the A4s. Not only could the DP1 deliver the power and speed the ECML required, but it was also within the limits of a 20-ton axle loading. The Eastern Region took DP1 on trial, and ran it mainly between King’s Cross and Doncaster. It impressed to the extent that British Railways ordered a production run of twenty-two Deltics. While schoolboy trainspotters had begun to loathe the sight of diesels – ‘boxes on wheels’ – that were killing off their beloved steam engines, DP1 became something of a celebrity. Plaster model kit maker Kitmaster, and its successor Airfix, produced a highly popular 00-scale version at pocket-money prices. Sadly, in March 1961 the full-size one suffered a serious power-plant failure and was withdrawn from service permanently. When plans to rebuild it and test it on Canadian railways failed to materialize, English Electric could simply have sent DP1 to the scrapyard. Instead it was cosmetically restored and donated to the Science Museum in London. It is now part of the National Collection, and in recent times has been based at the Locomotion museum in Shildon, not too far from the ECML. The production Deltics, the class being named after the prototype, were built between 1961 and 1962 by English Electric to take over the ECML express trains. They were allocated to depots at Finsbury Park in London, Gateshead and Edinburgh’s Haymarket. At first the drivers did not warm to them. Draughty doors that wouldn’t stay closed, slippery cab and engine room floors that quickly became contaminated with oil, and boiler and oil pressure switch problems all provoked complaints, to the extent that British Railways threatened to withdraw acceptance certificates, leaving English Electric with the threat of not being paid. Indeed, there were cases of Deltics being removed from their trains at Peterborough or Grantham and replaced by Gresley A3s, A4s or V2s.

However, all these problems were rectified fairly quickly. The Deltics were a marked improvement on the Class 40 diesels that had been introduced to the ECML earlier – the Class 40s had a maximum drawbar horsepower of 1,450, which could be exceeded by a Pacific steam locomotive if worked hard. By 1963 Deltics were recorded as exceeding 100mph (160km/h). The late railway writer O. S. Nock recorded 100mph for 16 miles (26km) south of Thirsk with a maximum of 104mph (167km/h), and said that such speeds in 1963 were ‘terrific’. By the mid-1960s the Deltic-hauled Flying Scotsman was achieving a five-hour fifty-five-minute timing from King’s Cross to Edinburgh with one stop at Newcastle. It was the fastest ever timing, beating the prewar A4-hauled Coronation service’s six hours. With upgrades to the ECML, the timing fell to five hours thirty minutes by the mid-1970s. The Finsbury Park Deltics were named after winning racehorses, just as the LNER naming tradition with the A3s. That was certainly appropriate, as the Deltics were destined to be used over Stoke Bank, the steam era’s greatest racetrack. The Deltics based at Haymarket and Gateshead were given the names of British army regiments. On the ECML, the Deltics proved themselves to be outstanding performers. They were delivered by English Electric in a smart twotone green, a livery that still kept one foot in the steam age, with the dark British Railways green on top and a narrower strip of a lighter, lime green along the bottom, and white for the cab window surrounds. The bright yellow warning panel typical to diesel and electric locomotives at each end was soon applied by the buyer. British Railways unveiled its new Rail Blue, or blue and white corporate livery, in 1964. It was designed to be a uniform replacement for regional liveries that had their roots in the steam age, but it came to be associated with a period when much of the past was not just being modernized, but swept away. And this applied not just to traditional liveries, but to infrastructure too, with classic Victorian stations that had survived the Beeching axe being pruned back in many cases to little more than glorified bus shelters.

Class 55 Deltic No. 55002 The King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, heading north from Peterborough on 17 April 1981. This locomotive worked its last train for British Rail on 30 December 1981, from Liverpool to York, and is now preserved. BRIAN SHARPE

The Deltics began appearing in blue in 1966, again with the yellow warning panels, usually applied when they were taken back into the works to have additional air braking fitted, having been supplied only with vacuum braking. With the introduction of BR’s TOPS computer system for numbering locomotives and stock, the Deltics became Class 55 and were renumbered 55001 to 55022. On 2 February 1978, No. 55008 The Green Howards hauled ten coaches comprising the 7.25am from Newcastle to King’s Cross, and set new records. In between York and King’s Cross it achieved a timing of 137 minutes 15 seconds, including signal stops and speed reductions. The estimated running time of 115 minutes 45 seconds gave an average speed of 97mph (156km/h) from start to stop. No. 55008 hit 113mph (182km/h) on the flat between Darlington and York, 114mph (183km/h) at Offord… and 125mph (201km/h) while descending Stoke Bank! However, modernization meant that the writing was on the wall, not just for steam engines, but eventually locomotives in general. One of the biggest problems with a steam locomotive is that it either needs to be turned at the end of a trip, or allowed to run round its train at a loop and then make the return trip backwards. A modern

diesel locomotive with a cab at each end would not be seen running backwards, but would still need to run round a train. Even so, diesel railcars and multiple units provided a perfect solution in this respect, since all that was needed was for the motorman to walk from one end of the train to the other. The large-scale introduction of DMUs and EMUs resulted in the elimination of run-round loops, and the concept reached a new height with the introduction of the next stage of express trains, the High Speed Train, branded as InterCity 125s. British Rail’s tilting Advanced Passenger Train project was under way, but officials knew that a stopgap was needed to hold the inter-city express train fort before it was ready for the production lines. In fact the ‘stopgap’ proved to be far more than that, and was anything but a stopgap: the Advanced Passenger Train never made it past the prototype stages, but the HSTs became one of, if not the most successful class of passenger traction in UK railway history. In 1970 it was decided to build two lightweight Bo-Bo locomotives to top-and-tail a rake of British Rail’s new Mk.3 coaches. A prototype train of seven coaches with two locomotives was completed in August 1972 and was soon undergoing trials on the national network. On 12 June 1973, the prototype InterCity 125 (comprising power cars Nos 43000 and 43001) set a world diesel speed record of 143.2mph (230.4km/h) while running on the ECML around Northallerton.

Deltic No. 55009 Alycidon, in BR corporate blue livery, hauls an Inter-City express up the grade and into King’s Cross station on 29 April 1976. BARRY LEWIS/CCL

Deltic No. 55018 Ballymoss at King’s Cross on 12 April 1976. BARRY LEWIS/CCL

A northbound Class 125 High Speed Train in British Rail livery snakes its way slowly out of the Peterborough platform. BRIAN SHARPE

Carrying InterCity livery, a Class 125 High Speed Train passes Helpston crossing on 31 January 1988. BRIAN SHARPE

Following three more years of trials British Rail decided to build twenty-seven production High Speed Trains, initially for InterCity services between Paddington, Bristol and South Wales. The first production power car, Class 43 No. 43002, was delivered in late 1975, and in October 1976, a 125mph (200km/h) service began on

the Western Region. By May 1977, the twenty-seven units completely replaced locomotive-hauled trains on the Bristol and South Wales routes. Until the coming of the High Speed Train, the maximum speed of British trains was limited to 100mph (160km/h). Class 125s – the HST – were permitted a 25 per cent increase in service speeds along many of the routes they operated, and passengers responded very favourably to their introduction. In 1978, the High Speed Trains began replacing the Deltics on the East Coast Main Line, even taking over the Flying Scotsman service from King’s Cross to Edinburgh from May that year. They were concentrated on services from King’s Cross to Newcastle and Edinburgh Waverley, with some extending to Glasgow Queen Street, Aberdeen and Inverness, and also ran on services from London to Leeds, Bradford, Hull, Cleethorpes and Scarborough.

New World Speed Record Set A world speed record for a diesel train carrying passengers was set on 27 September 1985, when a seven-car set forming a special press train, headed by Class 43 power car No. 43808, for the launch of a new Tees-Tyne Pullman service from Newcastle to King’s Cross, reached 144mph (232km/h) north of York. The next day, No. 43808 was named National Railway Museum: The First 10 Years 1975– 1985. And the spirit of the Stirling Singles, Flying Scotsman and Mallard, was invoked yet again, as a Class 125 unit on a test run set a new record for the world’s fastest diesel-powered train. A HST set comprising power cars No. 43102 City of Wakefield and No. 43104 and three carriages reached 148mph (238km/h) on Stoke Bank – where else? – on 1 November 1987. The HST remains the fastest diesel unit in the world, with an absolute maximum speed of 148mph (238km/h) and a regular service speed of 125mph (200km/h). However, it has been claimed that the record was unofficially broken by a Russian train, which hit 168mph (270km/h) in 1992, and a decade later a Spanish train reached 158mph (254km/h).

The introduction of Class 125s heralded major improvements across the network. By 1982, when production ended, ninety-five sets, including 197 Class 43 power cars, had been outshopped. However, many of the post-privatization train-operating companies, including Virgin Trains, still have them in regular service decades on. To increase their life expectancy, operators – including those on the ECML – have upgraded them by replacing the original Paxman Valenta engines with MTU types.

Class 55 D9009 Alycidon returned to the main line on 22 May 1999, when it worked the Deltic Preservation Society’s 1Z45 11.35am York to King’s Cross railtour. It is seen approaching Essendine. AUTHOR

Displaced by the 125s, the once-mighty Deltics were then relegated to secondary duties, including semi-fast or newspaper, parcel or sleeper services along the ECML and its branches to Cleethorpes, Harrogate and Scarborough, along with Edinburgh to Newcastle via Carlisle stopping trains. However, as with so many other classes of early production diesels, British Rail decided that the cost of maintaining a small class of non-standard locomotives could

not be justified, and as the 1970s drew to a close, Deltics began to be withdrawn and were taken to Doncaster Works for scrapping. The last timetabled Deltic service was the 4.30pm from Aberdeen to York on 31 December 1981, hauled from Edinburgh Waverley by No. 55019 Royal Highland Fusilier. The last Class 52 train of all under British Rail was an enthusiast charter, the Deltic Scotsman Farewell on 2 January 1982, from King’s Cross to Edinburgh and back, hauled by No. 55015 Tulyar from London and No. 55022 Royal Scots Grey on the way back.

Deltic D9009 Alycidon heads The A1 Steam Locomotive Trust’s ‘Elizabethan’ charter from London to Edinburgh on 25 July 2012, towards Greatford crossing. AUTHOR

However, there were those who were determined not to let the class die out, because after twenty years it had built up its own enthusiast following. Six ended up being saved for posterity: D9000 (55022) Royal Scots Grey, D9002 (55002) The King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, which was donated to the National Railway Museum, D9009 (55009) Alycidon, D9015 (55015), D9016 (55016) Gordon Highlander and D9019 (55019) Royal Highland Fusilier. The King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry was the first of the saved Class 55s to make a comeback on British Rail metals, running light engine to York after taking part in the Doncaster Works Open Day on 27 February

1982. It also made history by being the first preserved diesel to run over the national network. However, no Deltic hauled another train until after the privatization of the network, which allowed open access, with anyone who had a main line certified engine able to use it. In 2006, the Deltic Preservation Society brought all six preserved production Class 55s together for the first time at Doncaster Works. However, during the weekend of 7–9 October 2011 the society literally went one better, because to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the first production Deltic in 1961, it collaborated with Locomotion: The National Railway Museum at Shildon to stage a line-up of all seven Deltics, including DP1. More than 10,000 visitors turned out to see them.

The line-up of all seven surviving Deltics at Locomotion on 7 October 2011, left to right, are The King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, Royal Highland Fusilier, DP1, Gordon Highlander, Alycidon, Royal Scots Grey and Tulyar. It marked the start of a Deltic 50 weekend to celebrate the half centenary of the production class entering service, which attracted more than 10,000 visitors. The event earned the Deltic Preservation Society the Heritage Railway Association’s Rail Express Modern Traction Award three months later. AUTHOR

One of the last classes of locomotive to be built at Doncaster Works was the Class 58 Co-Co heavy freight diesel electrics. The first, No. 58001, pictured at the works’ open day in 2003 in Railfreight livery, was handed over to British Rail on 9 December 1982, and delivery of the remaining forty-nine locomotives continued until early 1987, with the final delivery of No. 58050. Operator English, Welsh & Scottish Railway withdrew them in 2002 after twenty years in service, and thirtytwo were hired abroad – four to the Netherlands, eight to Spain and twenty to France. One of them, No. 58016, has been preserved by the Class 58 Locomotive Group, which also acquired No. 58045 for spares. AUTHOR

CHAPTER 15

Beeching, Serpell and Electrification Dr Richard Beeching’s report ‘The Reshaping of British Railways’ was published on 27 March 1963, and proved to be the watershed in the history of the national network. On secondment from ICI, where he was technical director, the British Railways chairman had been appointed by Conservative Transport Minister Ernest Marples to stem the soaring losses made by the nationalized network, which in 1961 were running at £300,000 a day. Beeching’s remit was to lead the railways towards profitability again. For many years the railway network had ceased to be the premier form of public transport, both for the carriage of passengers and freight. Road haulage had steadily cut into the railways’ income from the latter, while the booming growth in car ownership in the 1950s saw a major shift by the public at large from rail to road. In short, Beeching is best remembered for the closure of numerous lossmaking branch lines and cross-country routes. It was said that the ‘Beeching Axe’ made him the most hated civil servant in Britain. His appointment was controversial from the start. He was paid a salary of £24,000, which was £10,000 more than that of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. His report recommended that around a third of Britain’s 18,000 miles (29,000km) of railway should be closed entirely, and others saved purely for freight. Furthermore, a total of 2,363 stations were to close, including many on lines that were to stay open. The cuts would also see the loss of around 70,000 British Railways jobs.

Beeching did not invent railway closures: that had been going on in the UK since the 1930s, and before his report was published, around 3,000 route miles (5,000km) had been closed since nationalization in 1948. He wanted to create a streamed national inter-city network, doing away with small stopping stations to speed up express services and to make train travel attractive to the public once again. He also envisaged an end to the picking up of local goods, which had been part and parcel of the railway scene since the dawn of the network. These tried to compete with cheaper road transport for the smaller local goods services, whereas the future of freight traffic lay in the transhipment of bulk loads in US-style containers. Indeed, Freightliner was one of Beeching’s big success stories. Beeching did not close any railways himself, he merely made recommendations to the transport minister of the day, who had the right to follow or ignore them. Indeed, several of his recommendations were not followed for one reason or another, such as the Conwy Valley line between Llandudno Junction and Blaenau Ffestiniog, which is still very much with us today. One major thrust of his strategy was to close inter-city routes that doubled up: for instance, the Great Central Railway route from Manchester to Marylebone was a prime target, because, Beeching recommended, its services could be transferred to other routes such as the Midland Main Line. Such was the public outcry, from both passengers and the trades unions, over the loss of so many route miles that in its 1964 election manifesto, Harold Wilson’s Labour Party promised to sack Beeching and reverse all his cuts if they were elected. They won – and not only kept Beeching in place, but carried on with closures both before and long after his return to ICI in June 1965. The sweeping closures that left Britain with around 12,000 route miles (19,300km) failed to halt the nationalized railway’s losses, or to entice passengers back en masse at that time. However, much wastage was eliminated, which would almost certainly have made the cost of running an overstaffed and now underused network too much for the taxpayer to bear, and streamlined the system in

readiness for the day that passengers would see that train travel could offer big advantages over the car, especially in urban areas. Much less well known was Beeching’s follow-up report in February 1965, entitled ‘The Development of the Major Railway Trunk Routes’. Nicknamed Beeching II, the report highlighted trunk routes that would justify large-scale investment to handle projected increases in both passenger and freight traffic over the next two decades. That by itself seemed fair enough, but critics immediately pounced, suggesting that the routes that had not been listed would face closure. One of these was the Newcastle to Edinburgh section of the ECML line. Under the worst case scenario, it would have been cut short at Newcastle, from where northbound trains would have been rerouted westwards over the Tyne Valley line to Carlisle. From there, only one route would have been left to link London with Scotland, as Beeching had listed the Waverley Route to Edinburgh for complete closure, which did finally happen in 1969. He saw the borders route as ‘doubling up’ on the route from Carstairs Junction on the West Coast Main Line to Edinburgh. As the Waverley Route ran for much of its length through sparsely populated tracts of countryside, that was the one that had to go.

The 27 March 1963 was a watershed moment in UK transport history, for it was then that British Railways chairman Dr Richard Beeching unveiled his report ‘The Reshaping of British Railways’. Its recommendations led to around a third of the national network’s route mileage being cut, and in retrospect he was dubbed the most hated civil servant of all time.

Beeching’s lesser known follow-up report in 1965: critics feared it would have led to the rundown and closure of the East Coast Main Line north of Newcastle, had its recommendations been implemented.

The 1965 report identified the southern portion of the ECML from King’s Cross to Newcastle as the future primary route for traffic between London and the East Midlands, South Yorkshire and the Tyne-Tees area, rejecting the alternative through Cambridge, March, Spalding, Lincoln and Doncaster, part of which was the original GNR main line. Beeching denied that the routes that he had not listed for development were under threat, saying: ‘For the sake of clarity, it is emphasized that non-selection of lines for intensive development does not necessarily mean that they will be abandoned in the foreseeable future, nor even that money will not be spent upon some of them to improve their suitability for their continuing purpose.’ Many were not convinced, however, and breathed a sigh of relief when he left British Railways.

The Closure of Intermediate Stations Even before Dr Beeching had entered the railway sector, numerous intermediate stations on the East Coast Main Line were closed. Beeching’s vision was that of an inter-city network, but here, as on

many major routes, the process of closing down stations that served villages and sparsely populated rural communities had been under way for years. Many of these stations were hopelessly overstaffed by today’s standards, and could only run at a loss. The demise of the pick-up goods in the face of cheaper competition from road haulage reduced the role of intermediate stations and many of their staff. Perhaps most importantly, the elimination of smaller stops allowed journey times between major centres of population to be reduced. Little Bytham station in Lincolnshire, near the scene of Mallard’s world record feat, opened on 2 October 1853 and closed on 1 September 1959. The Midland & Great Northern Joint Railway crossed the ECML just north of the station at right angles. The Great Northern Railway had been given powers to build a junction, but never did so, and so the nearest station on the M&GNR was at Castle Bytham. From 1857 to 1884, Little Bytham was the junction for the Edenham & Little Bytham Railway branch line to the village of Edenham. In recent years there has been a private attempt to turn the surviving station building into a museum.

In its heyday, Little Bytham was a substantial country station. It is said that windows were shattered when Mallard stormed through on its record run on 3 July 1938. AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

Its platforms cut back decades ago and its sidings long since removed, Little Bytham’s main station building survives. AUTHOR

Essendine in LNER days, with New England shed’s 1898-built GNR Ivatt C2 4-42T No. 4518, which was withdrawn in March 1951. It appears to be coming off the Bourne branch and running into the south-facing bay, which the Bourne trains used. Essendine was a junction made important by the GNR’s decision to bypass the coaching town of Stamford and serve it with a short branch instead. GRESLEY SOCIETY

To the south of Little Bytham lay Essendine station in Rutland, which also opened and closed on the same dates. Essendine served as the junction for the branch lines to Stamford and Bourne, opened in 1856 and 1860. Due to its status as a junction, it was served by

some express trains as well as by stopping trains. For many years a commuter train left King’s Cross at around 5pm and terminated at Essendine, before returning the next morning. The Bourne branch closed in 1957, while the Stamford branch closed two years later. At that time, all local stopping services between Peterborough and Grantham were lost. At 29 miles (47km), Peterborough to Grantham is now the longest distance between adjacent stations in England. There have been comparatively few calls for intermediate stations on the ECML to be reopened; indeed, in recent years Network Rail has announced public consultations regarding the closure of many level crossings in a bid to cut costs and increase efficiency.

Serpell’s Shock Option Beeching may have gone, but the threat to the ECML had not. Apart from the years 1978–80, when passenger numbers grew in successive years, the overall decline that had begun in 1957 continued. In 1982, the lowest number of passenger journeys of the second half of the twentieth century was recorded on the network, while car ownership was at an all-time high. Other possible causes were rail strike over rostering arrangements, which had cost British Rail £150 million, the lowest level of passenger miles, and the lowest level of passenger revenue since 1968. Revenue had decreased steadily from £2,300 million in 1970 to £1,800 million in 1982, while costs had risen from £2,500 million to £2,700 million. The passenger deficit was £933 million, and with costs continuing to rise, it was inevitable that Margaret Thatcher’s government, which had a core policy of aiming for self-sufficiency, would consider more drastic steps. A committee chaired by Sir David Serpell KCB CMG OBE, a senior civil servant who had worked under Beeching – and who had claimed to have persuaded him to become British Railways chairman in the first place – looked at the worsening deficit. In his report, ‘Railway Finances’, published in January 1983, Serpell, who had been a member of the British Railways Board since 1974, went further than Beeching had ever dared to go.

The first of four options contained in it was the reduction of the network’s 10,370 route miles (16,685km) down to the bare bones of just 1,630 profit-making miles (2,623km). This option would be to aim for a commercial network, in which the railways as a whole would make a profit. To do that, route mileage would have to be cut by 84 per cent, and annual passenger miles by 56 per cent. It would have left London–Bristol/Cardiff, London– Birmingham– Liverpool/Manchester–Glasgow/Edinburgh, and London– Leeds/Newcastle as the only surviving main lines. Some London commuter lines would be kept, but all others would close. The second option was almost identical to the first, apart from making provision for the cost of tackling road congestion caused by rail closures. If the overall cost to the nation of closing a railway line was greater than saving it once road congestion had been considered, it would be allowed to stay. This second option would still cut route mileage by 78 per cent, and annual passenger miles by 45 per cent. The third option offered various means to cut the annual deficit through specific targets. One of these would have kept the existing network virtually intact, apart from the worst of the loss-making routes and the closing of many smaller stations. Overall passenger miles would have been cut by only 4 per cent. A fourth option would keep routes that served communities with a population greater than 25,000. Sir Peter Parker, the popular British Rail chairman from 1976–83, said that he found Serpell ‘as cosy as a razor blade’ – even though he had recommended his appointment. He exploited the report’s suggested closures to persuade the train drivers’ union ASLEF to call off a threatened strike that would have shut the rail system. Serpell, then seventy, who had become permanent secretary at the Ministry of Transport in 1968, even endured personal abuse from a guard on his train home to Devon. Mainly because of the extremely harsh first option that provoked so much outrage, the Serpell Report was quickly shelved, and it led to no changes being made to the network. Transport Minister David Howell, who had commissioned it, sat on it for a month, during which period the more salacious parts were leaked to the national press,

generating anger and fears among commuters and the rail unions. With a general election looming, many Conservative MPs became nervous. It was said by many that the Serpell Report was Howell’s downfall, for after the Conservatives’ 1983 election landslide boosted by the ‘Falklands Factor’, Thatcher dropped him from the cabinet. However, the report had given an insight into the way that some in the corridors of power were thinking. In 1983, Serpell himself said that he was aggrieved by the hostile reaction to his report, because its concern with railway finances was ‘in accordance with our terms of reference’. As history records, passenger numbers improved from the low of 1982, reaching a twenty-year high in 1988. With privatization looming in 1993, Serpell’s report was not only forgotten, but the backlash against it showed the depth of opposition to cutbacks in the rail network, both in lengthy debates in the Houses of Parliament and in a review by the Transport Select Committee. It led to a sea change in the way the nation considered its railways, and brought winds of change that led to a far more proactive approach towards the network, as British Rail went on to reform itself under new chairman Sir Robert Reid. By the summer of 1984, British Rail had gained Margaret Thatcher’s government’s green light for ECML electrification all the way to Edinburgh, as well as the first of many approvals for new fleets of electric and diesel locomotives and rolling stock. All 393 miles (632km) of the great London to Edinburgh route would remain intact.

The worst case scenario in the Serpell Report: Option A involved Britain’s national rail network being pruned back to a sub-basic level of a handful of inter-city routes, and no East Coast Main Line north of Newcastle.

Serpell retired to his native Devon and Dartmouth, famously – and here ironically – the only town in Britain with a railway station, but which has never had tracks or trains running into it, for it was built on the opposite side of the River Dart from the GWR rail terminus at Kingswear, to which it was linked by ferry. He died on 28 July 2008, aged ninety-six.

The First East Coast Electrification Scheme The electrification of at least part of the ECML was an idea that had been about for three-quarters of a century, long before the heroics of Flying Scotsman and Mallard. North Eastern Railway chief mechanical engineer Vincent Raven looked at introducing electric locomotives to the main line between York and Newcastle, and in 1913, the NER gave him the green light to convert as a testbed the 18-mile (29km) route from Shildon Yard, a collection point for coal, to Newport Yard, a distribution point for coal to docks, blast furnaces and iron works in the Stockton-Newport area. Electrification using a 1500V DC overhead system began the following year, with the first stage being opened on 1 July 1915, and the whole scheme completed on 10 January 1916. Raven designed ten 0-4+4-0 freight locomotives, which were constructed by Darlington Works between 1914 and 1919, with electrical equipment supplied by Siemens including twin pantographs on the central cab roof to pick up the overhead supply. They were designed to start a 1,400-ton train and haul it on the level at a minimum speed of 25mph (40km/h). Raven’s electrics impressed, so much so that they were considered by many to be better than the NER’s Q6 0-8-0 freight engines. Shildon’s No. 3 steam roundhouse was converted to accommodate all ten. However, declining coal traffic meant that there was never enough work for all ten. By the 1930s the overhead system needed replacing, but revenue from freight traffic had dropped to the point where it was deemed uneconomic to do so. It was decided to remove the wires and masts and revert to tried and tested steam haulage, and this was done in the first seven months of 1935. The LNER had planned to electrify the Woodhead Route from Manchester to Sheffield as early as the 1930s, but because of World War II, that did not happen until 1954. The LNER looked at converting the Shildon electrics into banking engines for this route, and one of them, No. 11, was modified for this purpose at Doncaster Works, but was not even tested. Another was transferred to Ilford in 1949 for shunting at the new electric carriage sheds built for the London Liverpool Street to

Shenfield electrification. Its final run there came on 4 November 1960 when the Shenfield line was converted to AC operation. As a ‘one off’, No. 100 was not converted to AC operation, and was officially withdrawn in April 1964 and scrapped, bringing to an ignominious end a great East Coast Main Line ‘might have been’ story.

A manufacturer’s photograph of one of Vincent Raven’s electric locomotives built for the North Eastern Railway. BEAMISH MUSEUM

What if Raven had electrified ‘his’ section of the route? Would Britain’s network have preceded rather than followed that of the USA in modernizing? Would we ever have seen an A4 Pacific? We will never know.

The Modern East Coast Speed Record Holder

The first part of the ECML to be electrified was the stretch between King’s Cross and Royston, work on which was completed between 1975 and 1978. The 1955 Modernization Plan had called for trunk routes to be electrified, but with British Railway making soaring losses, this was easier said than done. However, the West Coast Main Line electrification showed the multiple benefits that it could bring, and so there was a renewed impetus to similarly upgrade the backbone route on the opposite side of the country. Overhead electrification 25kV 50Hz AC was chosen, as on the WCML and as opposed to the third rail of the Southern Region. The work was commissioned as part of the Great Northern Suburban Electrification Project, and included the Hertford loop line, a 24-mile (39km) branch of the ECML. Following the go-ahead three years earlier, the section between Hitchin and Peterborough was electrified by 1987, with the wires extended to Doncaster and York in 1989, Newcastle in 1990 and Edinburgh in 1991. At the time it was said that the ECML was the longest construction site in the world. Also given the go-ahead was the extension of the electrification scheme on the line between Edinburgh and Carstairs, on the WCML, and the ECML’s 4.7-mile (7.6km) North Berwick branch.

The Class 89s were to have been a new type of locomotive built for the newly electrified East Coast Main Line, but a change of plan saw only one built, No. 89001. Nicknamed ‘Aardvark’, enthusiasts called it ‘The Badger’ owing to its slanted front ends. Now preserved at Barrow Hill near Chesterfield, it has been repainted into its original BR InterCity livery; this photo was taken on 26 September 2015. AUTHOR

For the new services on the ECML, the InterCity Class 225 electric multiple units were introduced, instead of the planned new fleet of Class 89 Co-Cos. Indeed, only one Class 89, No. 89001, was built, and that is now preserved. InterCity 225 sets comprise a Class 91 Electra Bo-Bo locomotive, nine Mk.4 coaches and a Class 22 driving van trailer, which allows the train to be controlled from the rear. The design of the 225 was heavily influenced by aspects of the discontinued Advanced Passenger Train project. The body shells are of all-steel construction, and the motors are body-mounted and drive bogiemounted gearboxes via cardan shafts. That lowers the unsprung mass and reduces wear on rails at high speeds. The 91s were equipped with underslung transformers, so their bodies are relatively empty compared to other electric locomotive types. The Class 91s were built by British Rail Engineering Ltd at Crewe Works, while the coaches came from GEC-Alstom in Birmingham.

British Rail commissioned a design that could function as a power car in a 225 set, and could also run as a stand-alone locomotive in its own right. This led to a second cab being incorporated into the non-streamlined blunt end at the rear of the 91. Operating with the blunt end first limits the maximum speed of the locomotive to 110mph (177km/h) because the aerodynamics of the pantograph’s knuckle create excessive uplift force on the overhead lines. The first of the class to be completed was No. 91001, which was unveiled on 14 February 1988, before undergoing tests from Crewe and then at the Railway Technical Centre in Derby. Trial running over the ECML began from Bounds Green depot in late March 1988.

This plaque fixed to one of the catenary masts at Peterborough station commemorates the fact that on 7 February 1985 it became the first of 35,000 to be erected to complete the electrification of the East Coast Main Line. AUTHOR

When they first appeared, the Class 91s at 6,300hp were the most powerful locomotive in Britain, with computer-based electronics for power and brake control. Amongst the many new features were a streamlined No. 1 end for high-speed operation, and a slab-fronted No. 2 end for slow-speed operation. On 17 September 1989, an InterCity 225 hauled by Class 91 No. 91010, since renumbered 91110 and named David Livingstone, reached 162.6mph (261.6km/h) on, yet again, Stoke Bank, with the DVT leading the train. In another test, an InterCity 225 consisting of a Class 91, five Mk.4s and a DVT, covered the King’s Cross to Edinburgh run in three hours, twenty-nine minutes and thirty seconds – a record for the route. The average speed was 112.5mph (181km/h), and the official top speed of 140mph (225km/h) was reached on several occasions. On 3 March 1989, the first Class 91 entered passenger traffic when No. 91001 hauled the 5.36pm King’s Cross to Peterborough service. Then at 6.50am on 11 March 1989 the King’s Cross to Leeds service ascended Stoke Bank at 140mph (225km/h) – and the guard announced that it had done this near the spot where Mallard had set its world steam speed record of 126.1mph (202.8km/h) while descending Stoke Bank fifty-one years earlier. Class 91 No. 91010 (now 91110, and formally named Battle of Britain Memorial Flight on 2 June 2012) holds the British locomotive speed record at 161.7 mph (260.2km/h), set on 17 September 1989, just south of Little Bytham on a test run down Stoke Bank with the DVT leading. That made No. 91010 officially the fastest British locomotive of all, and underpinned the government’s faith in its ECML electrification investment. (Although the Advanced Passenger Train and Eurostar units have run much faster, they are both electric multiple units as opposed to locomotives.) The full InterCity 225 units entered regular service on the ECML in 1990. In all, a total of thirty-one Class 91s were built, the last being delivered in February 1991.

A Class 91 locomotive on a test train approaches Tallington level crossing in Lincolnshire on 3 July 1988. BRIAN SHARPE

One of the then-new Class 225 InterCity units passing Yaxley on the approach to Peterborough on 2 June 1990. BRIAN SHARPE

Locomotive speed record holder Class 91 No. 91110 was formally named Battle of Britain Memorial Flight by television presenter Carol Vorderman in a ceremony to mark the opening of Railfest 2012 at the National Railway Museum on 2 June that year. After the unveiling of its specially designed livery featuring the planes and insignia of the RAF Battle of Britain Memorial Flight along with its new nameplates, the Flight’s Spitfire, Hurricane and Lancaster staged a spectacular and emotive flypast over the event. AUTHOR

Ken Humphrey and John Swaby were reunited with celebrity Class 91 No. 91110 on Saturday 2 June 2012, the opening day of the National Railway Museum’s nine-day Railfest 2012. They were behind the controls on 17 September 1989 when it set a new British locomotive speed record at Little Bytham, near the spot where Mallard touched 126mph (202.7km/h) in 1938. AUTHOR

On 26 September 1991, Class 91 No. 91031 (now 91131), hauling five Mk.4 coaches and a DVT on a test run, ran between King’s Cross and Edinburgh in three hours, twenty-nine minutes and thirty seconds. The set covered the route at an average speed of 112.5mph (181km/h) and reached the full 140mph (225km/h) several times during the run. This feat is still the current record for the entire route. On 2 June 1995, an InterCity 225 set what was then a new UK record for a timetabled passenger service when it hit 154mph (247.8km/h) on a Newcastle to Peterborough train. Between 2000 and 2003, the entire fleet of Class 91 underwent a refit to improve reliability, under the banner of Project Delta.

The Electrification of North Berwick

The short North Berwick branch was built by the North British Railway to link the East Lothian seaside town to its main line at Drew Junction. It was a strategic move, because at the time it was feared that railway king George Hudson was backing plans for a rival line. Opened in 1850, at first it made losses, but North Berwick took off when Albert Edward, Prince of Wales (the future King Edward VII) visited by train in 1859. It became a favoured resort for the wealthy, and in 1894 the station was enlarged to cope with extra traffic. Diesel multiple units replaced steam on the branch in 1958, and goods traffic ceased on 1 January 1968. British Rail tried to close the branch, along with all ECML local stations east of Edinburgh, but the Minister of Transport refused permission; however, services were drastically pruned back. The station buildings were demolished in 1985 and the platform shortened, but the provision of a park-and-ride car park helped revive the branch’s fortunes. The electrification of the ECML brought a major boost to the branch. Agreement was reached between British Rail and Lothian Regional Council to share the cost of electrifying the branch, at a cost of £1.3 million. Accordingly, electric services started on 8 July 1991, since when passenger numbers have risen steadily, again bringing into question the Beeching era strategy of closing lossmaking rural lines, not to mention Serpell’s worst-case proposal for the Newcastle to Edinburgh route. Before the privatization of British Rail, InterCity Class 125 dieselelectric units occasionally ran to North Berwick if no other train was available. The North Berwick branch is now officially considered to be part of the ECML.

Class 380 electric multiple unit No. 380104 waits at North Berwick station with a train bound for Edinburgh Waverley on 23 June 2012. The Class 380s arrived on the branch the previous June, replacing the earlier Class 322s, which were transferred back to England. Services in 2016 were provided by Abellio ScotRail. GEOFF SHEPPARD/CCL

The Hertford Loop and the Moorgate Line Two other electrified branches that are today classed as part of the ECML are the Hertford and Moorgate lines. A major commuter route for the capital and also a diversionary route for the main line, the 24mile (39km) Hertford Line, nearly always referred to as the Hertford Loop, leaves the ECML at Langley South junction to the south of Stevenage, and rejoins it at Wood Green North junction, to the north of Alexandra Palace station. Intermediate stations are Watton-atStone (where Gresley died), Hertford North, Bayford, Cuffley, Crews

Hill, Gordon Hill, Enfield Chase, Grange Park, Winchmore Hill, Palmers Green and Bowes Park. The line was opened in three stages between 1871 and 1924. The Enfield Branch Railway between Enfield and Wood Green was built by the London & York Railway. Work on a northern extension to Hertford and Stevenage – in a bid to increase ECML capacity by avoiding the bottleneck of Welwyn Viaduct – began in 1905. The extension included the 2,684-yard (2,454m) Ponsbourne Tunnel, the longest in eastern England and the last to be constructed using traditional methods. World War I delayed the completion of the extension to Stevenage until 4 March 1918, and then it was opened for goods trains only. Passengers were able to use it on 2 June 1924, when Hertford North station was opened. The Hertford Loop was electrified in 1977. Today’s Moorgate Line – popularly known as the Northern City Line – runs from Moorgate to Finsbury Park, and is the southeastern branch of the ECML. It started out as the Great Northern & City Railway, which was designed to allow electrified trains to run from the Great Northern Railway’s main line at Finsbury Park into the city at Moorgate. Unlike the tube tunnels, those of this route were built large enough to take a main line train. However, the GNR eventually decided to oppose the scheme and cancelled its own electrification plans. The GN&CR nonetheless opened in 1904 as an electric line, with its northern terminus in tunnels beneath the GNR station at Finsbury Park.

Modern-day Great Northern Class 313 unit No. 313044 at Alexandra Palace on 26 March 2015. AUTHOR

In 1913 the line was bought by the Metropolitan Railway, but remained isolated from the rest of the rail network. When the Metropolitan became part of London Undergound with the formation of the London Passenger Transport Board in 1933, the line was renamed the Northern City Line. However, 1930s plans to link it to suburban routes to Alexandra Palace and Edgware came to nothing because of the outbreak of World War II. In 1964, services were cut back from Finsbury Park to Drayton Park to enable the new Victoria Line to use Finsbury Park’s low-level platforms. Northbound Northern City line diverted to a new platform alongside the northbound Victoria Line at Highbury and Islington. The line was branded as the Northern Line (Highbury Branch) in 1970, and a year later, agreement was reached for British Rail to take it over. At long last it was to be linked to the main line at Finsbury Park as the original promoters had intended. The move was part of a bigger scheme to electrify ECML suburban services, and congestion at King’s Cross was relieved by running commuter trains to Moorgate instead.

London Underground services along this route to Moorgate ceased in October 1975, and British Rail services began the following August, under the banner of Great Northern Electrics. Now owned by Network Rail, train operator Great Northern (formerly First Capital Connect) runs services over it from Moorgate to Welwyn Garden City, and to Hertford North, Stevenage, Hitchin and Letchworth Garden City via the Hertford Loop. The name ‘Northern City Line’ has been revived to refer to the underground part of the route.

CHAPTER 16

Reach for the Stars: The Selby Diversion The East Coast Main Line, as we have seen, was by no means planned all in one go, in the same way as, for instance, the Channel Tunnel Rail Link. The Leamside line was the product of an early diversionary route, aimed at eliminating a kink in the route. The process has continued in the post-Beeching era, with the building of a new 14-mile (22.5km) section of high-speed line between Selby and York, to bypass a coalfield. In the early 1970s, the National Coal Board began planning a new underground mining complex in the Selby coalfield. However, it was considered that the workings presented a risk of subsidence to the ECML. A planning inquiry held in 1975 heard that because of the high water table and sand substrata, the mine could create unpredictable subsidence beneath the railway, which would then become unfit to handle high-speed trains. The inquiry recommended that the line should be diverted, and in 1976 the NCB was granted planning permission. The NCB agreed to pay for the diversion, and in 1979, the diversion of the ECML was authorized by the British Railways (Selby) Act. MPs had been told in the House of Commons that if a mile-wide bed of coal beneath ECML was left untapped, it would be tantamount to a loss to the NCB of up to £800 million. The diversion left Selby without a high-speed ECML service. It would leave the existing route at Templehirst Junction and join the York & North Midland Railway route at Colton Junction near Church Fenton. The diversion was designed for a line speed of 125mph

(200km/h), and in this respect was the first British purpose-built line of its kind. The new line also avoided the speed reduction over the 130ft (40m) long Selby swingbridge across the River Ouse, a major bottleneck on the ECML, where four tracks had to be reduced to two. Work began on 29 July 1980, in the presence of British Rail chairman Peter Parker. The contractor was A. Monk & Company Ltd, and the total cost was £63 million. The diversion opened three months ahead of schedule, and DMUs between York and Hull began using it from 16 May 1983. InterCity services started running over the diversion from 3 October 1983, the day it was formally opened. After that, the old line from Selby to York, the NER’s York and Doncaster branch that dated from 1871, was lifted. British Rail research in the 1990s indicated that the new diversionary route could be upgraded for 160mph (260km/h) running.

Where no HST has Gone Before… Selby station was the first station in Yorkshire when it opened in 1834 as the terminus of the Leeds & Selby Railway. With the development of the network it became the focal point of junctions of several lines, including those from Selby to Driffield, opened in 1848, and from Selby to Goole in 1910. Today, Selby’s lines lead to Leeds, Hull and Doncaster, and that swingbridge is still in use when needed. It is still possible to catch a train from Selby to King’s Cross, on Hull– London services. In 2009, the town celebrated the 175th anniversary of its first station.

Class 55 Deltic No. 55009 Alycidon crosses the Selby swingbridge with a southbound service to King’s Cross on 27 July 1976. Alycidon entered British Rail service as D9009 in July 1961, and was named at Doncaster after the 1949 winner of the Ascot Gold Cup, so becoming one of the Finsbury Park depot Deltics named after famous racehorses. Renumbered in January 1974, it was the last Deltic to record 2 million miles before individual mileage records for the Class 55 fleet were abandoned. Its last British Rail train was a Peterborough to Newcastle service on 2 January 1982, and it was one of the last four Deltics to be withdrawn after more than 2 decades of service. However, later that year No. 55009 was bought by the Deltic Preservation Society, and moved to the North Yorkshire Moors Railway where it entered traffic almost immediately. It was re-certified for the main line in 1999 and has been used on rail tours. BRIAN SHARPE

In the late 1980s, much of the trackbed of the lifted section of the ECML was converted into the York and Selby Railway Path, hich now forms part of Route 65 of the National Cycle Network. It was the second section of disused railway bought for conversion into a traffic-free path for pedestrians and cyclists by cycleway charity Sustrans. The first 6.4 miles (10km) running south from York now doubles up as a linear model of nothing less than the solar system. Under the banner of Cycle the Solar System, the model was made possible by a millennium award to its creators Dave Coulthard, Willy Hoedeman

and Peter Thompson, administered by the Royal Society and the British Association, with Sustrans as the community partner. Along this stretch of the cyclepath can be found models of all the planets, spaced apart at scale distances, as well as models of the Cassini and Voyager spacecraft.

Selby station today is no longer a through route on the East Coast Main Line. The swingbridge can be seen in the background. AUTHOR

The swingbridge over the Yorkshire Ouse at Selby today. AUTHOR

Selby swingbridge open: the structure was a notorious bottleneck on the East Coast Main Line. AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

The site of Escrick station on what was the Selby to York section of the East Coast Main Line. The main building stood to the far left. NIGEL THOMPSON/CCL

The model is built to a scale of 575,872,239 to 1: this means that every 109 yards (100 metres) along the track corresponds to more than 35 million miles (57 million km) in space. Scaled down, the speed of light is about 1.16mph (1.87km/h), so it is possible to walk at three times light speed and cycle at ten miles that speed. That is faster than any steam locomotive or High Speed Train has ever gone along the stretch before; Captain Kirk and Mr Spock would surely be impressed. To the south, the stretch between Barlby and Riccall was used for a new bypass on the A19.

The sun is not shining today – but it still hangs over the trackbed of the former section of the East Coast Main Line south of York, which, following the 1983 Selby coalfield diversion, became part of the ‘Cycle the Solar System’ trail. PETER THOMPSON

Saturn the ringed planet stands on the site of the former Naburn station, with some of the extant buildings in the background. PETER THOMPSON

The former swing bridge at Naburn is now part of the cycle trail and is decorated by the Fisher of Dreams Sculpture. PETER THOMPSON

CHAPTER 17

Scotsman’s Modern-Day Successors The InterCity East Coast franchise for East Coast passenger trains was formed following the privatization of British Rail in 1994. The franchise covers the routes from King’s Cross to Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Aberdeen, Bradford, Harrogate and Hull, and was transferred to the private sector in April 1996. However, under the post-privatization open access policy, operators other than the franchise holder can apply to run services over the route. Operating under the Great North Eastern Railway brand, Bermuda-registered company Sea Containers Ltd successfully bid for the franchise, which in March 2005 it was awarded for seven years, with a three-year extension provided that targets were met. GNER agreed to pay the Department of Transport £1.3 billion over ten years. However, GNER sustained financial problems, having overbid for the franchise, and because its parent was in difficulties too. In December 2006 the government announced that it would be taking the franchise away from Sea Containers and re-tendering it, but would pay GNER to run services on a fixed fee management contract until a new operator was appointed.

A GNER Class 225 set approaches Greatford crossing north of Peterborough with a London-bound service on 6 June 2007. AUTHOR

A Class 125 HST led by Class 43 power car No. 43110 Stirlingshire in GNER livery at Peterborough, with a King’s Cross–Aberdeen service on 14 November 2007. HUGH LLEWELYN/CCL

In August 2007 the franchise was awarded to National Express, and GNER services switched over to a new company, National Express East Coast, on 9 December that year. Because of rising fuel costs and the start of the post-2008 recession, the new operator also

ran into financial difficulties on the route. Ticket sales in the first six months of 2009 fell by 1 per cent, despite forecasts. Talks were held with the government over possible financial assistance, but in July 2009, when it failed to renegotiate the terms of its contract, National Express announced it planned to default on the franchise. The Department of Transport responded by renationalizing the franchise – but what a U-turn, many critics commented. Before 1994, privatization as led by the Conservative government of the day had loudly extolled the virtues of denationalizing the rail industry to make it more efficient and reduce the burden on the taxpayer, and now this particular slice of the national network was being taken back into public ownership, as from 14 November 2009. In July 2009, the Department for Transport had established a holiday company, Directly Operated Railways, to run any rail franchise that had to be taken back into public ownership, and a subsidiary, East Coast Main Line Company, took over this one. However, it was announced that the intention was for operations to return to a private franchise. A date for this to happen was initially set at December 2013, but it was delayed. In November 2014, the eight-year East Coast Main Line franchise was awarded to the Stagecoach/Virgin Trains joint venture company InterCity Railways Limited. The company began operations on 1 March 2015, trading as East Coast Main Line. Services were run using the fleet of InterCity 125 and 225 units inherited from East Coast. Most of the driving cars had been re-badged as Virgin within three days of operating starting, and all sets had been painted into the eye-catching Virgin red and white livery by 15 November.

In the new National Express East Coast livery, a Class 125 set crosses the Forth Bridge on the first day of the company’s new franchise taken over from GNER. NATIONAL EXPRESS

Carrying the renationalized East Coast livery, InterCity 125 High Speed Train Class 43 power car No. 43315 heads over Helpston level crossing 5½ miles (8.8km) north of Peterborough on 9 January 2012. AUTHOR

East Coast Class 91 No. 91107 was temporarily renumbered 91007 in 2013 as part of the promotion of the James Bond movie Skyfall. When the Skyfall vinyl overlays were removed, the locomotive reverted to No. 91107. AUTHOR

Virgin Trains, the brand name of Virgin Rail Group – 51 per cent of which is owned by Virgin Group and 49 per cent by Stagecoach – has operated the West Coast passenger train franchise since 1997, linking London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow, and winning much praise for the quality of its services. In June 2014, the Department for Transport awarded the group a new franchise until at least April 2017. Since Virgin expanded to take over the ECML, Sunderland and Stirling were given new direct services, with forty-two extra services a week between London and Edinburgh. On 28 October 2015 Virgin unveiled a new look Flying Scotsman train during a ceremony in Edinburgh Waverley attended by Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon. Class 91 power car No. 91101 was for the second time in its history re-liveried as the historic brand to promote rail travel to and from Scotland. On the same day, Virgin announced a £16 million contract to refurbish all thirty-five diesel

engines for its High Speed Trains, which are serviced and maintained at its Craigentinny depot in the city.

Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister of Scotland, and David Horne, managing director at Virgin Trains East Coast, launch the new Virgin service with the world’s most famous train name on 28 October 2015.

The First Minister said: ‘For over 150 years the Flying Scotsman service has connected Edinburgh and London by the historic east coast rail route. It is wonderful to see the name of the Flying Scotsman train kept alive on the route with a new, contemporary design.’ However, the Flying Scotsman named train had never really died out. Following nationalization in 1948, it had ceased to be a non-stop named train, and called at Peterborough, York and Newcastle en route. When Deltics replaced steam, the train became a focal point of an advertising campaign, just as it had been in 1928. Then after British Rail was privatized, the Great North Eastern Railway continued using the name from 1996 to November 2007, and even branded itself ‘The Route of the Flying Scotsman’. Its successor on

the route, National Express East Coast, continued using the name until November 2009, when the franchise was taken back.

Three Virgin Class 91s, the nearest being No. 91101 Flying Scotsman, and a Class 43 High Speed Train (third in) line up at King’s Cross on 13 April 2016. AUTHOR

The Flying Scotsman had been relaunched by East Coast on 23 May 2011, when No. 91101 was re-liveried in brand colours for the first time. The new service could leave Edinburgh at 5.40am and be in King’s Cross exactly four hours later, despite stopping at Newcastle. Virgin Trains was, therefore, merely continuing a great ECML and British tradition.

A King’s Cross-bound Peterborough Class 225 SET prepares to depart from Peterborough on 24 February 2016. Today, Peterborough marks the furthest extremity of the outer London services; beyond here, the ECML takes on a far more rural and isolated character, with, as previously stated, the smaller intermediate stations having been closed in the post-war British Railways era. AUTHOR

Under open access, independent operator Grand Central has operated trains from Sunderland to King’s Cross since December 2007 – its ‘North Eastern’ service – and from Bradford Interchange to King’s Cross since May 2010 – its ‘West Riding’ service. It is a subsidiary of Arriva UK Trains, which since 2010 has been owned by Deutsche Bahn. In August 2014, Grand Central was granted an extension of its operating rights until December 2026. Class 43 HST No. 43468 stands at King’s Cross on 1 December 2013. AUTHOR

Under the post-privatization provisions of open access, First Hull Trains, which is owned by FirstGroup, runs long-distance services between Hull and Beverley and King’s Cross, and has a track-access agreement until December 2029. Class 180 Adelante five-car DMU No. 180109 in the First Hull Trains ‘dynamic lines’ livery passes Greatford crossing near Stamford on 16 April 2012. AUTHOR

The Day of the Azumas However, the Department of Transport had earlier drawn up plans under the banner of the InterCity Express Programme to replace the existing Inter-City sets, both on the ECML and Great Western Main Line, with new modern trains, and on 12 February 2009 it was announced that a consortium called ‘Agility Trains’ and led by Hitachi was the preferred bidder to provide them. A £4.5 billion order for 596 carriages for use on both routes was announced in July 2012, and a £1.2 billion option for a further thirty nine-car electric trains to replace the InterCity 225 on the ECML was taken up on 18 July 2013. Under the programme, there will be two variants of the futuristic new multiple units based on the Hitachi A-train design: the Class 800

electric/dieselelectric hybrids, which can be powered both from overhead lines and from underfloor diesel generators on nonelectrified routes – with the changeovers able to be carried out at line speed – and the Class 801s, which are electric only. What is more, just as with Gresley’s greats, the new trains for the ECML are being built alongside the ECML, in this case at a new, purpose-built Hitachi Rail Europe Ltd factory in Newton Ayliffe.

Sir Richard Branson unveils the first of the Virgin Trains Azuma fleet at King’s Cross on 18 March 2016. VIRGIN TRAINS

The new trains were titled ‘Virgin Azuma’, ‘azuma’ being the Japanese word for ‘east’. In a landmark ceremony at King’s Cross on 18 March 2016, attended by Virgin Group founder Sir Richard Branson, Virgin Trains unveiled the first of its new fleet. The Azumas can accelerate from 0–125mph (200km/h) a minute quicker than their InterCity predecessors, and yet have lower emissions. And in a further giant stride away from those long-distant days of the stagecoach and highwayman on the Great North Road, the Virgin Azumas hold out the prospect of 140mph (225km/h) along the

ECML, opening up the prospect of even faster journeys between King’s Cross and Edinburgh Waverley.

One of the new Virgin Azumas in full flight along the East Coast Main Line, as depicted by an artist. VIRGIN TRAINS

The front of the first Virgin Azuma to be unveiled. VIRGIN TRAINS

The trains will come into operation in 2018, it was announced. Along with reducing journey times – making four hours between London and Scotland, and two hours between London and Leeds the norm – capacity will be increased by 28 per cent during peak times. While the Azuma will initially reach speeds of up to 125mph (200km/h), it was announced at the same time that a cross-industry working group, including Network Rail, would investigate their potential to operate at 140mph (225km/h). Branson said: This is a hugely important moment for passengers on the East Coast. A line which has witnessed the historic Flying Scotsman and Mallard will now see passenger services transformed with the UK’s most advanced long distance trains. Our customers on the West Coast have already seen what Virgin can bring to train travel, and how the Pendolinos have made a huge difference to speed and comfort. Our new fleet of Azumas will bring a similar

transformation to the East Coast, and propel one of the UK’s most prestigious lines into the twenty-first century.

An artist’s impression of the interior of one of the new Virgin Azuma carriages. VIRGIN TRAINS

David Horne, managing director of Virgin Trains East Coast, said: ‘Since Virgin Trains launched services on the East Coast in 2015 we have committed more than £40 million to improving our existing fleet for passengers. As part of this we’re bringing in brand new interiors with new seats in both first and standard, new carpets and mood lighting – a first for trains in the UK.’ Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin said: ‘The state-of-the-art InterCity Express trains heading to Virgin will transform rail travel for passengers between London, the North East and Scotland.’ In June 2016, former East Coast Main Line Company managing director Karen Boswell was awarded the OBE in the Queen’s Ninetieth Birthday Honours List in recognition of her contribution and services to the UK rail industry during her five-and-a-half years in the post. From 2009, Karen led a highly successful transformation of East Coast to significantly enhance the value of the business in

preparation for its successful return to the private sector in the form of Virgin Trains in March 2015, by which time around £1 billion was returned to the taxpayer. During Karen’s leadership, East Coast increased customer and employee engagement, delivered safer engineering and infrastructure standards, improved train performance, and implemented new capital investment programmes while increasing financial returns at every stage. In June 2015 Karen was appointed managing director of Hitachi Rail Europe Ltd, at a time when it was delivering the new trains for the ECML.

Vote of Confidence On 26 January 2016 it was only too clear that Sir David Serpell and his report were by then ancient history, a history that thankfully was never made. That was the day when the Scottish government announced a £200 million investment package to improve rail links between Aberdeen, the Scottish Central Belt, and destinations along the East Coast Main Line. The money would be invested over the following five to ten years to help improve journey times and increase capacity on key rail links between Aberdeen, the Central Belt, and destinations along the East Coast Main Line, including London, York and Newcastle, announced by Keith Brown, Cabinet Secretary of Infrastructure, Investment and Cities. The announcement was, understandably, warmly welcomed by the Consortium of East Coast Main Line Authorities, which works to secure investment in the 580-mile (933km) route from Inverness and Aberdeen to King’s Cross, and calls for both the Westminster and Holyrood governments to prioritize it. Consortium chairman Chris Steward said: The East Coast community is the backbone of the UK economy – communities served by the line contribute more than £300 billion to the economy every year. Investing to deliver extra trains, speed up journeys, improve resilience and increase capacity in any one area along the East Coast route can bring

benefits to the twenty million passengers who use the route every year. Transport ministers come and go, reports and White Papers gather dust in forgotten archives, and yet the ECML continues to grow from strength to strength. Since the dark days of the worst possible scenario option contained in the Serpell report, rail traffic on both the ECML and over the network in general has flourished far beyond the dismal predictions of the Beeching era. At the time of writing in 2016, and indeed for many years before, the ECML is suffering from a lack of capacity, with bottlenecks inhibiting growth by placing limitations on available train paths. Network Rail’s East Coast Main Line 2016 Capacity Review identified the problem areas, and pointed the way to solving these where possible. Demand for paths now exceeds the capacity available, and the difference in the speed of services on the ECML is the key constraint as to how the capacity is used, said the report. One way ahead is using ‘trade-offs’ to equalize the use of paths between fast and slow services at key points along the route. Four sections of the route were identified here: the fast and slow line between Finsbury Park and Welwyn Garden City; the threetrack section between Huntingdon and Peterborough; the two-track section between Peterborough and Doncaster; and the two-track section between Northallerton and Newcastle. However, such tradeoffs are unlikely to meet passenger, freight customer or stakeholder requirements, the report said.

The twenty-first century has not only seen major improvements to King’s Cross but also to Edinburgh Waverley at the opposite end of the ECML. During 2006–7, parts of the station were extensively refurbished, with two new through platforms provided. Furthermore, platforms 12 to 18 were electrified for electric trains from the Airdrie–Bathgate Rail Link, as well as in readiness for future lines to be electrified under the Edinburgh/Glasgow Improvement Project. Between 2010 and 2012, the 365,840sq ft (34,000sq m) of roof glazing was replaced with new strengthened clear glass panels (pictured), and as at King’s Cross, the amount of natural light in the station was vastly increased. Also as part of a £130 million improvement programme, between 2012 and 2014 a new set of covered escalators leading to Princes Street was installed, canopies over the old ‘suburban line’ were replaced, new interior lifts and escalators added, and the central space in the ticket hall restored. NETWORK RAIL

The key constraint on the ECML was found to be the section between Peterborough and Huntingdon, particularly in the southbound direction where the extended section of two-track railway is a large capacity constraint. Passenger and freight growth cannot both be accommodated in the southbound direction – and an expansion to four tracks over this section, which largely passes through flat fenland country, was recommended by the study.

The GNR’s original main line, from Peterborough to Spalding, Lincoln and Doncaster, has been identified for an upgrade to handle large freight traffic; such an improvement would reduce pressure on the ECML between Peterborough and Doncaster.

Despite the advent of several generations of diesel and electric locomotives, there are still vestiges of the steam age to be found on the East Coast Main Line, like this traditional gated level crossing at Etton, north of Peterborough, worked by a keeper in a hut in the time-honoured way. In recent times, Network Rail has strived to eradicate gated foot crossings on the route. AUTHOR

The section between Northallerton and Newcastle was said to be approaching full capacity, and any increase in passenger or freight traffic would lead to the situation where demand for paths will exceed supply. Possible solutions include the diversion of passenger or freight services via Eaglescliffe and an upgraded Stillington line, and, as stated in Chapter 13, the reopening of the Leamside line. On 12 May 2016, the Office of Rail and Road announced its approval of applications from Virgin Trains East Coast and First Group for new services between King’s Cross and Edinburgh, to be introduced in stages over the coming years, in some cases once

Network Rail completes a programme of work to increase track capacity. John Larkinson, ORR’s director of railway markets and economics, said: ‘These new train services will give passengers more choice on services to Edinburgh and London, and will provide more frequent trains to towns and cities that are not so well served by rail today.’ The extra services were to be targeted at passengers travelling to Middlesbrough, York, Newcastle, Morpeth, Lincoln, Leeds, Bradford, Harrogate and Stevenage.

CHAPTER 18

A New Steam Star for the TwentyFirst Century Volunteer-led railway preservation is considered to have begun with the saving of the Talyllyn Railway in mid-Wales in 1951. Since then, it has worked many wonders. Notable examples that come to mind include the following: the Ffestiniog Railway’s building of a deviation around part of its line that was flooded by the Central Electricity Generating Board to create Llyn Ystradau reservoir as part of a hydro-electric scheme; the rebuilding of unique British Railways Class 8P No. 71000 Duke of Gloucester from scrapyard condition after key components had been removed, and the resolving of design faults that had hampered its performances in the steam era; and the creation of a double-track heritage trunk line in the Great Central Railway. These are just three examples amongst many, many others far too numerous to list here. Many enthusiasts consider that the building of a new main-line Pacific steam locomotive from scratch would be near the top of the movement’s achievement tree, if not at the summit. In so many ways, new-build £3 million Peppercorn A1 Pacific No. 60163 Tornado is to the twenty-first century what the likes of Flying Scotsman and Mallard were to the twentieth – a gleaming, allconquering, out-of-the-box locomotive that draws crowds of admirers wherever it goes. Builder The A1 Steam Locomotive Trust, a registered charity, did not invent the new-build concept, and there have been projects launched and completed both before and after

Tornado, but at the time of writing, it remains the only one to have gained main-line certification. The Tornado project began in April 1990, when enthusiast Mike Wilson of Stockton-on-Tees proposed in the now-defunct fortnightly newspaper Steam Railway News that a group should be set up to build a new Peppercorn Pacific. Amongst those who read his words were brothers David and Phil Champion. David had been considering the idea of new-build since the 1960s, and had viewed with interest engineer Mike Satow’s replicas of locomotives from the dawn of steam, and the new Ffestiniog Railway double Fairlie Earl of Merioneth emerge from Boston Lodge Works in 1979. Furthermore, the above-mentioned restoration of No. 71000 Duke of Gloucester showed that it was feasible to make so many replacement components that the next logical step would be a completely new locomotive. The A1 Pacific was glaringly absent from the ECML heritage fleet, and possibly the most significant locomotive type of the post-war era not to be represented in preservation. There was an A2 in No. 60532 Blue Peter, an A3 in Flying Scotsman and six surviving A4s, four of them still in the UK. Essentially a product of the post-war LNER design team, yet actually built under BR auspices, the type proved to be the worthy successor of the Gresley class A3 and A4 designs, being a highly capable and reliable machine, perfectly suited to the challenging post-war conditions it found itself born into. They were designed by Arthur Henry Peppercorn, OBE (29 January 1889 – 3 March 1951), the last chief mechanical engineer of the LNER. Peppercorn merged the best of Gresley’s A4 design and that of his predecessor Edward Thompson’s A2/1 to create first of all the new A2 Pacifics, and then the A1.

New-build £3 million Peppercorn A1 Pacific No. 60163 Tornado storms through Doncaster on 24 April 2009, in its first operating livery of apple green with British Railways lettering. DAVE COOPER/A1SLT

A total of forty-nine A1s were built, being outshopped after nationalization. They were designed to cope with the heaviest postwar passenger trains between King’s Cross, Edinburgh and Aberdeen, which normally consisted of trains with up to fifteen coaches and up to 550 tons in weight. They were able to haul such trains on the flat at a speed of 60–70mph (95–115km/h), and the five examples of the class that were fitted with Timken roller bearings turned in some of the highest reliability and mileage figures between overhauls of any of BR’s steam express passenger fleet. The A1s had been intended to take over from the A4s on non-stop express duties, but they failed to make inroads into the King’s Cross–Edinburgh empire ruled by the A4s, which, following their postwar frame alignment and fitting of double Kylchap chimneys, dominated the ECML once more. However, the two big advantages of Peppercorn’s two designs were their reliability and economy, resulting from their hybrid nature. Peppercorn, who was given the job

title of ‘Chief Mechanical Engineer, Eastern and North Eastern Regions’ by British Railways, retired in 1949. In the mid-1960s, many classes of steam locomotive were brought to extinction by the scrapman, the preservation movement at the time not having acquired the stature to save them. Enthusiast and businessman Geoff Drury found himself having to choose between saving the last operational class A1 No. 60145 Saint Mungo, which had a working life of just seventeen years, or Blue Peter. He chose the A2, and by summer of 1966, all Peppercorn’s A1s had been scrapped. With regard to the new-build A1, the Champions contacted Mike Wilson offering to join the project, and David recruited locomotive engineer Ian Storey and Newcastle-upon-Tyne lawyer Stuart Palmer, a former colleague. The National Railway Museum confirmed that all the A1 drawings still existed, and so they launched the project in York at the end of 1990. David, a businessman from the north-east, realized that it would not be enough to build a replica A1 Pacific: it had to be the next A1 Pacific, the fiftieth member of the class, thereby allowing small changes to be made to the original design to meet modern standards. It would be numbered next in the class after No. 60162 Saint Johnstoun. David saw from the outset that it was all too easy for enthusiasts to draw up a build plan for a new locomotive on the back of a beermat. We can all dream to our hearts’ content, but only money, and not raw enthusiasm or nostalgia for the steam era, can make those dreams a reality. David was the driving force behind a sound business plan according to which the locomotive would be built stage by stage – at an estimated cost back then of £500,000. He sat down one evening with a glass of wine and began working out figures on the back of an envelope. He estimated that if just 1,000 people could be persuaded to donate £1.25 a week, it would take only ten years to raise the necessary finance, allowing for charity gift aid. And so the concept of the A1 covenantor was born. The figure of £1.25 happened to be around the average price of a pint of beer in the 1990s, and so the phrase ‘An A1 for the price of a pint!’ was coined – and one that proved phenomenally successful for the builders.

Six days after the trust was launched, around 120 people packed out the inaugural meeting at the Railway Institute in York on 17 November 1990. People had to stand on the stairs outside because there was not enough room. Two years later, marketing expert and future A1 Trust chairman Mark Allatt came on board, to be joined by experienced project planner Rob Morland, and then Andrew Dow, the late former head of the National Railway Museum. It was known that a large collection of former LNER drawings from Doncaster survived, uncatalogued in the vaults of the National Railway Museum. The drawings had to be sorted, photographed and catalogued, and here Tornado project engineer David Elliott joined the project. On 22 April 1994 the frame plates – traditionally the single component that gives a locomotive its identity – were rolled at British Steel’s Scunthorpe works. It was intended to have the frames cut out at Doncaster Works on the same machine that had profiled the frames for the A1s and the A4s, but very sadly it was sold a matter of days before Tornado’s frames were due to arrive.

Dorothy Mather, the widow of designer Arthur H. Peppercorn, lights the first fire in Tornado at Darlington on 9 January 2008. AUTHOR

The new A1’s main frames were profiled at BSD Plate and Profile Products’ 38-acre (15ha) site in Leeds, West Yorkshire. The CNC Plasma and Oxyfuel profile cutting system, which cut the main frames from steel donated by British Steel, was started by none other than Mrs Dorothy Mather, the widow of Arthur Peppercorn, and who later became The A1 Steam Locomotive Trust’s honorary president, firming up a living link between the steam age and the heritage era. Also that year, the first wheel was cast.

The process of manufacturing Tornado’s wheelsets began in 1995 when the first wheel was cast at the Burton-on-Trent plant of William Cook Cast Products Ltd, and continued until 2007 when they were balanced. A1SLT

The name Tornado honoured the RAF Tornado crews who flew in the Gulf War. The honour of choosing the name was given to a £50,000 sponsor of the project. In January 1995, officers of the Royal Air Force presented the Tornado nameplates to the trust at Birmingham’s Tyseley Locomotive Works, where the project was progressing in its early stages under the guidance of chief engineer Bob Meanley.

In March 1997, the frames were placed on show in the National Railway Museum, while three cylinder castings were unveiled at Tyseley on 25 May 1997. Later that year the project was moved to the former Hopetown Carriage Works at Darlington North Road station, a short hop from the ECML. The carriage works then became Darlington Locomotive Works. By 2004, Tornado was a rolling chassis. The biggest job of all was the boiler, and after failing to find a British manufacturer, commercial loans were raised to fund a contract with Dampflokomotiv Meiningen, a works that was part of the former East German railway system, and which was still capable of steam locomotive engineering. In June 2007 the boiler and firebox assembly were fitted to the frames, and on 9 January 2008 Dorothy Mather lit a fire in the boiler and the locomotive was pushed out of the Darlington works into the sunshine.

The first new steam locomotive built for the British main line since Evening Star in 1960, Tornado is unveiled to the world’s press at its builders’ Darlington Locomotive Works on 1 August 2008. Still in works grey primer, it carried the www.alsteam.com website of its builder on the tender! AUTHOR

Still in grey undercoat, the A1 Trust unveiled Tornado to the media outside the works on 1 August 2008, delighting all as it steamed along a very short length of track. It was then taken by low loader to the Great Central Railway for running in, and on 21 September it hauled its first passenger train. All having gone well, it was moved to the NRM, from where main-line test runs began on 4 November; it was still unpainted. The maximum permitted speed for a steam locomotive on today’s main line is 75mph (120km/h) unless special dispensation is granted, but it later emerged that Tornado had twice reached 90mph (145km/h) during those tests on the ECML. Speaking at a public meeting at the NRM on 26 October 2013, driver Dave Court – who drove Flying Scotsman through seventeen US states on its ill-fated tour of North America in 1969 – admitted that he twice took No. 60163 to 90mph (145km/h) on the third test run on 18 November 2008. He said that with fourteen coaches on, Tornado reached 90mph before Darlington, and again south of the town while approaching Croft during the run. No prior dispensation had been obtained by DB Schenker, the body solely responsible for the test runs, for the A1 to run above the maximum permitted speed of 75mph (120km/h), and Dave Court told the meeting ‘So I got suspended on the last run for speeding!’ – another little piece of hidden ECML history to see the light of day! On 13 December 2008, Tornado was unveiled in its first livery, LNER-style express passenger apple green, with British Railways on the tender, as carried by the original locomotives in 1948. The A1 Trust promised from the outset that the locomotive, the fiftieth member of the class, would appear in all four liveries carried by the original forty-nine during its first ten years of operation. The acid test came on 31 January 2009, when all along the ECML from York to Newcastle-upon-Tyne spectators and cameramen gathered at every vantage point to see Tornado haul its first passenger train, The Peppercorn Pioneer. The media had eagerly seized on the appearance of the first mainline steam locomotive built for the British network since BR Standard 9F 2-10-0 No. 92220 Evening Star had emerged from Swindon works in 1960, and Tornado’s status in the modern age of celebrity culture was assured. Even teenage girls who had probably never had an interest in

railways or owned a train set in younger days were vying for positions with seasoned line-side photographers on the passenger footbridge at York station, desperate to see the mechanical equivalent to Posh and Becks.

Enveloped by steam, Mark Allatt, the delighted chairman of The A1 Steam Locomotive Trust, stands by as the Prince of Wales officially launches Tornado into traffic at York on 19 February 2009. AUTHOR

A week later, on 7 February, Tornado ran into King’s Cross for the first time, hauling the Talisman over the ECML from Darlington, and on 14 February, it became the first of the A1s to run out of London

on the former Southern Region. However, the crowning glory came on 19 February when Tornado was officially named by the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall at York station, watched by Peppercorn’s proud widow Dorothy. On 28 February 2009, Tornado steamed up the ECML into Scotland for the first time with The Auld Reekie Express from York to Edinburgh; then on 7 March it became the first A1 out of Edinburgh for forty years, at the head of the North Briton back to York. On 18 April, Tornado became the first A1 to run out of King’s Cross for forty years. At every point on the journey, platforms were packed with admirers, a phenomenon that still accompanies the locomotive several years on. A week later, on 25 April 2009, Tornado ran from King’s Cross to Edinburgh at the head of a ten-coach private charter, a journey that was undertaken under a shroud of tight secrecy. The special had been organized for the BBC show Top Gear, with former presenter Jeremy Clarkson shovelling coal on the footplate. Top Gear is a motoring show, so what did Tornado have to do with cars? The answer was that the A1 was racing a Jaguar XK120, a sports car manufactured by Jaguar between 1948 and 1954, driven by fellow presenter James May along the A1 highway, and also Richard Hammond, another of the Top Gear team, on a Vincent Black Shadow motorbike. Because of delays entering Edinburgh, Tornado came second and the motorbike third – so road transport again had the final word. The show was screened on 21 June that year. On 6 February 2010, the Heritage Railway Association presented The A1 Steam Locomotive Trust with its highest accolade, the Peter Manisty award, in recognition of its unique accomplishment in raising the profile of the British railway heritage movement in the eyes of the general public and throughout the world. At the NRM on 9 February 2011, Tornado was unveiled in lined Brunswick Green with the pre-1957 British Railways crest on the tender, a popular choice amongst enthusiasts. In early 2012, while undergoing maintenance at the Mid-Hants Railway, the early crest was replaced by the later crest, which all the A1s carried from the late 1950s until the withdrawal of the last class members in 1966. In November 2012, Tornado was repainted again, at Southall depot in

London, this time into British Railways express passenger blue, the second livery carried by the A1s after entering service. The livery was applied in the early 1950s only to express locomotives, and was short-lived because it showed up the dirt. Nonetheless, the blue Tornado certainly cut a striking image. In October 2014, Tornado was withdrawn for an intermediate overhaul, and reappeared in June 2015 in its original LNER-style express passenger apple green livery.

Displaying the royal train headcode and carrying the Prince of Wales motif, Tornado prepares to depart York station with Prince Charles on board on 19 February 2009. During the trip to Leeds, the Prince would don overalls and take a turn on the footplate! AUTHOR

The top choice of livery for Tornado for enthusiasts who remembered the Peppercorn A1s in action was British Railways lined Brunswick Green with the early crest. In this guise Tornado is seen steaming through Sandy in Bedfordshire on 4 April 2012. IAN MCDONALD/A1SLT

Later that year the steam world was in mourning following the death of Dorothy Mather on 10 November 2015 at the age of ninetynine. She had been ill for two years. Her funeral took place at Faceby parish church in North Yorkshire eight days later, ending the last human link between the age of modern steam and that of the great designers who elevated the ECML to legendary status.

The A1 Steam Locomotive Trust pledged from the outset that during its first years in service Tornado would carry all the liveries worn by the original forty-nine A1s. No. 60163’s second operational livery was the short-lived but nonetheless very attractive and eye-catching British Railways express passenger blue. It is seen approaching Farcet, south of Peterborough, on 11 June 2013. JACK BEESTON/A1SLT

Back in British Railways apple green livery, Tornado heads The White Rose through Fenwick on 7 July 2015. GEOFF GRIFFITHS/A1SLT

The building from scratch of an all-new Pacific to run on the national network is undoubtedly the apex of the heritage railway sector. However, at its annual convention in Darlington on 1 October 2016, The A1 Steam Locomotive Trust announced that it would go one better. Supporters and donors were told that a series of authorized test runs were planned for the following spring that would pave the way for Tornado to run at its design speed of 90mph (145km/h) on selected routes, including the ECML; this time it would be doing so with permission, and on a regular basis too – a first for the preservation sector. The facility to run at 90mph would pave the way for shorter journey times and in theory make more paths on the increasingly congested modern network available for Tornado to run on. At the same time, furthermore, the trust announced that it was planned to create a dedicated rake of refurbished Mk.3 coaches to run behind Tornado. Unlike trains comprising ‘heritage’ stock, the new carriage set would be equipped with air conditioning, central door locking, controlled emission toilets, power at seats for mobile telephones and laptops, better disabled access, and kitchen car facilities to enable 250 first-class passengers to be served.

Now for the Next One

Spurred on by its dazzling success with Tornado, the A1 Steam Locomotive Trust is now building a second new main-line engine – nothing less than the seventh member of Gresley’s P2 ‘Mikado’ class. A new batch of components was released for sponsorship in time for Father’s Day on Sunday 19 June 2016, while the project was preparing for the wheeling of the engine in the autumn of 2016, only three years after its launch. The class P2 2-8-2 ‘Mikado’ locomotives were the most powerful passenger steam locomotives to operate in the UK, designed by Sir Nigel Gresley to haul 600-ton trains on the arduous Edinburgh to Aberdeen route. Sadly the design was never fully developed, and they were rebuilt in 1943/44, and then scrapped by 1961. The trust is building the locomotive over seven to ten years at its Darlington Locomotive Works at an estimated cost of £5 million. Fitted with additional water capacity and the latest railway safety electronics, it will be fully equipped for tomorrow’s main-line railway. The project will demonstrate how the design can be fully realized using modern computer design techniques, enabling the new locomotive to deliver its full potential, hauling passenger trains at high speed across the national network – and yes, it is very likely to run between Edinburgh and Aberdeen, just like its predecessors. The new P2 will be numbered 2007, the next in the original series, and will be named Prince of Wales, after Prince Charles gave his consent to this proposal; the prince launched Tornado at York, and is clearly a big fan of steam locomotives.

An artist’s impression of new Gresley P2 No. 2007 Prince of Wales racing A1 Pacific No. 60163 Tornado. A1SLT

Top Gear’s James May manufacturing the first component for the new Gresley P2 on a lathe inside Darlington Locomotive Works on 20 February 2014. A1SLT

Television presenter James May manufactured the first component of the new £5 million Gresley P2 2-8-2 No. 2007 Prince of Wales, the smokebox dart, the component that keeps the smokebox door securely closed, inside Darlington Locomotive Works on 20 February 2014. The trust’s chairman Mark Allatt became friends with James when the Top Gear team raced Tornado, as described in the section above. The frames for No. 2007 – the single component which tradition holds gives a locomotive its identity – were subsequently

cut, and the wheels cast and machined, along with a host of other parts, including the cab. Looking even further ahead, at the same annual convention in 2016, the trust announced plans to construct new examples of two extinct Gresley locomotive types: the V4 2-6-2 mixed traffic engine, and the V3 2-6-2T. Only two V4s were ever built, No. 3401 Bantam Cock, and No. 3402, unofficially known as Bantam Hen. Built at Doncaster Works in 1941, they comprised Gresley’s last design before he died that year, and both were scrapped in 1957. The V3s were a development of Gresley’s earlier V1 2-6-2T and were used on suburban and branch line trains. The first appeared in 1930, and the last was scrapped by 1964.

CHAPTER 19

The National Railway Museum: Jewel in the East Coast Crown Britain’s National Railway Museum (NRM) is considered by many to be today’s star feature as far as the East Coast Main Line is concerned. First-time visitors who step inside the Great Hall can only marvel at the fact that it appears as if they are walking into a giant version of a Hornby model catalogue, with classic locomotives leaping off the pages at every turn, and looking every bit as if they have been outshopped from the works as new. However, the history of the museum itself is inextricably linked to that of the ECML, for it is housed in a building – a former steam locomotive shed – that was for long a key part of the great route that runs alongside. Today, the NRM at York is widely considered by many, including the author, to be the finest of its kind anywhere in the world. However, while Britain gave the world the steam locomotive, the same cannot be said to be true for national railway museums. Norway opened its equivalent in 1897, followed by Germany two years later. The initiative was already there in Britain, however: pioneer Canterbury & Whitstable locomotive Invicta was set aside for preservation as early as 1840, and in 1862 the Patent Office Museum, which later became London’s Science Museum, preserved what was left of Stephenson’s Rocket, albeit in a much-altered form. The 1925 celebrations to mark the centenary of the Stockton & Darlington Railway, the world’s first steam-operated public line, set the ball rolling. The event comprised an exhibition of railway items that had been collected by North Eastern Railway employee J. B.

Harpert from 1880. Two years later, the LNER acknowledged the importance of saving classic locomotives and rolling stock with the opening of a museum in York. The museum was set up in its Queen Street works, which had been built for York and North Midland Railway in 1839 as a small locomotive repair shop. The LNER chose York because it was a centre not only of the country but also of the ECML, and because the city’s history, including York Minster cathedral, was an excellent tourist honeypot. Alongside the landmark locomotives that were placed on static display inside the museum were Grand Junction Railway 2-2-2 No. 49 Columbine, LBSCR 0-4-2 No. 214 Gladstone – and none other than GWR unofficial 100mph (160km/h) record-breaker No. 3440 City of Truro. The other ‘Big Four’ companies were by comparison with the LNER far less switched on to their heritage, and when GWR directors refused to preserve the legendary Churchward 4-4-0 at their expense, it was donated to the LNER for the museum, and was sent there on 20 March 1931. Obsolete maybe, but far from useless, because in 1957 British Railways returned City of Truro to steam and, basing it at Didcot shed, used it not only for hauling special excursion trains but on normal timetabled services too.

The Great Hall at the National Railway Museum in York, which attracts more than 700,000 visitors each year, and to which admission is free.

Nationalization of the railways in 1948 saw the creation of the British Transport Commission, which took over responsibility for a substantial collection of heritage locomotives and stock. A report published in January 1951 recommended that British Railways keep the Queen Street museum. An official list of locomotives for preservation was drawn up, many of them being stored in sheds and works throughout the country, and others on loan to museums. This was the beginning of the National Collection. Axe-wielding British Railways chairman Dr Richard Beeching recommended in 1963 that such museums were given up to save money, but a campaign was led by transport historian Tom Rolt, whose efforts led to the Talyllyn Railway becoming the first preserved line in the world in 1951, and others to create a new museum. Labour’s 1968 Transport Act recommended the establishment of a national museum, to be set up in partnership with the Science Museum. Several sites were considered, starting with London, where

all national museums were based. However, British Rail declined to release Nine Elms station in Vauxhall for the purpose, and so the Clapham Museum of Transport, which had amassed an excellent collection since it opened in 1961, was then considered. But new ground was broken when a site far outside the capital was finally selected: the new museum was to be based in York – but not in Queen Street. Instead, York North shed was picked, which opened in 1878, a year after the city’s station. Ironically, during World War II City of Truro had been moved from York for safekeeping to the small engine shed at Sprouston station on the Tweedmouth-to-St Boswells line in the Scottish Borders. A Luftwaffe raid on York in 1942 made a direct hit on York North shed, destroying A4 Pacific No. 4469 Sir Ralph Wedgwood and NER B16 4-6-0 No. 925. The Gresley Society has in recent times marked the spot with a floor plaque. When it opened, York North shed comprised three roundhouses, each with a 45ft (14m) turntable linked to a coaling stage. In 1932, a 70ft (21m) Mundt turntable was installed, to cope with the bigger Gresley Pacifics. Eventually the shed comprised four roundhouses. In 1949 the shed was designated 50A. Five years later, two of the roundhouses were knocked down and replaced with a conventional straight locomotive shed. The other two roundhouses were reroofed. The roundhouses closed to steam traction in 1967, when the straight shed became a diesel depot. The mechanical coaling plant was demolished, with great difficulty, between March and May 1970. The NRM, which was to be a branch of the Science Museum, then moved into the surviving steam shed alongside the ECML in Leeman Road; the diesel depot was added when it closed in the 1980s.

This plaque in the Great Hall of today’s museum marks the spot where, during a Luftwaffe raid on 28–29 April 1942, LNER A4 streamlined Pacific No. 4469 Sir Ralph Wedgwood was destroyed, along with B16 4-6-0 No. 925, as a result of a direct hit on the steam shed. The plaque was placed by the Gresley Society to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the raid. ROBIN JONES

The Clapham and Queen Street museums both closed in 1973, with the majority of exhibits transferred to the new NRM. Clapham was demolished, and a Sainsbury’s supermarket now occupies the site; however, most of the Queen Street buildings are still in existence on the site, including the main erecting shops, which are used for commercial purposes. Its turntable is now at the Great Central Railway’s Quorn & Woodhouse station. Some of the exhibits from Clapham went to the London Transport Museum in Covent Garden, while York took delivery of vehicles that had been in storage at various locations, including Preston Park depot in Brighton.

The new York museum was shaped largely by its first keeper, the late John Coiley, who is remembered by an annual locomotive restoration award given out by the Heritage Railway Association; also his deputy Peter Semmens, the Science Museum’s John van Riemsdijk, and Yorkshire-based railway historian David Jenkinson. What set it apart from other, similar museums that had gone before was the prominent inclusion of carriages and rolling stock alongside locomotives. The museum was opened by the Duke of Edinburgh in 1975, the 150th anniversary of the Stockton & Darlington Railway. It was ecstatically welcomed by the public and critics alike, and received over a million visitors in its first year. In 1979 it commissioned a working replica of Stephenson’s Rocket for the following year’s 150th anniversary of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway. Many of the museum’s vast collection of over 100 locomotives are on display in the Great Hall, outlining the story of the development of the railways from Rocket to Eurostar. The only Shinkansen Bullet Train to be on display outside Japan is on display in the hall; it is also the first railway vehicle built and run outside Britain to enter the National Collection. The 82ft (25m) long Series 0 power car, built in 1976 and capable of 125mph (200km/h), was presented to the NRM by West Japan Railways. The Bullet Train arrived in April 2001 – finishing its journey from Japan by being towed over part of the ECML, a route that it could never have physically run over by itself! To get it into the museum, the power car had to be unloaded at York’s carriage works and then brought down the ECML in the early hours of the morning. While Britain’s network has the same 4ft 8½ in track gauge as Japan, the Bullet Train is much wider overall than anything in Britain and does not fit the loading gauge. Railtrack agreed to shut down the ECML in the early hours of a Sunday morning, and temporarily moved about thirty signals and switchboxes that would have been in the way, replacing them once the Bullet Train had passed by. Also, special couplings had to be made to join the Japanese vehicle to the locomotive that towed it on its short journey.

The last few yards into the Great Hall also proved a challenge, as the museum’s exhibitions’ team had to ease the Shinkansen from the tracks surrounding the museum’s turntable using equipment normally used to re-rail derailed stock. Today’s visitors can take a seat inside the Bullet Train and find out what makes it one of the greatest engineering icons of the modern age. In 1994, the Institute of Railway Studies was launched as a joint venture between the museum and the University of York. Its aim is to develop the academic and scholarly basis of the museum through a series of courses, publications and directly undertaken research. In 1999 the former diesel depot became The Works, the NRM’s own dedicated workshop where many of its large exhibits, including locomotives, are overhauled, with the public able to see the jobs in hand from an overhead viewing gallery. Its opening expanded the museum to three times the size that it was when it opened in 1975.

The National Railway Museum’s Shinkansen power car is a candidate for one of, if not the bulkiest item of rolling stock ever taken along the East Coast Main Line. AUTHOR

Prince Charles alights from one of the magnificent royal carriages on display in the museum during his visit on 22 July 2013. In terms of permanent displays, the museum considers that the prize exhibition is that known as ‘Palaces on Wheels’. Based in the Station Hall, which in steam days was the main goods transhipment station for York, this exhibition features royal saloons dating back to the Victorian era, giving visitors a rare chance to glimpse the sumptuous bedrooms, dining rooms and day saloons that really were palaces on wheels. AUTHOR

The Works comprises three galleries. As well as the workshop itself, The Working Railway outlines the story of day-to-day operations on the national network, with panoramic views out on to the ECML, while The Warehouse is a browser’s delight of thousands

of small exhibits, from model locomotives to stone sleepers from presteam-age railways. The Integrated Electronic Control Centre is located on The Warehouse balcony and allows visitors to watch real-time train movements over a long section of the ECML, enabling them to appreciate how automation has relieved thirteen signallers of much of their routine work. You can even wave to a driver as he passes by! The success of The Works contributed to the museum winning the European Museum of the Year award in 2001. Indeed, the museum has carried off more than twenty prestigious awards since 1975, and has won Yorkshire’s White Rose Awards for tourism more times than any other local attraction. In June 2004 the Yorkshire Rail Academy was opened as a joint development with York College. A purpose-built rail training centre, it is the base for the NRM’s education team. In 2008 the National Railway Museum completed the construction of its Heritage Lottery Fund-backed £4 million archive and research centre Search Engine, which facilitates access to thousands of fascinating, previously offlimits artefacts in its comprehensive library, archive and image collection, such as unseen artwork, papers, reports, photographs and small objects.

One of the East Coast Main Line’s most famous sons, A3 Pacific Flying Scotsman, under overhaul in The Works on 21 November 2011. AUTHOR

The sole surviving LNER Gresley V2 2-6-2, No. 4771 Green Arrow, is part of the National Collection and is seen on display in the National Railway Museum’s Great Hall in 2008. Green Arrow, numbered 60800 by British Railways, was withdrawn from traffic in 1962 and selected for preservation, and is the sole survivor of the class. It has run extensively in preservation, both on the main line and on heritage railways, but is now on static display awaiting the day when major repairs may be carried out, leading to a new boiler ticket. AUTHOR

Much rebuilt North Eastern Railway No. 66 Aerolite, classified X1 by the LNER, was built in 1869 and used to haul the mechanical engineer’s saloon over the system. It was withdrawn in 1933 and preserved in the original LNER railway museum in York. It is seen on the turntable in the National Railway Museum’s Great Hall on 6 August 2015. AUTHOR

Sprawling as it is, the Leeman Road site could never be big enough to house the entire National Collection. In 2004 an outreach station, Locomotion: The National Railway Museum at Shildon, a town served by the branch from the ECML at Darlington, was opened by Prime Minister Tony Blair. Shildon, widely considered to be the ‘cradle of the railways’, was home to Timothy Hackworth’s Soho Works, the precursor to the Shildon wagon works, which closed in 1984. As with the York parent museum, Locomotion has also gone from strength to strength.

The Warehouse is the museum’s small exhibits store, which is open to the public for viewing. It includes the ‘School of Signalling Model Railway’, built in 1912 for the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway to train signallers at Manchester Victoria station. It features in The Guinness Book of Records as the world’s oldest complete working model railway. AUTHOR

Prime Minister Tony Blair officially opened the £11.3 million Locomotion Museum at Shildon on 22 October 2004. He is standing next to North Eastern Railway Class ES1 No. 1, which was built in 1904 for the pioneering electrified Tyneside lines. AUTHOR

The NRM has twenty-seven locomotives in full working order and maintained by an army of eager volunteers and apprentices at both York and Shildon. Under plans announced on 7 December 2015, the museum is set to be expanded under £78 million plans to redevelop land around York station and turn it into what was immediately described as the ‘King’s Cross of the North’, referring to the hugely successful redevelopment of the rundown area around the ECML terminus. One option in the scheme was the closure of Leeman Road to traffic, allowing the two ‘halves’ of the museum, currently connected by a pedestrian underpass, to be joined together. During the previous twelve months, the City of York council had been working in collaboration with Network Rail, the NRM and the Homes and Communities Agency to draw up a blueprint for the development of a site to the rear of the station extending northwestwards towards the former British Sugar, under the banner of York Central. While it currently incorporates a range of uses

including the museum, private housing and businesses, the site is largely used by the rail industry.

On display in Locomotion is 1898-built East Coast Joint Stock third class carriage No. 12. It was constructed at York carriage works. AUTHOR

LNER publicity poster extolling the virtues of seaside resorts along the East Coast Main Line on display inside Locomotion.

LNER poster for the ‘Harrogate Pullman’ is one of many smaller artefacts on display at Locomotion.

A poster extolling the virtues of travelling to Scotland by the East Coast Main Line, which passes outside the museum’s balcony, when it was shared by three preGrouping companies.

As well as expanding and greatly enhancing the museum, the project, to be developed over a fifteen-year period, could provide up to 130,000 square yards (120,000 square metres) of high quality office space, creating up to 7,000 new jobs, a new residential community for up to 2,500 new homes, improvements to the station, and a network of vibrant public squares, green spaces and routes linking to surrounding neighbourhoods, according to the masterplan.

To link York Central to the city centre and neighbouring communities, it is planned to create a new foot/cycle network, including a new bridge over the ECML from within York Central. NRM director Paul Kirkman said: ‘We are working on big plans to transform our museum to tell the epic story of railways, increase our contemporary relevance and grow our visitor numbers to over one million per year. We want to be at the heart of this exciting York Central development, which offers a once-in-a-generation opportunity to transform the museum and its surroundings.’ Council leader Chris Steward said: ‘The redevelopment of York Central represents a once-in-a-life-time opportunity to deliver major growth in York. This will enable us to attract high value jobs, deliver new and much needed sustainable homes, and create world-class public spaces, which will help define the future for our city. We will also reduce the pressure to build on York’s green belt.’ If all goes to plan, the scheme will open a new chapter in the history of the ECML at its midway point.

The Flying Scotsman, an LNER poster from 1923–1947, now part of the National Railway Museum’s pictorial collection. As well as more than 300 locomotives and items of rolling stock, the museum’s collection, the largest in the world, includes more than 628 coins and medals, 4,899 pieces of railway uniform and costume, railway equipment, documents, records, artwork and railway-related photographs. NRM

However, York station could be bypassed by a future extension to the new High Speed 2 rail link from London to the north, according to a government report published in March 2016. Four different options for HS2, which is intended to cut the journey time from London to

Edinburgh and Glasgow to less than three hours, include three along the east coast route, all possibly passing through or bypassing York.

East Coast type No. 5 The Deck-chair Man – one of a series of LNER posters in the museum’s exhaustive collection. AUTHOR

The report highlights the existing station, perfectly placed for visitors to both the city centre and the museum, as one of the major speed constraints on the ECML, because it sits on a curve that limits speed to 30mph (50km/h), and because it is tight on platform space and is already busy with terminating trains. It said that while a

‘bypass’ for York is only one of several broad options being considered at a very early stage of planning, it would make ‘significant time savings’ on journeys.

Artist’s impression of a new public square fronting a new entrance to the National Railway Museum. YORK CITY COUNCIL

It was suggested that a parkway station could be provided near either the A59, A64, outer ring road or the Harrogate to York line. ‘If sufficient time were to be made up by bypassing York, then a parkway on the bypass might provide more overall benefits and revenue than a slower route through the central station. In this scenario, journey-time savings on through trips would outweigh the loss in benefits within Yorkshire from reduced ease of access.’ York Central Labour MP Rachael Maskell said she feared that the parkway proposals would damage the city’s economy, which benefited from direct connections to the capital and could lead to extra congestion because of greater numbers of people driving to the station to catch a train. York Outer Conservative MP Julian Sturdy said that a parkway station would not be in the best interests of York. ‘We must ensure that York is not bypassed,’ he said. HS2 took a major step forwards on 23 March 2016, as the hybrid bill for the £33 billion phase one of the scheme between London and Birmingham successfully passed its third reading in the Commons, with MPs voting 399 to 42 in favour. Subject to completing its parliamentary passage, construction was scheduled to begin in 2017, with the first trains running in 2026. Future extensions to Manchester, Leeds and then further north have been mapped out.

One of the big questions about HS2 remains: what would be the impact on the existing rail network? Would there be a fall-off in patronage to the point where services would be reduced, or whole towns disenfranchised, just as in the days of Beeching? Or worse still, could there be a Serpell-like threat to parts of the ECML that would parallel a high-speed route to Scotland?

CHAPTER 20

Gresley’s A4s: Demise and Regathering The fleet of thirty-four A4s remained as the most illustrious form of motive power on the East Coast Main Line into the early 1960s, when they were ousted by diesel traction in the form of the Class 55 Deltics. The first five A4s to be withdrawn in December 1962 were No. 60014 Silver Link, No. 60028 Walter K. Whigham, No. 60003 Andrew K. McCosh, No. 60030 Golden Fleece and No. 60033 Seagull. The rest of the class was taken out of traffic between then and 1966. The last six in service were No. 60004 William Whitelaw, No. 60007 Sir Nigel Gresley, No. 60009 Union of South Africa, No. 60019 Bittern, No. 60024 Kingfisher and No. 60034 Lord Faringdon. Of those, Nos 60019 and 60024 were the last to be withdrawn, in September 1966. Six of them survived into preservation. Because of its historical place in the development of world transport technology, plans to save Mallard for the National Collection, which was being compiled by the British Transport Commission in view of the demise of steam, had been made as early as 1960. However, there was no place on the list for the class pioneer, No. 2509 Silver Link, in much the same way as those who drew up the list of engines for the collection saw fit not to include even one Gresley A3, even the famous Flying Scotsman, a decision which today we consider bizarre beyond belief. When a class was selected to be represented in the collection, it would normally be the first member to be saved, but Mallard’s feat in 1938 placed it ahead of Silver Link.

Billy Butlin was in the market for engines for display at his holiday camps, recognizing the fact that despite its demise, steam still held a massive fascination for youngsters. He looked at some LMS Pacifics, and then Silver Link. Withdrawn on 29 December 1962, the Eastern Region was unwilling to sell Silver Link, and quoted a price that was far too high; it was subsequently scrapped. Mallard continued in service for another quarter of a century after its speed record run. After nationalization it became garter blueliveried No. 60022. Its final reallocation came on 11 April 1948 when it was moved to King’s Cross. It was given a new corridor tender, and headed non-stop expresses to Scotland. In mid-1952 the garter blue livery was replaced with British Railways lined Brunswick green, a derivative of the GWR. Mallard hauled the last non-stop The Elizabethan from King’s Cross to Edinburgh Waverley on 8 September 1961. It completed the 392¾-mile (632km) journey nearly three minutes early, despite five permanent-way slacks and two signal checks. However, Mallard’s finest post-war moment in steam came on 19 September 1961, when it produced one of the highest power outputs reached by a member of its class while taking the 2pm from King’s Cross to Newcastle with eleven coaches. Up the 1-in-440 gradient from Tallington to Essendine on Stoke Bank, Mallard reached 78mph (47.5km/h), and 82mph (132km/h) as the slopes eased beyond to Corby Glen. The estimated drawbar horse power would have been around 2,150, very high indeed for an A4, even those fitted with the Kylchap chimney. It reached the 1-in-178 summit at 78mph (47.5km/h), where 50–60mph (80–95km/h) was considered the norm. Thus it had at last achieved a record run up the legendary Stoke Bank, as opposed to down it.

Post-war steam record holder A4 No. 60007 Sir Nigel Gresley approaches Greatford crossing on the start of Stoke Bank near Stamford with the Railway Touring Company’s The Tynesider from King’s Cross to Newcastle on a frostbound 19 December 2009. AUTHOR

A4 No. 60003 Andrew K McCosh getting into its stride having just left Wood Green Tunnel with a train for York, on 15 June 1962. This locomotive was originally numbered 4494 Osprey until July 1942. Andrew Kirkwood McCosh JP, DL (1880– 1967) was chairman of the LNER committee responsible for loco building and repair, and one of only five directors who served on the board of the company for the full twenty-five years of its existence. The displaced name Osprey was subsequently carried by Peppercorn A1 Pacific No. 60131. PETER GROOM

A4 No. 60022 Mallard on a ‘down’ Flying Scotsman service passes Clay Lane, Newark-on-Trent, in 1961. FOTORUS/CCL

When finally withdrawn from King’s Cross on 25 April 1963, Mallard had covered 1,426,261 miles (2,294,854km). Mallard quickly went into Doncaster Works for external restoration to original condition, complete with valances and garter blue livery as No. 4468, and ready to take pride of place in the new Museum of British Transport taking shape at Clapham. It entered Clapham Museum on 29 February 1964; that museum was superseded by the National Railway Museum at York. Mallard made a return to the national network on 12 April 1975, when it was towed from London to York for static display. In 1977 it was displayed at York station to mark its centenary, and from 17 to 18 June 1978 it visited Doncaster Works for an open day commemorating the twelfth anniversary of The Plant. With the half-centenary of its record run approaching, the museum decided to return Mallard to working order. The Friends of the National Railway Museum set up a ‘Mallard 88’ working party under the leadership of Andrew Roberts, and received backing from Scarborough Borough Council; the council was also backing the launch of the Scarborough Spa Express that year. The resort contributed around £35,000 towards the cost of the restoration of Mallard.

A4 No. 60015 Quicksilver heads a ‘down’ train on Holloway Bank on 6 June 1955. PETER GROOM

Marking the tenth anniversary of the museum, Mallard moved under its own power, minus its boiler cladding, on 27 September 1985. The following year, on 25 March 1986, it returned to the main line, hauling a special train from York to Doncaster via Scarborough and Hull as a test run. Subsequently it went to Doncaster Works for its weight distribution to be checked, returning to York in the night. Mallard ran its first heritage era, main-line rail tour on 9 July 1986, when it hauled British Rail’s Scarborough Spa Express from York to Scarborough and back via Hull and Goole. Then on 4 October 1986, it ran from York to Marylebone via Sheffield, Derby, Birmingham and Banbury. It also hauled three dining-train trips from Marylebone to Stratford-upon-Avon and back, on 12 and 26 October and 4 November. On 16 May 1987 Mallard hauled a Royal Society for the Protection of Birds special – appropriately, in view of its designer’s hobby – from Carnforth to York. Then on 2 October that year Mallard joined forces with BR Standard 9F 2-10-0 No. 92220 Evening Star, the last main-line steam locomotive built by British Railways, for a trip from

York to Doncaster for a works open day, before returning to their York home. Celebrations continued for the fiftieth anniversary, and several members of the original train crew from 3 July 1938 were invited to join a special excursion from Doncaster to Scarborough on the exact fiftieth anniversary. British Rail chairman Sir Peter Parker agreed for the steam engine to take over from an electric locomotive on the East Coast Main Line north of Peterborough. However, because the new type of 25kV insulator used in the tunnels on the ECML during electrification were considered too heat sensitive, the changeover was instead arranged for Doncaster, from where Mallard would take the train on to Scarborough. Hauling the train from King’s Cross to Doncaster, and back from Doncaster again, was prototype Class 89 No. 89001, which was built at Crewe Works in 1986 and which was later preserved by the AC Electric Group. On board the special were driver Joe Duddington’s granddaughter Jean Delaney and her son Matthew, and Tom Bray, the son of the fireman. Thousands packed the line side to glimpse Mallard pass by on the trip, which was undertaken at a modest 60mph (97km/h). Mallard steamed for the last time on 27 August 1988; since then it has remained a static exhibit.

Mallard heads out of Hartlepool towards Newcastle on 27 August 1988. BRIAN SHARPE

Mallard at York station in the summer of 1988. ROB NEWMAN

A Royal Mail 1988 stamp marking the half centenary of Mallard’s world steam speed record. ROYAL MAIL

The Fortunate Five Had three A4s not been bought by British enthusiasts and two more acquired by museums in North America, Mallard would be the sole representative of one of the most magnificent of locomotive classes of any description. Indeed, railway preservation has always been a hit and miss affair. Look at today’s heritage steam fleet, where the imbalance between GWR and Southern Railway types, when compared to examples from the LNER and LMS, is markedly topheavy. There is a simple explanation: withdrawn and condemned locomotives were usually cut up at the nearest BR works, or at a scrapyard in the region concerned. Many GWR and SR types were bought by Dai Woodham, owner of Woodham Brothers scrapyard in

South Wales. One day in the 1960s he made a commercial decision that was unique amongst scrapmen, and which had far-reaching consequences: rather than cut up scrap main-line engines within days of their arrival, as happened in other breakers’ yards, he decided to focus his attention on the more immediately rewarding business of scrapping redundant wagons, and set aside the evergrowing stockpile of locomotives, saving them for a rainy day. While those locomotives rusted in the salt air of the Severn estuary, the railway preservation movement matured to the point where it began buying more and more for restoration. Eventually, a total of 213 were bought for preservation purposes between 1968 and 1990. Of those, only one had been built by the LNER. Indeed, despite Gresley’s historical stature, apart from the six A4s, only a handful of his locomotives survived. Gresley’s assistant Oliver Bulleid left the LNER to join the Southern Railway as chief mechanical engineer, and designed distinctive streamlined Pacifics of his own in the form of the Merchant Navy, West Country and Battle of Britain classes. A total of thirty-one Bulleid Pacifics, mostly from Barry scrapyard, were saved for preservation, although it is highly unlikely that all will steam again. Compare that with the fact that only seven Gresley Pacifics survived, and even the famous A3 No. 4472 Flying Scotsman was only saved by the skin of its teeth. In LNER territory there was no Dai Woodham equivalent to hold off cutting up engines: the A4s that survived were obtained directly from BR. While the history of Mallard is legendary, the other five also have their tales to tell – and we owe an immense debt of gratitude to those who saved each of the ‘fortunate five’.

No. 60007 Sir Nigel Gresley First there is Sir Nigel Gresley, the post-war steam speed record holder which, after King’s Cross shed closed, moved to New England shed at Peterborough on 16 June 1963. On 6 July that year, No. 60007 hit 103mph (166km/h) when running down Stoke Bank with the Locomotive Club of Great Britain’s ‘Mallard Commemorative’ rail tour from King’s Cross to London and back. Later that year, on

20 October 1963, it was transferred to St Margaret’s shed, from which it hauled Edinburgh-to-Aberdeen trains. Its final allocation was Aberdeen shed, on 20 July 1964; its last known duty in BR revenueearning service was the 5.30pm Aberdeen-to-Perth run on 7 January 1966. It was withdrawn from British Railways service on 1 February 1966 with around 1.5 million miles (2,500,000km) on the clock. A group of enthusiasts bidding to save Sir Nigel Gresley from the scrapman had come together in October 1964 under the banner of the A4 Preservation Society, and on 23 October 1965 had organized a rail tour from Manchester to Paddington with No. 60007 at its head. The group bought the locomotive in March 1966 and had it moved to Crewe Works for overhaul. While inside, it was fitted with the six driving wheels from A4 No. 60026 Miles Beevor, which were in far better condition. Also in the works being cosmetically restored was No. 60010 Dominion of Canada. No. 60007 underwent trial runs in March 1967, and later that month worked the late-night Crewe-to-Preston parcels train. It then headed a series of rail tours around the country, making a comeback to the ECML on 23 July 1967. When the steam shed at Carnforth in Lancashire closed, it became a popular heritage railway museum called Steamtown, and from there, once British Rail had relaxed its 1968 steam ban, Sir Nigel Gresley ran main-line rail tours once again. In April 1972, No. 60007 was reunited with Bill Hoole at Carnforth, and he drove it up and down the half-mile Steamtown running line. Three years later, in August 1975, No. 60007 took part in the Rail 150 Cavalcade at Shildon. When the Post Office launched its Famous Trains stamps, Sir Nigel Gresley was depicted on one of them. In late January 1985 it was chosen to haul a series of special trains between Marylebone and Stratford-upon-Avon. The following year, on 11 October 1986, No. 60007 and Flying Scotsman were briefly joined on shed at Marylebone by no less than Mallard. During the 1990s, No. 60007 became the only A4 to be fitted with steam heating on the front, enabling tender-first running on heritage railways that lacked turning facilities. In 1999, No. 60007 hauled a special train to mark the fortieth anniversary of its record run down

Stoke Bank. Two years later, in 2001, it was withdrawn from traffic for overhaul. On 18 June 2012, Sir Nigel Gresley carried the Olympic torch over the North Yorkshire Moors Railway, its long-term home. No. 60007 is owned by the Sir Nigel Gresley Locomotive Preservation Trust Ltd and operated by the A4 Locomotive Society Ltd, and at the time of writing is undergoing a major overhaul at the National Railway Museum in York.

No. 60019 Bittern Another operational A4 to be bought straight out of service was No. 60019 Bittern. Built at Doncaster Works as works number 1866 and outshopped on 18 December 1937 in standard garter blue livery, Bittern’s last livery change of several in the steam era came on 12 February 1952, when it was painted Brunswick green. On 6 September 1957 it was equipped with a double chimney with a Kylchap double blastpipe, automatic warning system apparatus on 13 December 1958 and a speed indicator on 6 September 1960. It had fourteen boilers during its career. The second to be fitted was No. 9025 from No. 4469 Sir Ralph Wedgewood after it had been destroyed at York depot during the Luftwaffe raid on 6 June 1942. On 30 November 1954 it was fitted with boiler No. 29279 from No. 60009 Union of South Africa, and on 6 September 1957 with boiler No. 29315 from none other than Mallard. However, it always had the same tender, the non-corridor No. 5638.

On 3 July 1988, to mark the half centenary of its 126mph (203km/h) run, No. 4468 Mallard was lined up alongside Sir Nigel Gresley (far left) and Bittern (centre), which had at that stage been restored as No. 2509 Silver Link and accordingly painted silver. BRIAN SHARPE

Bittern headed the last A4-hauled Glasgow to Aberdeen service on 3 September 1966, when it was withdrawn by BR. However, the next day it hauled the Edinburgh-to-York leg of a two-day rail tour: when it arrived at York, it entered the ownership of Geoffrey Drury. Bittern became the first preserved A4 to haul a main-line rail tour, being used on enthusiast trips out of York during 1966–67. However, when it had been bought, the extent of the damage to its badly cracked frames was not apparent, and its speedy return to the main line soon came to an end. After buying Bittern, Geoff Drury then switched his attention to Peppercorn A2 No. 60532 Blue Peter, and bought it from British Rail in 1968. Both found a new home at the now-closed Dinting Railway Centre near Glossop in Derbyshire, and were looked after by the North Eastern Locomotive Preservation Group. While Blue Peter found its way back on to the national network, the non-operational Bittern was briefly cosmetically restored as the far more famous Silver Link. In 1995, Bittern was moved to the Great Central Railway at Loughborough to be restored to working order, but this reached only a partial stage of dismantling. Eventually it was

bought as a kit of parts by the late pharmaceuticals entrepreneur Dr Tony Marchington, one-time owner and restorer of Flying Scotsman. Dr Marchington sold it on to multi-millionaire enthusiast Jeremy Hosking in January 2001, after which major restoration work began at Ropley Works on the Mid-Hants Railway. Bittern steamed for the first time in around three decades on 19 May 2007, and after passing its main-line test runs, made a comeback on the national network on 1 December 2007, heading a charter from King’s Cross to York. In 2011–12, Bittern briefly ran as No. 4492 Dominion of New Zealand, with a borrowed New Zealand government railways-type five-chime whistle, as had been fitted to the original No. 4492.

No. 60009 Union of South Africa

A4 No. 60009 Union of South Africa arrives at York station with The Heart of Midlothian tour on 24 May 2008. AUTHOR

A4 No. 60009 Union of South Africa thunders over Durham Viaduct on 28 April 2013, the last day of the Railway Touring Company’s Great Britain VI tour. A. D. TEASDALE/CCL

The third privately preserved A4 was No. 60009 Union of South Africa, which had entered service on 29 June 1937, the first of five engines nominated for service on the Coronation King’s Cross to Edinburgh service. Continuing the bird theme à la Mallard, the locomotive had previously been allocated the name Osprey on 17 April 1937, but by the time it was outshopped it had been renamed. The springbok plaque on the side of the locomotive was donated on 12 April 1954 by a Bloemfontein newspaper proprietor. No. 60009 had a double chimney fitted on 18 November 1958, twenty years after Mallard was similarly equipped. After the Harrow & Wealdstone crash of 8 October 1952, in which 112 people died, safety requirements were tightened and automatic warning systems were fitted to all locomotives; No. 60009 received its apparatus on 17 February 1960, when a Stone-Smith-type speed recorder was also fitted. Union of South Africa hauled the last booked steam-

hauled train from King’s Cross on 24 October 1964. It was also the last locomotive to be overhauled at Doncaster while in service. Withdrawn from traffic on 1 June 1966, it was sold to Scottish farmer John Cameron, who built his own line on which to run it: the Lochty Private Railway in Fife, at a mile long, was Scotland’s first passengercarrying heritage line. Following preservation, No. 60009 worked the last steam special in Scotland in 1967; but six years later, in 1973, it returned to the main line after BR lifted its steam haulage ban in January of that year. Two routes were allocated in Scotland for the running of steam special trains, and Union of South Africa headed the first such special, on 5 May that year: it hauled its ninecoach trains at speeds of up to 60mph (96km/h) over the Edinburghto-Dundee main line. John Cameron closed his private railway in 1992, but Union of South Africa was his prize possession and one of the most consistent main-line registered steam engines, and remained in his ownership. Due to the international condemnation of apartheid, No. 60009 carried Osprey nameplates during the 1980s and early 1990s. On 29 October 1994, fittingly it hauled the first steam tour into King’s Cross for thirty years on a rail tour from Peterborough, under the banner of the Elizabethan – thereby making more East Coast Main Line history, carrying on from where it had left off in 1964. It was fitted with on-train monitoring recorder equipment in early 2007. Union of South Africa’s most recent overhaul was at pop producer Pete Waterman’s LNWR Workshops at the Crewe Heritage Centre, beginning in 2010; it is said to have cost nearly £1 million.

No. 60008 Dwight D. Eisenhower

Its name saved it from the scrapyard! On 27 April 1964, A4 No. 60008 Dwight D. Eisenhower was officially handed over to its new US museum owners by none other than axeman Dr Richard Beeching, and is seen being craned aboard the SS American Painter at Southampton Docks. It would return forty-eight years later. THE RAILWAY MAGAZINE

The other two A4s still with us today only survived because they were given new homes in North America. When No. 4496 entered traffic on 4 September 1937 it was named Golden Shuttle and painted in LNER garter blue. It was to have been named Sparrow Hawk, but that name was later used on No. 4463. It was painted wartime black on 30 January 1942, but on 25 September 1945 the garter blue livery was reapplied, and the name changed to that of Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces during the latter part of World War II – thus breaking the tradition of renaming engines after LNER officials. The name was covered up until February 1946 because it had been intended that Eisenhower himself would attend an official unveiling, but this could not be arranged. After nationalization it became No. 60008, and Brunswick Green livery was applied on 9 November 1951. On 4 October 1962 Dwight D. Eisenhower hauled a special train from Stratford in east London to York, after being specially cleaned

by King’s Cross shed staff. Its final allocation was New England shed from 16 June 1963, four days before it was withdrawn from service. Meanwhile steam disappeared from US railroads earlier than in Britain, and a National Railroad Museum was established in Green Bay, Wisconsin, in the 1950s. A chance conversation between a lady called Mrs Kovachek, who was on holiday from Yorkshire, and a man she mistook as the gardener, resulted in No. 60008 ending up in the USA, purely because of its name. The man was the chairman of the National Railroad Museum’s board, Harold E. Fuller, who became determined to add Dwight D. Eisenhower to the collection, once he knew of its existence in the UK. British Railways, however, would not sell it to him, but after it was withdrawn, donated it to the museum along with two LNER coaches used by General Eisenhower in two military command trains in Britain during the build-up to D-Day. Still in BR green livery, as cosmetically restored at Doncaster Works on 19 July 1963 prior to export, it was shipped to the USA, arriving in New York harbour on 11 May 1964. It was taken by rail to the museum later that month. In October 1990 it was moved by rail to Abilene, Kansas, for the celebrations of the centenary of Eisenhower’s birth. Ten years later, in 2000, it became a major exhibit in a new museum building at Green Bay, standing alongside Union Pacific articulated 4-8-8-4 BigBoy No. 4017 – an example of the world’s fastest steam locomotive next to the world’s biggest.

No. 4489 [60010] Dominion of Canada Outshopped from Doncaster Works on 4 May 1937, No. 4489 was originally to have been named Buzzard, but entered traffic as Woodcock. For its first fortnight in service it ran in works grey with green-painted wheels, but was taken back inside ‘The Plant’ and by the end of May had been repainted into LNER garter blue livery. At that point it was renamed Dominion of Canada because it had been chosen to haul the Coronation streamlined express. The coat of arms of Canada appeared on the side of the cab, with the works plates moved inside, and a Canadian Pacific Railroad-type bell was

mounted ahead of the single chimney. The bell was steam operated and was used in service. The locomotive was also fitted with a Canadian Pacific Railway whistle. On 27 October 1948 it was renumbered No. 60010. The coat of arms was removed on 8 April 1949, and the bell was removed when the chimney was replaced with a Kylchap double blastpipe and chimney on 27 December 1957. First allocated to King’s Cross, its final allocation was to Aberdeen on 20 October 1963, the shed being a bolt-hole for the A4s that had been displaced by Deltics from the ECML. It was officially withdrawn on 29 May, and, marked in Darlington’s records as ‘for sale to be scrapped’, was left on a weedchoked siding. However, suddenly No. 60010 was taken back into Darlington Works to be refurbished, after BR agreed to donate it to the Canadian Railroad Historical Association, along with its bell, which had been in storage. The cosmetic overhaul was concluded at Crewe, after which it was formally presented to Geoffrey Murray, Acting High Commissioner for Canada at Royal Victoria Dock, London, in April 1967. Shipped to Canada aboard the MV Beaverbrook, it was preserved at Exporail, the Canadian Railway Museum at Delson/Saint-Constant, Quebec, near Montreal. The bell was shipped out with No. 60010, but was not refitted due to the double chimney. As the railway preservation movement matured into a major player in the UK tourist economy, the scrapping of any sort of British steam locomotive became unthinkable. With every locomotive from Barry scrapyard bought, and all the industrial locomotives that had soldiered on after the end of BR steam accounted for, preservationists looked beyond our shores for British locomotives overseas. Some had been built for military purposes to War Department orders and exported during World War II, while a handful of others had been acquired by museums at the end of BR steam. Very quickly, thoughts turned to the two ECML giants in exile. The question was asked – their names apart, what had either of the two A4s to do with the heritage of either the USA or Canada? Over the years, several bids were made to buy either No. 60008 Dwight D. Eisenhower or No. 60010 from their North American

museum owners so that they could be returned to Britain and restored to running order, but all were rebuffed. If you wanted to see either, a trip to North America was the only way.

Bringing Them All Back Together Again The East Coast Main Line’s heritage sector, however, changed at a stroke in August 2011. It was then that Heritage Railway magazine announced that the unbelievable would happen: the two A4s were to be brought home across the Atlantic, and join the other four in a historic line-up to mark the seventy-fifth anniversary of Mallard’s world steam record. The mastermind behind the daring plan was Steve Davies, who had been appointed as director of the National Railway Museum in late 2009. Before that, he had been director of the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester, and before that, Chief of Staff at the Army’s Staff Headquarters 2nd Division. During his years of military service he had helped establish Sierra Leone’s National Railway Museum. However, his greatest railway adventure was yet to come. He decided that something very special indeed was needed to celebrate the anniversary. Of course, the obvious and straightforward course of action would have been to restore Mallard to running order. However, with Sir Nigel Gresley, Bittern and Union of South Africa already running on the main line, the museum decided early on that there was little commercial gain to be had there. The public could see an A4 in action whenever they wanted – but what if they could see all six survivors together, for the first and maybe the last time ever? The deal with both North American museums was simple. Allow the York museum to borrow both A4s, which were both in need of cosmetic restoration, and the job would be done. Once the Mallard 75 celebrations were over, they would be shipped back. It was a winwin formula for everyone, although many said from the outset it would never happen. Reaching the ground-breaking agreement with both museums was just the start of a true-life ‘mission impossible’,

as difficult and complex to carry out as any of the plots seen on the 1960s American drama series of the same name. A ‘Mr Fixit’ was found in the form of Andrew Goodman, whose Moveright International firm based near Sutton Coldfield specializes in the transport of railway locomotives and rolling stock by road, predominantly for heritage lines. However, Andrew had built up significant expertise in the international shipping of locomotives by virtue of his experience in bringing engines to the UK from the Middle East, South Africa and the former Yugoslavia. He joined the Mallard 75 sponsors, and flew out to North America to see what needed to be done. There would be little difficulty in extracting No. 60008 from the Canadian museum, but Dwight D. Eisenhower had effectively been bricked into its museum home in Green Bay. Undeterred, Andrew drew up a successful plan to build a sled to move the A4 sideways out of the building, with only 3 inches leeway on each side.

They’re back – for the moment! After half a century in exile in North America, A4s No. 60008 Dwight D. Eisenhower and No. 60010 Dominion of Canada stand on the dockside at Liverpool Freeport on 3 October 2012, after being unloaded from a transatlantic cargo ship. AUTHOR

Both locomotives were then taken on a complex, problematic and circuitous tour of North America – at one time No. 60010 was even ‘lost’ for five days in Illinois. Finally, after a journey lasting weeks, and a month of delays, both A4s were able to set sail aboard an Atlantic Container Line cargo ship from Halifax, Nova Scotia, on 25 September 2012, reaching Liverpool a week later. At dawn on 3 October that year, journalists gathered to witness both A4s being unloaded from the ship. Steve Davies said: ‘We wanted to do something really special to mark the seventy-fifth anniversary of Mallard breaking the world speed record, and what could be more spectacular than an international family reunion?’ From Liverpool Freeport, they were taken one by one on a journey across the Pennines to the National Railway Museum’s outreach station, the Locomotion museum in Shildon, where the restorations of both locomotives were to begin. There, they were immediately

placed on public display free of charge, and the expected crowds responded accordingly. Photographic charter organizer 30742 Charters arranged for No. 60009 Union of South Africa to join the repatriated pair, and during the evenings of 19 and 20 October all three were lined up outside the museum. One-time run-of-the-mill scenes at sheds such as King’s Cross, New England and Grantham were replicated under floodlighting. However, it was not just the expatriate pair that were in need of a fresh coat of paint: Mallard’s garter blue paintwork had been looking somewhat tired, so in the summer of 2012, it received a cosmetic restoration. Bury, Lancashire-based Heritage Painting, which had built up a superb track record with repainting classic steam locomotives, set to work and applied a brand new coat of the A4’s trademark garter blue livery. Heritage Painting then carried out the cosmetic restoration of No. 60008 Dwight D. Eisenhower after it was brought to the York museum from Locomotion by low loader later that autumn. Its restoration was finished in January, and No. 60008 was moved into the Great Hall proudly to take its place alongside Mallard. Dominion of Canada presented the more daunting task, because under the loan deal it was to be restored to its as-built condition complete with valances and garter blue paint. Also, a large dent in the front of the streamlined casing, sustained when the locomotive was involved in a shunting accident at the Montreal museum, had to be ironed out. Darlington-based M-Machine tackled its restoration at Shildon, before Andrew Goodman took it to join its two sisters at York.

Bittern’s Heritage Era Speed Record

Heritage era steam speed record holder Bittern arrives at York with The Ebor Streak on 29 June 2013. AUTHOR

Marking the start of the first Great Gathering, Mallard enters the Great Hall at the National Railway Museum on 3 July 2013, seventy-five years to the day it seized the steam speed record from Nazi Germany. AUTHOR

Tim Godfrey doffs his hat to his grandfather Sir Nigel Gresley’s cosmetically restored A4 No. 4489 Dominion of Canada while sharing the footplate with Canadian high commissioner Gordon Campbell on 3 July 2013. AUTHOR

Another major event was to take place as part of the build-up to the Great Gathering, as the line-up of all six A4s for the Mallard 75 celebrations was to be called. For an A4 was to set no less than another major speed record on the East Coast Main Line, en route to the anniversary celebrations. Jeremy Hosking’s main line operational arm, Locomotive Services Limited, obtained special dispensation from Network Rail to run

Bittern at 90mph (145km/h) on three passenger-carrying trips over the ECML, the current speed limit on the UK rail network being 75mph (120km/h). However, a test run would first have to take place. On 29 May 2013, it ran with a load of eight coaches from Southall to Didcot, with 90mph recorded both ways, and 91.5mph (147km/h) being reached between Didcot East Junction and Tilehurst East Junction. A new official record for a high-speed steam locomotive running in the preservation era had been set. On 29 June 2013, heading the first of the trips with the train The Ebor Streak, and with test train driver Don Clarke at the controls, Bittern departed King’s Cross with ten coaches. The high point of the trip came at Balderton crossing south of Newark-on-Trent, where the A4 and train reached its top speed of 92.5mph (148.8km/h), beating its test run best, before heading through Northgate station and slowing at Crow Park. After arriving at York, Bittern and its support coach were uncoupled and moved into the museum’s north yard, ready to take its place around the turntable in the Great Hall for the Great Gathering. The final piece of the jigsaw was in place.

Showcasing the East Coast’s Finest and Fastest! On the evening of Tuesday 2 July, in front of camera crews from the BBC’s The One Show, the visiting A4s were shunted into their predetermined positions around the turntable in the Great Hall. Back in the BBC studio, rock star and model railway enthusiast Rod Stewart pulled a lever, which by remote control turned Bittern on the turntable to face its road for the Great Gathering. At 8am the next day – seventy-five years to the day of the record run – Mallard sounded its trademark chime whistle before being shunted by the NRM’s Class 08 diesel shunter into the Great Hall from the yard outside. A fanfare played by the York Railway Institute Brass Band marked Mallard’s arrival into the Great Hall and signalled that the Great Gathering, the centrepiece of the Mallard 75 celebrations, was open. No. 4468 was shunted on to the turntable and positioned alongside its sister locomotives Sir Nigel Gresley,

Dwight D. Eisenhower, Union of South Africa, Bittern and Dominion of Canada. On the opening day – a Wednesday, when most people would be at work or school – around 7,000 visitors entered the Great Hall to see the six in place. Enthusiasts from all over the world, including Australia, Canada, the USA, and even a remote island in the South Pacific, amassed to celebrate Mallard’s historic achievement. Travelling the furthest was Neil Waterland, who made a 25,000-mile (40,225km) round trip from Norfolk Island in the South Pacific especially for the event. He said: ‘I wanted to come over and see all the A4s together because since an early age, with a very influential father, I have been interested in all parts of the British Rail network, but the A4s are the ones that I love the most.’ Paul Kirkman, who had by then replaced Steve Davies as museum head, the latter having taken a new career opportunity opening a revolutionary inland surfing resort in the Conwy Valley of Snowdonia, opened the big event with a speech. Seventy-five years ago to this day, this mighty machine raced down Stoke Bank near Grantham at the incredible speed of 126mph. That placed a permanent marker on the international timeline for British technological excellence, and it’s a record still held today. ‘Not only was it a marvellous feat of engineering, but it was also a triumph of British design. Mallard’s technical ability is surpassed only by its beauty. It has earned its place in the hearts of millions, and to me sums up everything great about British innovation: both our vision to be the best and our ability to achieve it.’

Carrying the Prince of Wales’ coat of arms, A4 No. 4464 Bittern stands on the turntable in the Great Hall of the National Railway Museum at York on 22 July 2013, having made a dramatic entrance with a train conveying Prince Charles. AUTHOR

A record-breaking 13,035 visitors passed through the museum’s doors on the first Saturday of the Great Gathering, which ran until 17 July. The overall attendance was 138,141, making the event the most successful in the history of the museum. Prince Charles visited on 22 July and inspected the three remaining A4s, climbing on to Mallard’s footplate and sounding the whistle, powered by an air

compressor. He had entered the Great Hall on a special train headed by Bittern, carrying the Prince of Wales’ coat of arms. After the event closed, the three operational A4s left to resume their main-line commitments. Before the weekend of 7/8 September, Mallard was towed by a diesel down the ECML to the point nearest to Stoke Bank where it could be publicly displayed. A siding was re-laid at Grantham station so the A4 could take its place alongside one of its mighty modern traction successors, Class 55 Deltic No. 55019 Royal Highland Fusilier, as the centre-piece of the local ‘Story of Speed’ festival.

Prince Charles, patron of the Mallard 75 celebrations, looks out of the cab of Mallard during his visit on 22 July 2013 – the day his daughter-in-law Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, had gone into labour, Prince George being born the next day. AUTHOR

Mallard at Grantham station on 9 September 2013, the nearest point to the spot where it reached 126mph (203km/h) on Stoke Bank and where it was deemed most practical to display it to the public as part of the Mallard 75 celebrations. AUTHOR

A second Great Gathering was held at the museum in the autumn, for seventeen days from 26 October, and this time attracted 108,419 visitors. Meanwhile Bittern’s second and third 90mph (145km/h) trips had been rearranged, due to Network Rail’s summer fire risk ban. Bittern worked the 5 December Tyne Tees Streak on its York to Newcastle and back leg, reaching the permitted 90mph for long periods. However, it allegedly reached 94mph (151km/h) on the 1-in220 downgrade to Parkgate Junction, and a passenger’s GPS device recorded 95mph (153km/h), although locomotive custodian Locomotive Services Ltd said the true speed had been 93mph (150km/h). Two days later, with The Capital Streak from York to King’s Cross, Bittern reached 92mph (148km/h) between Essendine and Werrington, near to where Mallard had hit 126mph (203km/h).

On 12 September 2013 Mallard was taken back to its Doncaster birthplace, breaking a banner as it was rolled out on the erecting shop from which it first emerged on 3 March 1938, into the sunshine, in front of a select audience of people who had paid £100 for a celebratory meal at the Mansion House in Doncaster.

The six A4s back together again on 26 October 2013, again carrying headboards highlighting the sponsorship of the Great Gatherings by modelmaker Hornby. Standing around the turntable in the Great Hall are Sir Nigel Gresley, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Union of South Africa, Bittern, Mallard and Dominion of Canada. AUTHOR

The A4s did not earn their nickname of ‘Streaks’ for nothing. At the southern end of the legendary racetrack of Stoke Bank, yards from the Whistle Stop pub at the A16 Tallington level crossing in failing light on 7 December 2013, No. 4464 again does its designer proud by thundering through with the Capital Streak. AUTHOR

Echoing the similar plaque affixed to the side of Mallard, this one is testimony to Bittern’s achievements on the main line in 2013. AUTHOR

This life-size sculpture of a streamlined A4 Pacific, named simply Train, stands near to the A66 Darlington bypass, and celebrates the town’s proud railway history, firstly as a terminus of the Stockton & Darlington Railway, the world’s first public steam-operated railway, and then by virtue of its place on the East Coast Main Line. Artist David Mach was commissioned to fashion the sculpture by Darlington Borough Council and Morrisons supermarkets, with support from Northern Arts as the town’s contribution to Visual Arts UK 1996. The £760,000 sculpture comprises 181,754 orange-brown house bricks resting on precast concrete slab floors. It is hollow and incorporates twenty special bricks so that bats can nest inside the sculpture. It has a viewing platform on top of the grassy bank representing the ‘tunnel’ from which the Gresley masterpiece is depicted emerging. At the time of its unveiling by Lord Palumbo of Walbrook on 23 June 1999, it was said to be the biggest single sculpture to be built in Britain. AUTHOR

All brilliant things have to end sometime, and between 15 and 23 February a third and final event called the ‘Great Goodbye’, featuring all six A4s lined up, was staged at Locomotion, attracting 119,880 visitors. Afterwards, Union of South Africa towed Mallard back along the ECML to York, Bittern and Sir Nigel Gresley resumed their mainline duties, and the repatriated pair stayed on display until Easter, when Andrew Goodman oversaw their return to their North American homes. Thus for the best part of a year, East Coast Main Line history had been re-made and celebrated at every twist and turn. And whoever said that museums must run at a loss? Thanks in part to sponsorship deals, Mallard 75 made more than £500,000 profit for parent body the Science Museum, after attracting 365,000 visitors. The events pushed the total number of visitors to both the

York and Shildon museums to more than 1,250,000 in that financial year.

A unique line-up of East Coast Main Line steam power supreme at Barrow Hill roundhouse near Chesterfield on 14 February 2014. Left to right are A4 No. 4464 Bittern, A2 No. 60532 Blue Peter, A4 No. 4489 Dominion of Canada and A4 No. 60008 Dwight D. Eisenhower. AUTHOR

Speed kings side by side: cosmetically restored A4 No. 4489 Dominion of Canada, an example of the class that includes the world’s fastest steam locomotive, stands shoulder to shoulder with British Rail’s Advanced Passenger Train – Experimental set at the Locomotion museum in Shildon on 19 April 2014. The unique APT-E set a new British record on the Western Region between Swindon and Reading when it reached 152.3mph (245km/h) on 10 August 1975. It ended up on the East Coast Main Line, but only as a static exhibit in the National Railway Museum at York, to which it was presented on 11 June 1976. The record was broken by the subsequent Advanced Passenger Train – Prototype, which hit 162.2mph (261km/h) in December 1979, a record that stood for another twenty-three years. AUTHOR

CHAPTER 21

The Return of the King Flying Scotsman is undoubtedly the world’s most famous locomotive. On 30 November 2015 an online YouGov survey carried out across the UK, USA, India and Australia asked respondents – who were by no means all enthusiasts – to name five trains they had heard of, and topping the table was none other than the A3 Pacific. The Japanese Bullet Train, the only example of which outside Japan is displayed in the National Railway Museum, squeezes into the number ten spot. Stephenson’s Rocket made it to fourteenth place in the list, and the fictional Hogwarts Express, portrayed in the Warner Brothers’ Harry Potter films by West Coast Railways’ GWR 4-6-0 No. 5972 Olton Hall in decidedly non-authentic maroon livery, ranked at twenty-five. So why is this flagship locomotive of both the LNER and the ECML so famous? We have already mentioned its appearances at the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley in 1924 and 1925, and its heading of the first non-stop Flying Scotsman services from King’s Cross to Edinburgh on 1 May 1928. Then there was the 30 November 1934 official 100mph (160km/h) record run. However, Flying Scotsman was just one of fifty-two A1 Pacifics built, and on 22 August 1928, Gresley produced the first of an improved version, the A3, of which twenty-seven were built. All but one of his A1s were eventually rebuilt to the A3 design, and Flying Scotsman was duly converted at Doncaster Works, becoming an A3 as from 4 January 1947, having been equipped with a boiler with the long ‘banjo’ dome of the type it carries today.

Under Edward Thompson’s renumbering scheme, in 1946 it became No. 502 and then a few months later, No. 103. After nationalization it became British Railways No. 60103. In the 1950s, all A3s were fitted with a double Kylchap chimney for better performance and fuel economy, the down side being that soft exhaust and the resulting smoke drift could obscure a driver’s forward vision. From 1960, smoke deflectors as fitted to German Pacifics were fitted to the A3s. A driver from 1923 might well have found difficulty in recognizing the locomotive by that time. Flying Scotsman was coupled to a corridor tender between April 1928 and October 1936, after which it reverted to the original type. In July 1938 it was allocated a streamlined non-corridor tender, and ran with this type until withdrawal. That came on 14 January 1963 and, typical of the merciless disregard for railway heritage displayed by those in power in the Beeching era, the year before had been earmarked for the scrapyard. Had that happened, no member of this magnificent class would survive today – begging the question as to why it, or another example, was not preserved as part of the National Collection. A group tried to save it under the banner of ‘Save Our Scotsman’, but was unable to raise the required £3,000, the scrap value of the locomotive.

In its latter-day British Railways livery of Brunswick Green, No. 60103 Flying Scotsman, watched by hordes of spectators, makes a storming run up the East Coast Main Line at Holme on its King’s Cross to York official relaunch trip on 25 February 2016. BRIAN SHARPE

However, help was at hand in the form of Alan Pegler, the businessman who in 1954 had saved the Ffestiniog Railway: he allowed it to emulate preservation pioneer line the Talyllyn Railway, and along with rebuilt sister line the Welsh Highland Railway, set it on the path to what is arguably today the finest heritage narrowgauge system in Europe. Pegler had begun to run railway enthusiasts excursions from 1951, and his success in this field led him to be appointed to the British Transport Commission’s Eastern Area board four years later.

Alan had seen Flying Scotsman at the Wembley exhibition in 1924, and hearing that it was to be scrapped, bought it outright. He then spent a considerable sum having it restored and repainted into LNER livery as No. 4472 minus smoke deflectors and with a single chimney and corridor tender once more, at Doncaster Works. After the legendary ‘Fifteen Guinea Special’ of 11 August 1968, steam haulage on the national network was officially banned by British Rail, the only exception being steam breakdown cranes, and the 1ft 11½in Vale of Rheidol Railway in mid-Wales, which the London Midland Region decided to retain as a tourist attraction. However, Alan Pegler managed to negotiate an exception with British Rail for Flying Scotsman, lasting until 1972. It became the only steam locomotive permitted to run anywhere on the network, and was soon in demand for enthusiast specials. In 1968 it worked the non-stop London to Edinburgh run, recalling the first run four decades earlier. Modernization brought with it the widespread removal of steamage infrastructure, including water towers and troughs, and so Alan bought a second corridor tender, which was adapted as an auxiliary water tank. In 1969, Harold Wilson’s government agreed to support Alan’s ambitious scheme to use Flying Scotsman to head a continent-wide tour of the United States and Canada to support British exports. So it could run on North American railroads, it was fitted with the obligatory cowcatcher, an American-style whistle, buckeye couplings, a high-intensity headlamp and air brakes.

LNER A3 Pacific No. 4472 Flying Scotsman outside its Doncaster Works birthplace in 2003, complete with British Railways-era German-style smoke deflectors and double chimney.

The tour began in Boston, Massachusetts, but immediately hit snags. Some steam-free states became concerned about fire risk, and insisted the train should be hauled by a diesel through them, pushing up costs. Nonetheless, on a 15,400-mile (24,780km) journey, the train visited New York, Washington, Dallas, Montreal and Toronto, before ending up in San Francisco in 1971. The Conservative government that was elected in 1970 ‘pulled the plug’ on financial support for the tour, but Alan carried on regardless – and ended up £132,000 in debt. With No. 4472 secured in a US Army compound, Alan had no other way of returning to Britain minus his most treasured possession except by working his passage back as a ship’s entertainer, giving lectures about trains and travel. He was declared bankrupt in 1972.

East Coast hits the west coast – of the USA! March 1972 saw the short-lived operation of Flying Scotsman along San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf. It is seen running on Jefferson Street, with owner Alan Pegler in the driving seat. DREW JACKSICH/CCL

Multi-millionaire enthusiast Sir William McAlpine, who has his own private standard-gauge railway at Fawley Hill near Henley-onThames, answered a call for help to save the locomotive in 1973 by purchasing it for £25,000 direct from a finance company in California. Returned to the UK in February 1973, it was restored at Derby Works and then spent the summer working on what is now known as the Dartmouth Steam Railway between Paignton and Kingswear, before returning to the main line for special tours. In 1977 it was fitted with an unused replacement boiler at Vickers shipyard in Barrow-in-Furness. Sir William McAlpine was undeterred by the A3’s last overseas venture, and in October 1988 Flying Scotsman arrived in Australia for that country’s bicentenary celebrations. In the following year it ran for 28,000 miles (45,000km), which included a transcontinental return trip from Sydney to Perth via Alice Springs. In Perth it was reunited with GWR 4-6-0 No. 4073 Pendennis Castle, with which it

had been exhibited in the 1924 Wembley exhibition, and which Sir William McAlpine had sold in 1977 to Australian iron ore company Hamersley Iron for use on its own railway system. (No. 4073 returned to the UK in 2000 and is now based at Didcot Railway Centre.)

Flying Scotsman stands at Seymour station in Victoria in 1989, equipped with electric lighting and air brakes for operation on Australian railways.

Steaming from Alice Springs to Melbourne on 8 August 1989, Flying Scotsman’s non-stop run of 422 miles (679km) from Parkes to Broken Hill was the longest ever made. It returned to the UK in 1990, and ran on both the main line and heritage railways. By 1995 it had been dismantled for another overhaul; it was then owned by a consortium that included McAlpine and record producer Pete Waterman, but it was having trouble funding the costs of this latest restoration. In 1996, the A3 was sold for £2.5 million to the late pharmaceuticals entrepreneur Dr Tony Marchington, who over three years spent £1 million restoring it, after hiring chief engineer Roland Kennington. In late June 1999, following

a series of test runs from Southall depot, with the locomotive in grey undercoat, it was painted in LNER apple green all ready for its 4 July comeback trip, from King’s Cross to York.

No. 4472 Flying Scotsman prepares to leave King’s Cross on its comeback trip following a major overhaul under then owner Dr Tony Marchington on 4 July 1999. AUTHOR

Accompanied by the sound of bagpipes, No. 4472, in its A3 guise minus smoke deflectors, and heading a ten-coach train, pulled away at 8.55am – three minutes late – with 252 people each paying £350 to ride on it. Nationwide pre-publicity had fuelled enormous if not unprecedented levels of interest. Police said that at the time ‘a million’ people had lined the ECML to watch it, clamouring for every vantage point – scenes that would be repeated seventeen years

later. At one stage the train was held back by a red light because of reports of children trespassing on the line. It also stopped at Retford to allow a GNER express past. By the time Doncaster was reached at 1.15pm the train was more than eight minutes ahead of schedule, and No. 4472 had more than made up for the lost time. Some observers claimed it had touched 82mph (132km/h), but Flying Scotsman Railways, the company formed by Dr Marchington to run the locomotive, insisted that it had adhered to the permitted line speed of 75mph (120km/h). Because its water needed to be replenished from a water hydrant, No. 4472 was delayed by twenty minutes past its schedule at Doncaster, and York was reached at 2.50pm. There, Dr Marchington and his A3 received a pop star’s welcome, with members of the public pleading for a souvenir lump of coal from the tender. During the Marchington era, smoke deflectors were once again fitted. In 2002, Dr Marchington drew up plans for a Flying Scotsman Village at Edinburgh, based around the A3 and its branding, but they were turned down by the city council. In September the following year, he was declared bankrupt. Some said that Flying Scotsman was cursed, and that Marchington was the latest victim. At Flying Scotsman Railways’ annual general meeting in October 2003, chief executive Peter Butler announced losses of £474,619, and the company’s shares were suspended from the OFEX junior stock exchange after it failed to declare interim results. Early the following year, Heritage Railway magazine revealed that Flying Scotsman was being advertised for sale through a luxury vintage and veteran car dealership. On 16 February it was officially announced that the A3 was for sale, in order to clear the company’s £1.75 million debts. A campaign to buy it for the nation was launched, amidst fears that it could be sold abroad. Thanks to help from Virgin Trains boss Sir Richard Branson and an emergency National Heritage Memorial Fund grant of £1.8 million, the National Railway Museum was able to buy the locomotive for £2.31 million, it was announced on Monday 5 April 2004. More than 2,000 people had responded to the museum’s Save Our Scotsman appeal.

In public ownership at last, forty-one years after British Railways planned to send it to the scrapyard, and accompanied by a band of Scottish pipers, No. 4472 Flying Scotsman is shunted into the National Railway Museum’s yard on 29 May 2004. AUTHOR

At last in public ownership, forty-one years after Alan Pegler saved it from the cutter’s torch, Flying Scotsman made a triumphant entry into the museum’s south yard on 29 May 2004, to mark the start of the museum’s hugely successful Railfest steam festival, which ran until 6 June and marked the bicentenary of the first public demonstration of a railway locomotive by Richard Trevithick.

There to witness the receipt of Flying Scotsman at the Railfest event in 2004 was none other than Alan Pegler OBE, the man who had bought it straight out of British Railways service in 1963. AUTHOR

From then on, Flying Scotsman continued to head main-line specials, until its main-line certificate ran out. Its final excursion under that ticket was a Vintage Trains ‘Christmas Lunch Excursion’ on 17 December 2005; three days later the A3 returned to York for its next overhaul to begin. The following month, in January 2006, No. 4472 entered the museum’s workshops for a major overhaul to return it to Gresley’s

A3 specification and to renew its boiler certificate. This time round it would carry the last remaining genuine A3 boiler, which had been acquired at the same time as the locomotive as a spare, but in need of extensive work.

The ‘overhauled’ Flying Scotsman, now in wartime black minus German smoke deflectors, was unveiled to the world’s media at the National Railway Museum on 27 May 2011 – but sadly, all was not as it appeared. AUTHOR

On 27 May 2011, a high-profile re-launch of Flying Scotsman took place in the museum’s Great Hall. It appeared in wartime black livery as NE No. 102, and it was said that it would be painted green once its tests had been completed. However, all was not well at all, as cracks were discovered around the hornguides. All events featuring the A3 were quickly cancelled, and further examination of the locomotive revealed a lengthy list of further problems. The curse had struck again, in a big way.

No. 4472 Flying Scotsman departing York station with the Scarborough Spa Express on 6 July 2005. WAGON16/CCL

In October 2012, the museum published a report outlining the reasons for the delay and why the overhaul bill was now soaring. The following year, an agreement was reached with acclaimed Bury locomotive engineer Ian Riley to restore the locomotive, in return for running it on the main line for two years. Flying Scotsman’s boiler left the museum’s workshops to be reunited with the rest of the locomotive at Bury on 29 April 2015. The A4 boiler that Flying Scotsman had used since the 1980s – as had

several A3s in British Railways days – was sold to locomotive owner Jeremy Hosking as a spare. The first fire was lit inside the refurbished boiler at Riley & Son Ltd’s works just before midnight on 20 December 2015. By then, the overhaul bill had soared to more than £4.2 million, and that did not include the purchase price. After much trepidation, and still in black livery but with the smoke deflectors back on, Flying Scotsman, coupled to a Class 31, finally moved out of Ian Riley’s Baron Street works on to the East Lancashire Railway for the first of several test runs on the icy cold evening of 6 January 2016. The A3 was officially re-launched to the world’s media at Bury Bolton Street station two days later, prior to two weeks of hauling public passenger trains on the heritage line; these also doubled up as test runs. The very problematic overhaul meant that by then, it had been more than ten years since the world’s most famous steam locomotive had last turned a wheel. It returned to the main line, still in black, to haul tour operator the Railway Touring Company’s Cumbrian Mountain Express over the West Coast Main Line and Settle and Carlisle route on 6 February, two days after passing a main line test run. At Carlisle, the train was ecstatically greeted by a crowd of onlookers, despite heavy rain. All seemed well, but the ‘curse’ was having none of it: a driving wheel bearing was found to have run slightly warm, and so the leading pair of driving wheels were removed and sent to Bury. Here the problem was tackled while the locomotive was re-liveried into British Railways Brunswick green – the correct livery if it was to run with a double chimney and carry smoke deflectors – by Heritage Painting Ltd in the museum’s workshops. The wheels were refitted on 19 February, but the next day a cracked spring was discovered. Repairs to that delayed the locomotive’s final test run, from York to Scarborough and back, until 23 February – cutting it fine for the museum’s advertised £450-a-head inaugural run from King’s Cross to York two days later.

Near the scene of the infamous Abbots Ripton collision of 1896, Flying Scotsman with its support coach head towards London on 24 February 2016 for its inaugural comeback trip the following morning. AUTHOR

Flying Scotsman departs King’s Cross with its inaugural ECML passenger trip since the completion of its £4.2-million overhaul on 25 February 2016. A Virgin train East Coast Class 91 stands in the platform opposite. VIRGIN TRAINS

On 25 February 2016, in a moment of perfect timing, a Virgin East Coast service headed by Class 91 No. 91104 departs from Peterborough’s Platform 2, while Flying Scotsman heads its official inaugural comeback train across to the Stamford line from Platform 4. This picture was taken, with Network Rail’s permission, from a safe position. ALAN WILSON/CCL

Flying Scotsman arrives at York’s Platform 9 with its official comeback trip on 25 February 2016, fifty-three minutes late because of trespassers at two spots on the ECML. AUTHOR

Crowds ‘mobbed’ Flying Scotsman as it stood at York station awaiting transfer to the National Railway Museum’s north yard on 25 February 2016. AUTHOR

Penelope Vaudoyer, daughter of Flying Scotsman saviour Alan Pegler, with Sir William McAlpine, who rescued it from the USA, at York on 25 February 2016. AUTHOR

On 24 February, No. 60103 and its support coach travelled down the ECML from York to London, minus its nameplates, which were applied before the inaugural run. When it appeared in Platform 1 at King’s Cross the following day, it looked just as it did before it was withdrawn in January 1963. The eleven-coach train, titled simply The Flying Scotsman, set off on time at 7.40am. As in 1999, crowds lined the route throughout, even though it was a Thursday rather than a weekend. Near Doncaster, the astonished train crew spotted a lady standing on top of a pile of farmyard manure just to get the best snapshot. Sadly, two incidents of line-side trespass – one near St Neots and the other north of Doncaster – caused the train to be halted on both occasions. When Flying Scotsman arrived at York’s Platform 9 at 1.20pm – fifty-three minutes late through no fault of its own – a crowd of around 4,000 was there to greet it. The A3 and its crew were

mobbed by spectators before it was uncoupled and ran light engine into the museum’s yard. There, rapturous applause greeted it as it entered the gates for its official re-launch ceremony, which comprised speeches given by museum director Paul Kirkman, Lady Archer of Weston-super-Mare, chairman of the trustees of the National Science Museum Group, and Sir Peter Luff, chairman of the National Heritage Memorial Fund and Heritage Lottery Fund. So at long last Flying Scotsman was back, and cursed or not, the first page in the latest chapter of this East Coast star of stars was opened.

Back behind the controls of Flying Scotsman: Dave Court was, at the age of twenty-two, one of the firemen on the A3’s ill-fated tour of North America in 1969. He later became a fully fledged driver and instructor in his own right. PAUL BICKERDYKE

Flying Scotsman, Defining Symbol of the Steam Era

So in 2016, as tens of thousands of visitors flocked to the National Railway Museum to see No. 4472 on display at part of a special exhibition, we could at long last say – Flying Scotsman is back. Or can we? In the course of its rich and varied history, Flying Scotsman has undergone more transformations and regenerations than Dr Who, the immortal science fiction character whose body simply metamorphoses rather than expires when it is worn out or delivered a fatal blow. It has had nearly a century of replacement parts at every overhaul, including boilers – for many years using an A4 boiler rather than an A3 one – wheels, cylinders and tenders, along with its appearance, number and livery changes, and even its nameplates. This means that there is very little left of the locomotive that emerged from Doncaster in 1923 as No. 1472, or which set the 100mph (160km/h) world record in 1934. What has survived are the rear two-thirds of the frames (the single component that gives a locomotive its identity), part of the cab sides, a few parts of the motion, and maybe the driving wheel splashers. Furthermore, many A3 components were interchangeable with other Gresley classes, such as the V2s, the sole survivor of which, No. 4771 Green Arrow, also in the museum’s collection, has A3 components on it. Therefore much of the original Gresley GNR A1 No. 1472 Flying Scotsman had long since been replaced by the time Alan Pegler bought it for preservation and had it overhauled. He bought the boiler and cylinders from sister engine Salmon Trout in 1966 as replacement parts. So is what we see Flying Scotsman, or merely an illusion, a job lot collection of parts reassembled in a steamable form? Indeed, there are those with hindsight who said that when the last overhaul soared above £4 million, it might have been better to have built a new A3 and just to have incorporated the surviving original parts from Scotsman, allowing it to run on the main line while the ‘old one’ could be left on static display. By comparison, it cost the A1 Steam Locomotive Trust £3 million to build a new main-line Pacific in the form of Tornado from scratch.

Flying Scotsman passes Aycliffe during the steam-hauled York to Newcastle and return leg of rail-tour operator Steam Dreams’ Cathedral Express trip from King’s Cross to Newcastle and return on 10 May 2016. BRIAN SHARPE

An analogy may be drawn with a football team. If you go to Old Trafford in 2016, can you reasonably expect to see the European Cup winning side of 1968, or the treble winners of 1999? Players come and go, but they still wear the club colours and the same numbers. You might buy a desktop computer and then upgrade its memory to make it run faster, replace the motherboard, add a new keyboard and mouse, install a better processor, add a second-hand drive, change the case and so on. How much of your original computer is left after three or four years? Very few preserved steam locomotives are wholly original. The remains of Stephenson’s Rocket as displayed in the Science Museum are much altered from the locomotive that made its debut on the Liverpool & Manchester Railway in 1830. National Railway Museum staff will often tell you that the most ‘genuine’ locomotive in their collection is BR Standard 9F 2-10-0 No. 92220 Evening Star:

built in 1960, it was withdrawn in 1965 and never underwent any major overhauls in which sizeable components were replaced. The East Coast Main Line legend that we see today is therefore more a historical entity than a heritage artefact, and is one that has been rebuilt in the twenty-first century to perform on the modern railway. Nonetheless, the glitz and glamour that surrounds it continues to grow, half a century after British Rail ended steam haulage. For many people, Flying Scotsman is the defining symbol of the steam era, and its return to the ECML will further enhance the route’s history as the line where legends are made. However, in the first few months of the A3’s comeback that celebrity status has had a negative effect, in that operators shied away from using it on sections of planned routes because of fears of public trespass and the worst possible outcome arising from that. The Railway Touring Company’s planned White Rose trip from King’s Cross to York on 18 June 2016 was rescheduled, with Flying Scotsman joining the train at Newark-on-Trent instead of the starting point as originally hoped, because of fears of a repeat of the trespass seen at St Neots on the comeback trip. To compensate passengers, a circuitous tour from Newark via Pyewipe Junction, Gainsborough and Doncaster en route to York was arranged. Similarly, Steam Dreams ‘pulled the plug’ on a Flying Scotsmanhauled Cathedrals Express from London to Norwich on 25 May, after fears were expressed that on some stretches of the route through East Anglia, again spectators could get too close to the track. Instead, a replacement trip was arranged in the south of England. In June 2016, British Transport Police released pictures of alleged trespassers taken from a helicopter that had been monitoring Flying Scotsman’s trips, asking the public to identify them with a view to prosecution. So could the engine that jostles with Mallard for the title of being the East Coast Main Line’s most famous son have become, in this age of celebrity culture, too famous to run? What would Sir Nigel Gresley have made of that?

Four speed kings of the East Coast Main Line together inside the Great Hall of the National Railway Museum at York on 23 March 2016: left to right are GNR Stirling single No. 1, GNR C2 Atlantic No. 990 Henry Oakley, Flying Scotsman, and Class 55 Deltic D9002 The King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry. PAUL BICKERDYKE

CHAPTER 22

The East Coast’s Darkest Days The East Coast Main Line has, as might be expected for a 393-mile (632km) route, experienced several serious accidents over the past century and a half. In many such incidents, lessons were learned that improved safety not only on the route but on other parts of the network; however, in other tragedies, no definite cause could be established.

Accidents in the Nineteenth Century On 9 June 1866 two people died in a three-train collision in Welwyn Tunnel. The blame was attributed to a guard’s failure to protect a train and to a signalling communications error. On Boxing Day in 1870, a derailment at Hatfield caused by a disintegrating wheel resulted in the deaths of eight passengers and two bystanders. The Abbots Ripton disaster has already been described in Chapter 7. On 25 March 1877 faulty track was responsible for a derailment at Morpeth, which left five people dead and seventeen injured.

A Crash Caused by Extenuating Circumstances On 2 November 1892 ten people died and forty-three were injured at Thirsk when a signalman forgot about a freight train standing at Manor House signalbox and accepted the ‘Scotch Express’ on to his line. Signalman James Holmes was found guilty of manslaughter but

was given an absolute discharge due to extenuating circumstances surrounding the accident, a verdict widely supported by public opinion despite the casualties. The day before the crash, his baby daughter Rose had been taken ill and he had stayed awake for thirty-six hours to care for her. Extremely distressed, he had walked miles trying to find a doctor, but in vain and she had died later. He told the Otterington stationmaster that he was unfit to work the next night, but no relief signalman was appointed and Holmes had to do the shift. The railway company was criticized for its treatment of Holmes.

Accidents in the Twentieth Century

Mystery has always surrounded the exact cause of the disaster at Grantham station on 19 August 1906 in which fourteen people died. ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS

On 19 August 1906, fourteen people died and seventeen were injured after an evening sleeping car and mail train from King’s

Cross to Edinburgh headed by GNR Atlantic No. 276 failed to stop as scheduled at Grantham and derailed on a sharp junction curve at the end of the platform, ignoring signals set at caution and danger. No exact cause was ever identified. On 15 June 1935 two trains collided due to a signalman’s mistake at Welwyn Garden City, leaving fourteen dead and twenty-nine injured. The inspecting officer recommended that the block instruments should be linked to track circuits to prevent future similar occurrences, with a ‘Line clear’ indication only given if the passage of a train had been registered. The system became widely adopted and was known as Welwyn Control. Two people perished and twenty-six were injured at King’s Cross on 4 February 1945, when a train slipped on the gradient and slid back into the station. On 10 February 1946 a local passenger train bound for King’s Cross hit a set of buffers at Potters Bar station, derailing the carriages, which blocked the main line. Two express trains travelling in opposite directions then hit the wreckage. Two passengers died and seventeen were injured and taken to hospital. The driver of the local train was largely blamed, but a signalman contributed to the disaster by changing a set of points as the train passed over them.

LNER A3 Pacific No. 66 Merry Hampton and its tender sustained only slight damage after falling on to soft soil at Goswick, but twenty-eight people on board the Flying Scotsman train it was hauling died, on 26 October 1947.

At Goswick on 26 October 1947 the King’s Cross-bound Flying Scotsman, headed by A3 No. 66 Merry Hampton, passed a signal at danger, set because of a diversion, and came off the tracks, leaving twenty-eight people dead and sixty-five injured. The train crew had all failed to read the diversion notice that had been posted at Haymarket depot. The blame was laid mainly on the driver, who had defied regulations by taking an unauthorized passenger on to the footplate, who may have distracted him. It was the last major accident on Britain’s railways before nationalization on 1 January 1948. On 16 March 1951, a Doncaster to King’s Cross service headed by A2/2 No. 60501 Cock o’ the North derailed south of Doncaster station and struck a bridge pier, killing fourteen and injuring twelve. It was later ruled that poor maintenance of a crossover was the primary cause, with bolts missing or cracked. Mystery has always surrounded the reason for the actions of the signalman at Conington South on 5 March 1967, which led to a King’s Cross to Edinburgh Deltic-hauled express being derailed, with

five people losing their lives and eighteen others injured. The twentyyear-old signalman, A. J. Frost, a former Royal Marine, claimed that he had accidentally changed the points while ‘swinging’ on the levers. The signalman had entered the railway service in January 1965 after being discharged from the navy, after suffering from ‘hysteria and immature personality’ – a fact not known to railway management. After a trial lasting eleven days he was acquitted on charges of manslaughter, but was given two years in jail for unlawfully operating the signal and points mechanism so as to endanger persons being conveyed on a railway. Before that time, the only two signalmen ever to have been jailed were the two involved in Britain’s worst-ever rail disaster, the Quintinshill collision on 22 May 1915, which left 226 dead and 246 injured. At Thirsk on 31 July 1967, seven people died and forty-five sustained injuries when a cement train derailed and was hit by a northbound express hauled by prototype locomotive DP2, which was subsequently written off. On 7 May 1969 excessive speed on the curve approaching Morpeth station was the cause of a crash that left six dead and fortysix injured. Another crash occurred on 24 June 1984 for the same reason, when thirty-five people were injured. On 17 March 1979 two workers were killed when the roof of Penmansheil Tunnel collapsed during engineering works. On 30 November 1989 fifteen people received injuries when two InterCity expresses collided at Newcastle Central station. On 13 November 1992 one man died in a collision between two freight trains at Morpeth.

Accidents in the Twenty-First Century

A Virgin Trains 225 InterCity unit approaches the site of the Conington South crash on 24 February 2016. AUTHOR

Four people died at Hatfield on 17 October 2000, when an InterCity 225 derailed due to a failure to replace a fractured rail. The accident highlighted poor management at Railtrack, the post-privatization body responsible for the national network. In the wake of the accident, which left seventy people injured, Railtrack was partially renationalized as a replacement body, Network Rail.

The Great Heck Tragedy Amongst the most bizarre accidents of all time on a British railway line, and the worst to date in the twenty-first century in terms of fatalities, occurred at Great Heck near Selby in Yorkshire on 28 February 2001. In what was said to have had a sixty-seven billion-toone chance of happening, and which the railway could have done little if anything to prevent, builder Gary Hart was driving a Land Rover Defender, which, while towing a loaded trailer, swerved off the westbound M62 just before an overbridge, ran down the embankment and ended up on the track.

While Hart was using his mobile telephone to alert the emergency services, the marooned Land Rover was hit by a Great Northern & Eastern Railway InterCity 225 set; the front bogie derailed as a result, allowing points to nearby sidings to deflect the train into the path of an oncoming coal train. Both train drivers, two crew members on board the InterCity 225, and six passengers died, all as a result of the second collision, and eighty-two were injured. Hart was not injured, but an investigation concluded that he had been driving in a sleep-deprived condition. Separated from his wife at the time, he had stayed up the previous night talking on the telephone to a woman he had met online. Found guilty on ten charges of causing death by dangerous driving, on 13 December 2001 he was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment. Hart never set out that morning with the conscious intention of hurting anyone, and but for the sequence of a freak chain of circumstances, the outcome would almost certainly have been different. What if his vehicle had come off the road a few inches later and been deflected from its path down the embankment by a tree or a fencepost, for instance? However, a poll by the US-based National Sleep Foundation showed that 60 per cent of Americans have driven while feeling sleepy, and 37 per cent admit to actually having fallen asleep at the wheel over one year. Yet Alaska and New Jersey are the only states in the USA that have laws against drowsy driving. In Alaska, fatigued driving is classified as an offence under negligent homicide, and in New Jersey a driver who has not slept for twenty-four hours is considered to be driving recklessly, and is put in the same category as a drink driver.

A Tragic Derailment in 2002

This EMU driving car came to rest on Potters Bar station platform after undetected faults in a set of points caused it to derail at speed on 10 May 2002, killing seven people. CHRIS MILNER

On 10 May 2002, a derailment caused by a badly maintained set of points at Potter’s Bar led to seven people being killed and seventy sustaining injuries. The incident led to Network Rail ending the use of external contractors for routine track and infrastructure maintenance. The 12.45pm West Anglia Great Northern to King’s Lynn service, comprising Class 365 electric multiple unit No. 365526, crossed over 2182A, the set of points just south of Potters Bar station. However, as the end coach went over the points, they moved, and the rear bogie crossed over on to the line alongside. The bogie derailed at speed, flipping it into the air, and carried the coach into the station. It struck a bridge parapet, scattering masonry on to Darkes Lane beneath, killing one pedestrian, eighty-yearold Agnes Quinlivan. The coach then mounted the platform and slid

along it, before finally stopping at 45 degrees beneath the canopy. Six passengers in the damaged carriage died.

An Exemplary Safety Record Despite these tragedies, statistics show that Britain has an exemplary safety record. However, there is never any room for complacency, and just as the advancement of steam locomotive technology placed the East Coast Main Line top of the pile in the 1930s, we now look to the development of computer age technology to minimize and hopefully eradicate the chances of accidents like these happening again.

Index A1 Steam Locomotive Trust, The 118, 148, 180–9 Abbots Ripton 63–4, 227 Aberdeen 48–53, 65, 104 accidents 233 Act of Union 7 Andrews, George Townsend 45 Atlantics 70, 75 atmospheric railways 26, 29 Azumas 174–7 Baker, Sir Benjamin 49 Barlow, William Henry 50 Beeching, Dr. Richard 150–3, 191 Berwick-on-Tweed 9, 20–5 Border sign 33 Borsig Class 05 98 Boston locomotive and carriage works 55, 57, 59 Bouch, Thomas 48 Brandling Junction Railway 31 Branson, Sir Richard 175, 224 Bristol & Exeter Railway 26 British Railways 77, 14–2, 181, 191, 204, 225 British Transport Commission 191, 200, 201 Brunel, Isambard Kingdom 26, 55 Buckinghamshire Railway Centre 59 Bugatti, Ettore 91

Bulleid, Oliver 205 Bury, Edward 54 Caledonian Railway 48, 65 Cameron, John 208 Champion, David and Phil 180, 182 Clarkson, Jeremy Coronation, The 94 Cubitt, Benjamin 54 Cubitt, Lewis 120 Cubitt, William 38, 39 Darlington Bank top 35 Davies, Steve 211 Deltic Preservation Society 148 Deltics 142–144, 164–67 dieselization 141 Dobson, John 28 Doncaster Works 55, 59, 62, 68, 69, 99, 148, 149 Drury, Geoff 207 Dunbar 19–20, 22 Durham Junction Railway 136 dynamometer car, LNER 86–7 East Coast Joint Stock 57, 59, 197 East Lincolnshire Railway 37, 54 Edinburgh & Glasgow Railway 16, 17, 57 Edinburgh Haymarket 16 Edinburgh Princes Street 17 Edinburgh Waverley 1718, 178, 184 Edinburgh, Leith & Newhaven Railway 17 Edinburgh, Perth & Dundee Railway 48 Eisenhower, General Dwight D. 209 electrification 155–62 Elliot, David 182 Flying Hamburger 88, 90

Flying Scotsman/other A3/1 Pacifics/the ‘Flying Scotsman’ named train 7, 49, 58, 65, 69, 81–6, 117, 194, 205, 219–232 Forth Bridge 48, 49, 50, 51, 53 Fowler, Sir John 49 Germany, speed record 98, 102 Glasgow Queen Street 16 Great North British Railway 25 Great North of England Railway 25, 33 Great North Road 8, 10, 12, 13 Great Northern Railway 37, 40, 41, 44, 51, 54, 57, 60, 63, 67, 74, 77, 120, 123, 135 Great Western Railway 26, 55, 68, 78, 79, 81, 93, 133, 205 Gresley, other A4 Pacifics 90, 92, 108, 115, 116, 201–18 Gresley, Sir Herbert Nigel 7, 8, 69, 76, 77, 78, 88, 89, 132, 133, 188 Grimsby 37 Hardwicke 66 Hertford Loop 161 High Speed 2 200 High Speed Trains 144–7 Hosking, Jeremy 207, 213 Howick, Viscount 25, 26 Hudson, George 25, 26, 32, 33–35 InterCity East Coast Franchise 168–79 Ivatt, Henry Alfred 70, 79 King’s Cross 8, 120–135, 184 Leamside 136–140 Leeds 43 Leeds & Selby Railway 34 Leeds, Bradford & Halifax Junction Railway 43 Lincolnshire Loop 40 Lincolnshire Wolds Railway 44

Liverpool & Manchester Railway 11, 14, 15, 192 Locomotion Museum, Shildon 149, 196 London & North Eastern Railway (LNER) 8, 65, 69, 70, 78, 88, 97 London & York Railway 37 London, Midland & Scottish Railway (LMS) 95 Mallard 8, 90, 97, 103, 201–6 Manchester, Sheffield & Lincolnshire Railway/Great Central Railway 37, 44, 70, 125 Marchington, Dr Tony 207, 224 Mather, Mrs Dorothy 182, 184, 187 May, James 189 McAlpine, Sir William 222, 229 Midland Railway 41, 50, 121, 135 Moorgate Line 161–2 named trains on ECML 111 National Collection 191, 195 National Railway Museum 7, 58, 60, 87, 90, 182, 183, 190–200, 206, 224 Newark-on-Trent flat crossing 42, 43 Newcastle 25, 28, 36 Newcastle & Berwick Railway 25, 29 Newcastle & Darlington Junction Railway 33, 136 Newcastle & North Shields Railway 29 Newcastle Central 28, 31, 36 North Berwick branch 156, 160 North Bridge station, Edinburgh 17 North British Railway 17, 19, 20, 24, 25, 48, 50, 57, 76, 77, 113 North Eastern Railway 44, 47, 48, 51, 57, 75, 77 North Queensferry 53 Northumberland Railway 26, 28 P2 Mikado 104, 188–9 Pacifics, first 75, 79, 80. 81 Pacifics, LMS 95, 96, 97 Pacifics, Peppercorn A1s 106, 114, 125, 126

Peachey, William 45 Pegler, Alan 220–1, 225, 229 Peppercorn, Arthur H. 105, 181 Peterborough 37, 39, 157, 178, 179 Potter, Harry 133, 134 Preston station accident 66 Prosser, Thomas 45 ‘Races To The North’ 65, 83 Raven, Sir Vincent 75, 155 Romans 9, 120 Royal Border Bridge 31–2 Royal Mail 11 ‘Scotch Express’/’Special Scotch Express’ 40, 58 Scottish Central Railway 57 Selby Serpell, Sir David 154 Shinkansen 192–3 South Devon Railway 27 Spalding 39, 40, 178 St Pancras 121, 127, 128 stagecoaches 10 Stamford 13, 14, 41, 153, 157 Stanier, Sir William 78, 95 Stephensons, George and Robert 11, 25, 27, 28, 30, 32, 33, 76, 192, 231 Stirling, Patrick 60, 62, 68, 70 Stockton & Darlington Railway 32, 35, 38, 60 Stoke Bank 41, 42, 86, 99, 101, 102, 109, 147 Sturrock, Archibald 55, 56, 57 Tay Bridge 48, 49, 51 Thompson, Edward 105, 106, 219 Tornado 43, 118, 180–7 Turnbull, George 38, 41

Virgin Trains East Coast 171–177 Walschaerts, Egide 73 Waterman, Pete 209, 222 Welwyn Viaduct 38 West Coast Main Line/route 8, 65, 68, 83, 95 West Riding & Grimsby Railway 44 West Riding Limited 94 Woodham, Dai 205 York 34, 45, 46, 185, 186, 196–200 York & North Midland Railway 25, 34 York North shed 191 York, Newcastle & Berwick Railway 32 Yorkshire Engine Compay 55