HIGH PRIces PuT THeM ouT of ReAcH

With an asking price of £3,000 each (around £51,000 today), it was only businessmen who could possibly step in and save 1968 survivors. The average annual working wage was well below £1,000, so enthusiasts stood no chance of intervening.

It was a bit of a surprise that No. 45156 Ayrshire Yeomanry wasn’t saved. As John Hillier of the Bahamas Locomotive Society related in SR460, Glossop Council was approached for a loan of £8,000 to purchase No. 45156 and put it through works, but declined. The society was stymied because it was already in heavy debt with its ‘Jubilee’ No. 45596 Bahamas. So, the opportunity was lost, and No. 45156 was sold to T.W. Ward at Beighton, Sheffield, and broken up at the end of the year; by then it had been badly vandalised and plastered with unsightly graffiti. Despite its fine achievements on August 3’s Liverpool passenger run, No. 45318 also fades from view. It was on a list of six inspected at Lostock Hall for Ken Aldcroft, along with Nos. 44806, 44874, 45388, 45407, and 45444. No. 44806 was chosen, a decision later regretted because it was discovered that it had a poor firebox wrapper.

No. 44888 was another lost engine. While kept in light steam at Lostock Hall over the final weekend, it was not used. It was exhibited at a Derby Works open day at the end of the month, and then went quietly for scrap.

Only one of the clutch of BR ‘Standard 4s’ present at Carnforth on the last weekend of steam was considered worthy of rescue. Nobody stood in the way when the Bluebell Railway declared that it was keen to have No. 75027. The rest of the class had a variety of defects, such as poor fireboxes and worn tyres. The Keighley & Worth Valley Railway went for No. 45212 (good boiler and tyres), passing over Nos. 45386 and 45388, and all the other BR ‘Standard 4s’, and also because it still had nine tons of coal in the tender!

The story ends with No. 45305, which was, of course, reprieved by Albert Draper in early 1969 after he had torched No. 45388.