‘FIFTEEN GUINEA SPECIAL’ FIFTY YEARS APART...

erhaps oen of the most famous trains of all time was the very last steam-hauled British Rail train which ran on August 11 1968. Crowds met the train whenever it stopped and mobbed it. The engine for the first part of the run – from Liverpool Lime Street to Manchester Victoria – was ‘Black Five’

No. 45110, a last-minute substitute for classmate No. 45305, which was failed shortly before the event. Both these engines survive today, No. 45110 is out-of-ticket on the Severn Valley Railway and No. 45305 is under repair at the Great Central Railway.

The next part of the tour was entrusted to BR’s last working ‘Pacific’, No. 70013 Oliver Cromwell. Most of those in the crowds which surrounded the departure from Manchester Victoria station and then lined the tracks at Entwhistle on the climb to Sough Tunnel truly believed that this would be their last ever sight of a steam-hauled train on BR.

Those ‘in the know’ knew that the train would return later that day, as Oliver Cromwell was replaced by a pair of ‘Black Fives’ at Carlisle for the southbound run back to Manchester Victoria where they would hand their duties to No. 45110, which would bring the steam era to a close later that day.

We join them at Darwen as the two ‘Black Fives’ make an emotional scene climbing into the history books. No. 44871 survives today – and would work a main line steam train in Scotland 50 years and a day later – while No. 44781 would be used for a scene in the film The Virgin Soldiers after which it was sent for scrap, the only one of the four last steam engines not to survive – except on celluloid.

P