Record sale for ‘Scotsman’ plate
Original right-hand side nameplate from celebrity ‘A3’ goes under the hammer for £64,500.
One of Flying Scotsman’s original nameplates has set a world record after being sold at auction for £64,500.
Five bidders vied for the plate at the GW Railwayana auction on November 17, with the winning bid being submitted anonymously online and beating the previous record for a steam locomotive nameplate sold at auction, set in December 2004 when a nameplate from ‘A4’ Golden Fleece sold for £60,000.
GWRA director and auctioneer Simon Turner said: “I don’t think it will ever be beaten. It is something nobody envisaged – I certainly didn’t! A normal ‘A3’ nameplate is anywhere between £7,000 and £10,000 tops; I thought ‘Scotsman’ might fetch around £30,000 and maybe limp on into the mid-30s.”
Mr Turner claims it was the biggest attendance at any railwayana auction, with around 650 people there on the day and a further 500 observing online.
It was the first time the right-hand side nameplate, made at Doncaster in 1926 and stamped with the ‘A3’s’ 1946 number 103, had been on public sale. The locomotive’s former owner, Dr Tony Marchington, removed both of the LNER-era plates, which came as part of the deal to buy the Gresley ‘Pacific’ from previous owner Sir William McAlpine in 1996. They were never returned to the engine following its three-year overhaul, completed in 1999; and were replaced instead by replicas, which it still carries.
The originals were sold into private ownership and the right-side example resurfaced in 2016 when Bonhams attempted to auction it, but
Sir William thwarted the attempt by protesting that it should be returned to the locomotive.
However, this never happened and the engine’s current owner, the National Railway Museum, confirmed to Steam Railway that: “We decided not to submit a bid in the end, mainly because of the likely high sale price.”
The ‘Scotsman’ plate sale price is comparable to another item of railwayana acquired by the NRM in recent times: the George Cross awarded to engine driver Wallace Oakes (SR472). This, along with a Carnegie Medal and a BR citation recognising Oakes’ bravery, cost the museum £60,000. ●● The fortunes of No. 60103’s nameplate were in stark contrast to another ‘big name’ plate
– King Henry IV from GWR ‘King’ No. 6020, which failed to meet its reserve of £20,000. One piece of Great Western railwayana that did fare well was the cabside numberplate from the unique Churchward ‘Pacific’ No. 111 The Great Bear, which sold for £12,500.
For more details of the event, see next issue’s Railwayana.