They’re behind you – steam ahead, but electric and diesel also in five-figure territory

THE star turn – and thus the star realisation – at Great Central’s March 7 auction at Stoneleigh may have been a steam locomotive nameplate, but also jostling for attention in the five-figure bracket were representatives of both electric and diesel traction.

Top spot was claimed by Anti-aircraft Command with badge from Southern Railway Battle of Britain Pacific No. 34049 which attracted just one bidder, although this was enough for auctioneer Mike Soden to bring the hammer down at £27,000, slightly below reserve but high enough to clinch the sale.

The electric locomotive plate was Edmund Burke from Metropolitan Railway Bo-bo electric No. 7 – one of the ornate bronze originals from 1927 and not one of the 1953 alloy replacements – whose £15,500 price was matched by City of Winchester from GWR No. 3441, which was bought by the Great Western Society for display at Didcot Railway Centre museum.

LMS weighs in

Close behind this duo came Clan Mackintosh from Standard Pacific

No. 72007 (£14,400), followed by The Staffordshire Regiment (The Prince of Wales’s) with badge from Class 45‘Peak’ 1Co-co1 diesel D71/45049 (£11,600). The LMS then weighed in at £9600 with Caernarvon from Patriot No. 45515, and the GWR ended nameplate proceedings in neat symmetry at £8800 and £4400 for Chirk Castle (No. 5025) and North Aston Hall (No. 7917) respectively.

Two other LMS representatives, Bahamas from Nos. 45596 and Armada from No. 45679, failed to sell, leading to conjecture among some cognoscenti that the Jubilee success story of recent times may be slowing down. The latter plate, however, did redeem itself after full-time when it sold for £6000.

I’m going to mention an industrial mini-success at this point, £1400 for a mounted nameplate and worksplate set from 1899 Peckett-built 0-4-0ST (works No. 798) Alwilda that saw service in Essex for 62 years with initially a reservoir construction company and then at cement works in Grays.

There were three stand-outs in the non-nameplate categories, a BR(S) totem station sign from Okehampton (£6400) a West Country Class scroll from an unidentified member of the Southern Railway class of Pacifics (£4600), and a 1960 worksplate from English Electric Class 40 D326/40126, the diesel at the centre of the notorious Great Train Robbery on August 8, 1963, which went to a telephone bidder for a class-record £3100.

Smokebox numberplates were led by 7818 from GWR Granville Manor (£2400), a cabside numberplate from GWR

No. 6835 Eastham Grange came out top of its category with a realisation of £2100, and signalling had a busy day, headed by £1900 for a Tyer’s key token instrument and £1560 for an LNWR train describer.

A piece – or rather, two pieces – of Scottish railway history comprising a pair of locomotive headlamps sold for £1850. They were carried by Dunrobin ,aname given to two steam locomotives owned by the Dukes of Sutherland that were used to haul their personal trains that had the right to run from their private station at Dunrobin Castle near Golspie to Inverness. The station is still open today, as a public station on Scotland’s Far North Line.

The first locomotive to carry the Dunrobin name was a 2-4-0T built in 1871 by Kitson & Co for the third Duke, and the second its replacement, a Sharp Stewart 0-4-4T delivered to the fourth Duke in 1895. Each of the headlamps, which auctioneer Mike Soden told the room had been bought by the Highland Railway Society, carried the name of the engines’ long-time driver, A Rhind, and Brora, where the locomotives were shedded.

Retirement lamp

Other four-figure realisations included £1750 for a standard lamp presented by footplate crews and cleaners to H A Ivatt in February 1912 marking his retirement as chief mechanical engineer of the Great

Northern Railway; £1550 for a London & North Western Railway 14in dial wall clock; and £1450 for a Great Eastern Railway fireman’s helmet. Prices exclude buyer’s premium of 15% (+ VAT).

Mike Soden said:“we were pleased to achieve five-figure prices for five of the nameplates, and totems and most other enamels continue to rise. Against the background of the coronavirus scare we were also pleased with the attendance – railwayana collectors are not easily deterred.”