The fate of Dame Vera Lynn's sister locomotives

THANK YOU for publishing my letter regarding War Department 2-10-0 No. 3672

Dame Vera Lynn at the North Yorkshire Moors Railway in issue 283 containing my queries on the outcome of the 16 Greek WDs.

Here is a reply from Jason Zorzos, a Greek locomotive expert.

“No. 953 was never a ‘standby reserve' after the withdrawal of steam locomotives.

“The ones that were are Nos. 960 (later

Dame Vera Lynn), 962, 966, 964 and

No. 525; working in pairs they were used for snowploughing in northern Greece and that is why they were kept in running order.

“Of course, as time passed there was less need for keeping them all for such duties.

“The five still surviving do so because when they were all suggested to be scrapped, traction engineer Christodoulos Christodoulou, the founder and director of the Greek Railway Museum, managed to exclude these four plus other steam locomotives from other types. His reasoning was that Nos. 962 and 964 will remain in northern Greece for snowploughing and possible tourist services; No. 955 will stay in Thessaloniki for spares for the other two; and No. 958 will remain in Athens for the railway museum. Note that Nos. 955 and 958 were not that bad at the time.

“Mr Christodoulou himself faced intense resistance and undermining for creating a railway museum and for keeping the rolling stock others considered useless. You have to understand that, especially then, the term ‘heritage railway' did not exist within OSE (Hellenic State Railways), with the exception of a handful of people (or maybe less), and the fact that such a request had never happened before did not help either.

“Of course, when the time came for the locomotives to be scrapped, the standard procedure was followed and they were scrapped.

“Finally, the locomotives scrapped in 1984 to 1985 were all except the ones still existing and, if I remember correctly, one tender that was scrapped later.”

Roy Wolstencroft,

Skirlough, East Riding of Yorkshire