The bear facts of a travel companion
FROM ‘Streaks’ and ‘Footballers’ for Nigel Gresley’s LNER A4 and B17 classes to ‘Terriers’for the SR A1X locomotives and‘Black Fives’for the LMS Class 5 engines, railway enthusiasts and indeed the industry itself have long loved nicknames, writes Geoff Courtney.
One such emerged early in the diesel era when the Class 14s numbered D9500-D9555 were dubbed ‘teddy bears’, anecdotally due to Swindon Work’s erecting shop foreman George Cole (no, not that George Cole) declaring when the class was introduced in 1964: “We’ve built The Great Bear, now we’re going to build a teddy bear.”
The Great Bear was built at Swindon in February 1908 and was the UK’s first Pacific and the only 4-6-2 built by the GWR. Numbered 111, it was rebuilt as a Castle class 4-6-0 in 1924, and whether George did make the comment or not, the sobriquet has stood the test of time ever since the first of the short-lived Class 14s emerged from the same works in 1964. No fewer than 19 of the 56-strong 0-6-0 class, which had disappeared from BR tracks by the end of 1970, have survived into preservation. Almost without exception, all are fondly called ‘teddy bears’ rather than being referred to by their class number.
Travelling bear
There is another sort of teddy bear also frequently seen on heritage lines, especially during school holidays, and they are what have become one of the nation’s favourite cuddly companions.
US president Theodore ‘Teddy’ Roosevelt was the name’s inadvertent inspiration, following an incident on a bear-hunting trip in Mississippi in November 1902 during which he refused to shoot a captured bear.
A cartoon appeared in The Washington Post and soon after, a Brooklyn candy shop owner launched a tiny soft bear and labelled it ‘Teddy’s bear.’
I met a railway enthusiast teddy bear at Grosmont station on a trip to the North Yorkshire Moors Railway in June, and enjoyed a brief conversation with his owners. Named Bizzer, he has apparently visited many steam railways around the country and loves the attention, and has been told that, if he behaves himself, he may travel on the Rocky Mountaineer through the Canadian Rockies next year.
Why the name Bizzer? “That’s a long story,” his (human) companions told me, but before the tale could be told, the guard blew his whistle and the train pulled away to Pickering. Probably I will never know.