Factfile: LNER Gresley ‘A4’ 4‑6‑2
The 1930s is seen as a golden age for the railways, with the ‘Big Four’ companies competing to present themselves as stylish and forward-thinking. The craze for streamlining reflected the prevailing mood and, arguably, nobody did it quite as well as Nigel Gresley, Chief Mechanical Engineer of the LNER.
Inspired by events on Continental railways, Gresley’s experiments culminated in the ‘A4’ class ‘Pacific’, derived from his highly successful ‘A3’, but encased in a streamlined cladding. A fleet of 35 ‘A4s’ was built at Doncaster Works between 1935-38 for the LNER’S crack ‘Silver Jubilee’ and ‘Coronation’ expresses between London King’s Cross and Edinburgh, complete with matching streamlined coaching stock.
The ‘A4s’ proved themselves to be real thoroughbreds, with No. 4468 Mallard setting a new world speed record for steam traction of 126mph in July 1938, a record that remains unbroken to this day.
Most of the class was originally built with single chimneys, but a revised exhaust arrangement and double chimney was trialled on those later examples to emerge from Doncaster. Such was the uplift in performance that the modifications were rolled out to the whole fleet, although the outbreak of war meant that the task was not completed until after nationalisation.
British Railways withdrew the ‘A4s’ between 1962-66, with six examples being preserved, two of which were shipped across the Atlantic to grace museums in the USA and Canada.
No. 60009 Union of South Africa was built originally as
No. 4488 Osprey, but was re-named within a year of production and spent much of its career based at Haymarket shed. Withdrawn in 1966, it was purchased by John Cameron and has enjoyed numerous stints working on the main line and at various preserved railways. It was renamed Osprey in the 1980s during the period of international sanctions against the South African government’s apartheid policy. After retirement from operation in 2022, the locomotive is now destined for static display in Fife.