IT WAS NEARLY JOHN MILTON…

If BR’s original naming sequence for its new ‘Pacifics’ had been adopted, the preserved No. 70013 would have been ‘John Milton’. As it turned out, the 17th-century author of Paradise Lost was commemorated on sister engine No. 70005. Oliver Cromwell was intended for No. 70008, which emerged from Crewe as Black Prince instead. These interesting sidelines came to light in Steam World in 2008, and were revealed by the late Andrew Dow, former Head of the National Railway Museum, whose father George (the ER and NER public relations chief) was on the naming selection panel with E.S. (Stuart) Cox, the senior engineer who played a key role in the design of BR Standard locomotives. But for some skilful sidestepping, the preserved pioneer No. 70000 (originally intended to be named ‘Great Britain’, not Britannia), might be running today as ‘Sir Cyril [later Lord] Hurcomb’, observing the post-nationalisation convention of naming engines after the chairman of the British Transport Commission. Hurcomb’s name was attached to No. 70001, leaving No. 70000 to become Britannia at the specific personal request of CME Robert Riddles. The duplication with LMS ‘Jubilee’ No. 45700 Britannia was resolved by amending the 4-6-0 to Amethyst. The naming committee had a long list to draw from, and presumably would have used more of them if more ‘Brits’ had been built. Several Shakespearean and Dickensian characters were listed and then discarded. Only two playwrights (John Bunyan and William Shakespeare) made the cut, and only one woman (Boadicea), but there were six poets (Geoffrey Chaucer, Lord Byron, Lord Tennyson, Robert Burns, John Milton, and William Wordsworth) and three authors (Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy and Rudyard Kipling). Ten British heroes made it (John of Gaunt, Coeur-de-Lion, Hotspur, Iron Duke, Alfred the Great, Black Prince, Sir John Moore, Clive of India, Hereward the Wake and Owen Glendower), one architect (Sir Christopher Wren), one statesman (Oliver Cromwell) and one fictional character (Robin Hood). Other might-have-beens included G.K. Chesterton, George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells, Cardinal Wolsey, Thomas a Becket, William Wallace, Bonnie Prince Charlie, Charlotte Brontë, Jane Austen, Mary Queen of Scots, Prince Charles, Anglia, Enchantress, Oberon and Fire Queen. The Western Region reused old GWR names, and the Scottish went for Firths (Solway Firth was the last ever state-owned British main line steam engine to be named, in the week ending May 28 1960). After this was settled, it left a blank series of six engines (Nos. 70043-9), whose names were cobbled together throughout the 1950s, with the exception of No. 70047, which was never named.