More details about Lion

YOUR article on Lion wonders what happened to the locomotive's nameplates.

Brian Webb, the noted English Electric/

GEC historian who had privileged access to the company files, advised me that company records revealed that GEC directors, concerned at the poor result of their products in the locomotive, wished to remove all trace of the company's involvement in the project, hence destroyed the nameplates by casting them in the company's furnaces to ensure their total destruction.

Sadly, Brian’s early death in 1981 prevented publication of much material showing the history of the introduction of diesel traction to British Railways under the Modernisation Plan. I inherited many of his files, which were subsequently passed to the NRM and now form part of the Brian Webb collection within the museum's archives.

Fred Kerr Southport