RAIL enthusiasts from around the world will be converging on York this week for the Great Gathering of iconic steam locomotives.
It was 75 years ago on Wednesday that the mighty Mallard, designed by Sir Nigel Gresley, set the world steam locomotive speed record by reaching 126mph on the East Coast mainline near Grantham.
In a two-week event being staged to celebrate the 75th anniversary of that record, the mighty steam locomotive will be joined at the National Railway Museum by all five of its surviving sister engines.
Two of the great A4 class locomotives – The Dominion of Canada and the Dwight D Eisenhower – have travelled to the UK by sea from Canada and the USA respectively.
They and the Mallard will be joined at the NRM, from Wednesday, by the Bittern from London, the Union of South Africa, whose home is in Scotland, and the Sir Nigel Gresley, which has been granted leave of absence from the North York Moors Railway.
The six locomotives will be gathered around the turntable in the NRM Great Hall for two weeks, from Wednesday until July 17.
It is a once-in-a-lifetime event which is expected to draw crowds of railway fans, enthusiasts and professionals from around the world.
To get you in the mood, in Yesterday Once More today we bring you some wonderful old photos – courtesy of the NRM – of A4 locomotives in their prime, before they were withdrawn from British Railways service in the 1960s.
They show the great engines thundering through the countryside, emerging from tunnels, or pulling into or out of stations in clouds of steam.
Some of the locomotives in our photos are the very ones that will be gathered in York over the next couple of weeks.
Others are A4s that have not survived. But between them these photographs provide a wonderful portrait of an age of steam when great mechanical monsters of stunning grace and power ruled our railways.
Pochard: Class A4 engine No. 4499 hauling the down Yorkshire Pullman, Kings Cross to Bradford, Harrogate and Hull. This locomotive was later renamed Sir Murrough Wilson (deputy Chairman of the LNER) and given stainless steel cut-out numbers and letters in April 1939. The locomotive on the left was the first large boiler 4-4-2 of the GNR now preserved at the National Railway Museum
Silver King: The loco is pictured in full steam in 1938
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