The LNER Encyclopedia

Today, I came across a 1971 copy of Loco Profiles featuring the LNER A4. Quite interesting, however one photograph showed an A4 named "BRYAN" in LNER colours. Bearing in mind this was well before Photoshop and the Magic Roundabout, do you suppose it was a wind up by someone at shed/works level or it genuinely occured. I know the LNER renamed some A4's after the war to commerate LNER directors, war heros and countries of the Empire.

Thanks.

NG

One of three A4's named on the whim of Sir Charles Newton after his children and then back to correct names . He even got one named after himself as well.

The plates were temporary wooden ones, just for the photo shoot.

And this was all in wartime...

Bridget I think was one of the other Newton children, what's more the "loco numbers" were I believe the birth year of each of the 3 children too.

Correct in all aspects 2392.

I believe the loco involved was 4486 - Merlin.

I'm sure I've seen photos of all three names, but a photo of "Bryan" can be found on the link below.

http://www.nrm.org.uk/ourcollection/pho ... DON_44_155

There are photos of all 3, from memory, in the OPC book "Power of the A4s"
Steve


Www.gnrsociety.com

richard wrote:The plates were temporary wooden ones, just for the photo shoot.

And this was all in wartime...

Nice to know people still maintained a sense of fun!

Sawdust.

A very generous way of describing it, IMHO.

Nice to see that they have spelt my name correctly.

According to the RCTS Green Book 2A it was the three children of a newly appointed director of the LNER, Fitzherbert Wright, whose names were used. The locomotive was indeed Merlin and the names were Brigid 1928, Davina 1931 and Bryan 1934, the numbers being their year of birth. The locomotive was in black livery and only treated to the three names and numbers, presumably for photographic reasons, on the left-hand side. The fact that this was carried out on 10th August 1944 with the war still raging was rather surprising!

I wish my dad was an LNER director......

v3man wrote:...The fact that this was carried out on 10th August 1944 with the war still raging was rather surprising!

A little fun as light relief is necessary and healthy, and this pales into insignificance beside what some got up to.

RAF crew using their combat aircraft to 'beat up' another squadron's airfield with toilet rolls for example. That was late 1940, with the U boat campaign leaving the UK with about three weeks food reserves on the ration then in force and aviation fuel shortages.

Love it! Got any more 'war stories' like that, HS?

I'd start you off on Guy Gibson's 'Enemy Coast Ahead' from which that event came; the story it has to tell is one everyone should know, and did they get up to tricks in between missions.

My favourite 'from the horse's mouth' was a fellow called 'Savage' whom I had the joy of managing for a short while very early in my working life. An extremely capable man, who with better education could have gone far, but the pre-war East end didn't provide that. Came the war and conscription, his occupation of stevedore saw him trained to drive a truck in Army Transport, in which role he embarked on a life of undetected crime. He came to work in battledress trousers - this was 1971 - which I noticed and asked about; these were from a 'stash' he had built up during WWII. He had gone into motor transport post war (and would still have been doing it but an injury had ended that) on the basis of a truck which he 'acquired' from the army transport pool - and I do believe he was capable of it. (Among other things, you never saw a man more gifted at getting into locked cars for those colleagues who had left the keys inside and the like, ten seconds and no apparent effort, all very casual looking.)