The LNER Encyclopedia

Hi

I've been going through some of my dad's old photos and I'm trying to identify this train:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulnew/73 ... hotostream


As far as I can tell it's the Union of South Africa. The photo was taken in Northern England (possibly near Newcastle or Sunderland) around 1963.

Does anyone know what the name plate says ? It's just a bit too blurry to read in the photo unfortunately.

paulnuk wrote:Hi

I've been going through some of my dad's old photos and I'm trying to identify this train:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulnew/73 ... hotostream


As far as I can tell it's the Union of South Africa. The photo was taken in Northern England (possibly near Newcastle or Sunderland) around 1963.

Does anyone know what the name plate says ? It's just a bit too blurry to read in the photo unfortunately.

Well, it's 60009 so it must be.

Welcome to the forum paulnuk!

As a general point, and as far as I am aware, you can totally rely on the identification of a locomotive from it's number, other than in the very early days of the LNER when some tenders carried numbers rather than locomotive cabs, and there were occasional instances of tender swaps so engine and tender numbers were different.

There were also confusing situations arising at the time of the renumbering schemes, (where 2 different classes of locomotive carried the same sequence of numbers).

No doubt in the case of your photo though!

2002EarlMarischal wrote:Welcome to the forum paulnuk!

As a general point, and as far as I am aware, you can totally rely on the identification of a locomotive from it's number, other than in the very early days of the LNER when some tenders carried numbers rather than locomotive cabs, and there were occasional instances of tender swaps so engine and tender numbers were different.

There were also confusing situations arising at the time of the renumbering schemes, (where 2 different classes of locomotive carried the same sequence of numbers).

No doubt in the case of your photo though!

Thanks for that - I showed the photo to someone a few years ago who said that sometimes plates were swapped, so I wasn't 100% sure of the ID.

Great to see that it's still around and quite a classic train by all accounts.

Percy Main wrote:

paulnuk wrote:Hi

I've been going through some of my dad's old photos and I'm trying to identify this train:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulnew/73 ... hotostream


As far as I can tell it's the Union of South Africa. The photo was taken in Northern England (possibly near Newcastle or Sunderland) around 1963.

Does anyone know what the name plate says ? It's just a bit too blurry to read in the photo unfortunately.

Well, it's 60009 so it must be.

Excellent - thanks for that - ID confirmed

Location Newcastle, loco Union of South Africa, no idea of identity of train.

It looks like the Jubilee Requiem railtour which took place in October 1964. It was a return trip from Kings Cross to Newcastle and was notable for being the last trip a BR owned A4 pacific made from Kings Cross.

Cross referencing the photograph to the tour details on the Six Bells Junction web-site:-

http://www.sixbellsjunction.co.uk/60s/641024jr.html

Looks like the same nameplate to me.......