The LNER Encyclopedia

Back in 1963 around the January February time when I was 10 years old I visited Kings Cross station with some school friends, I know it was on a weekday as my school was closed that day due to the bad winter weather and snow we had that year.

At King's Cross I was amazed to find both 60001 Sir Ronald Matthews and 60002 Sir Morrough Wilson side by side at the buffer stops having brought in expresses from the north, also as a point of interest 60017 Silver Fox and one other A4 which I cannot remember name or number were also in the station at the same time.

I have been trying to find out if anyone knows why two rear Gateshead A4 pacific’s were in London at thast time so close to the closing date of King's Cross Top Shed 34A and can anyone else confirm seeing them there.

What expresses were they on and does anyone have any records of the exact date and when they returned north.

To this day I still have no answers.

I did contact Tommy Knox but he did not have any details either of these two locos on his vast data base of LNER pacific workings

I wonder if anyone can help me please?

Regards.

Landscapes and Steam

Landscape: A4 60017 was in Doncaster Works 15/1 -15/2/1963 for a light repair.
A4 60002 was reportedly under repair (Railway Observer, June 63) for some two months at Gateshead in early 1963, eventually returning to traffic 18/4/63. This may,hopefully, be of some little help in narrowing down dates. I remember seeing 60002 in the repair shop at this time.
The winter of 62/63 was severe and prolonged and steam made numerous reappearances on all classes of trains, often due to diesel train heating boiler failures.

You need to contact Tommy Knox he has details of pacific workings on the LNER. I cant remember his web address at the moment.

http://lner-pacifics.me.uk/cms/news.php

Tommy's web site.

Just had a look at Mr. Knox's site. Wow! What an incredible piece of work. Can anyone tell me how to register on there? I could only see a login and password box, but no actual way to register. Thanks.

I'm not sure it it is still possible to register on the Pacifics Database. On the home page there's a note saying all site memberships were lost when they moved servers and the facility tio create new ones n o longer exists. However you can still contact Tommy via email with specific queries and he does answer, I've done that seeral times and also sent in some of my own 1950s observations.

What I found fascinating was the information in his updates and feature articles. Some of those Scottish area Pacifics hardly ever visited the London area in BR days, though others were not so rare. I wish that kind of information and the means to access it had been available in the 1950s. On the whole though I think we were probably right to suspect some of the alleged sightings of rare A3s claimed by locals who were known never to have been even as far north as Peterborough.

This is why Giner :-
As we have moved to a new server, existing site memberships have been lost and the facility to create them removed. please enjoy looking at this site and let me have your feedback by emailing mailto:tommy@lner-pacifics.me.uk