LNER Route: Leicester to Marylebone

Catesby Tunnel: gcct4

This close up of image 'gcct4' shows the filthy state the locomotive was in, a not uncommon situation during and after the war. The photographer had originally identified this locomotive as No 60035 'Windsor Lad' however the following correspondence has been received. Number 60035 was built in July 1934 and carried the LNER running number 2500. After repairs following the accident in June 1949 it was withdrawn and scrapped in September 1961 at Doncaster Plant where it was originally constructed. Martin Beckett writes 'I discovered your website via the National Preservation site. The very first picture I looked at really staggered me - I could hardly believe my eyes! It was the close up view of an A3 heading into Catesby Tunnel on the GC main line and the engine is said to be Windsor Lad. Now, talk about 'prize cops' - well, Windsor Lad on the southern part of the GC main line would deserve to be rated as one of the biggest prize cops of all time!

This A3 Pacific was allocated to Scottish area sheds for the whole of its life. It hardly visited the south even on the East Coast main line, let alone the GC section. It might have come south on extremely rare occasions on a running in turn after overhaul at Doncaster, but as your picture shows the engine is certainly nowhere near in ex-works condition - in fact the very opposite.' I lived at the southern end of the Kings Cross main line from the mid 1940s until regular steam workings finished in 1963. Appearances of Scottish A3s in the south were like gold dust, and during my years in the area I had only 2 definite sightings - and one of those was at Peterborough.

Kester Eddy wrote "The note by Martin above that 'Windsor Lad' was a Scottish loco all its life and would have been the "cop of cops" in the history of the world to be seen in London got me sleuthing, or at least, organising a sleuthation (he he, like that word?) I wondered about the train itself - from the lighting I would say the sun is high and likely to be around 12.30 - 13.00, meaning the train would have depart Marylebone at 11.15-11.45 ish. Several people came forward with possibly useful info, including the fact that May 14 was a Saturday that year. Another person said that by blowing up the photo, the nameplate is a double name, but the two words are of roughly equal length. BUT, the clincher was a chappie called Owen, who wrote as follows: "It seems to me that the loco in the photo can't be Windsor Lad. The loco in the photo is right-hand-drive because the exhaust from the vacuum ejector to the smokebox is not visible on this side. Windsor lad was built new as an A3 and as such was built as left-hand-drive. The loco in the photo would have been one of those originally built as an A1 and later re-built to A3; most (all?) of these latter remained right-hand drive on re-building although they were all left-hand drive by withdrawal". Best wishes, Owen

So, it wasn't Windsor Lad, that's nailed that one - but what was it? My suspicion is that it is 60052 Prince Palatine, which was RHD and a GC loco, if I remember correctly".

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