LNER Route: Leicester to Marylebone

Staverton Road: gcrcs37

Ex-LMS 4-6-0 Stanier 'Black 5' No 45253 with a down express during the locomotive exchanges. Although only six months after nationalisation 45253 wears the new BR mixed traffic livery, smokebox number plate and the legend 'British Railways' on the tender. June 1948

Riddles having experienced the destructive influences of the grouping of 123 railway companies into the big four some 25 years earlier arranged for a number of trials across the country. Several classes of engines were matched against each other both on their home territory as well on foreign metals.

Built by Armstrong Whitworth in September 1936 it was given the LMS running number 5253 and survived almost to the end of steam before its withdrawal from Heaton Mersey (CLC) shed in April 1968 before being scrapped in October of the same year by G. Cohen of Kettering.

back