65 YEARS OF ‘DELTICS’ – INCLUDING THE VERY FIRST!
MORE than 65 years have passed since I first set eyes on the prototype English Electric‘Deltic’ locomotive – or rather, a picture of it – when, just before we broke up for the 1955 Christmas holiday, our junior school class teacher proudly told us that her son had been involved in the construction of the most powerful diesel-electric locomotive in the world, at Preston.
Most boys in the class already had an interest in trainspotting and gasped in amazement when she showed us a picture of the light blue locomotive, its paintwork offset by triple cream chevrons on each nose and the name DELTIC boxed by long cream-painted beadings along each side. It bore a striking similarity to the many North American diesels we’d gloated over in some of the best-thumbed railway books in our local children’s library.
The newcomer’s brash appearance came as such a shock to one particular railway journalist, as I learned much later in life, that he described it as “resembling a Zulu warrior in full war paint!”
During Deltic’s trials on the London Midland Region between 1955 and 1957, I always spent some of my summer holiday with my grandparents in rural Cheshire, sometimes accompanying my great grandfather, who lived nearby, on walks with his Scottie dog, Nip.
The route always took us to a small bridge over the main line from Weaver Junction to Liverpool, where he’d light itself hummed by with an up express, and Great Grandad, who’d known the line since London & North Western Railway days, was duly impressed.
