It was the beginning of that momentous decade, the 1960s. I had never ventured into North Eastern Region territory but seven years of spotting at the southern end of the East Coast Main Line meant that I’d seen many of that region’s larger locomotives.
The most familiar were ‘A1s’ from Copley Hill (an Eastern Region shed until 1956), which handled several daily passenger workings to King’s Cross, including the ‘Queen of Scots’, ‘Yorkshire Pullman’ and ‘West Riding’. A York ‘A1’ or ‘A2’ worked Up Glasgow trains and Gateshead ‘Pacifics’ of all classes started appearing in greater numbers from 1956/57. Ardsley and York ‘V2’ 2-6-2s came up to London with express goods, whilst their Copley Hill, Gateshead and Heaton classmates appeared occasionally on additional and relief passenger services.
By early 1960, I had seen all of the North Eastern Region’s 80-odd LNER ‘Pacifics’, except for several Neville Hill ‘A3s’. I had also seen about three quarters of the region’s ‘V2s’, as well as a few other classes – mainly ‘B1s’, ‘K1s’ and ‘K3s’ – which occasionally strayed south. For those of us living near London, only the sporadic visit of a ‘B16’ would provide the welcome spectacle of a genuine North Eastern Railway design.
Those infrequent ‘B16s’ apart, most former NER classes in my Abc were completely unmarked, while my Locoshed Book, too, had very few locomotives allocated to depots in the 50-56 series underlined.
This changed in May 1960.
The Stevenage Locomotive Society organised shed visits to Thornaby, Darlington (plus the Works) and York. We left King’s Cross at 1.15am and I can still recall the excitement of seeing orange station signs for the first time when we called at Selby in the early morning light. The rest of the day was sheer bliss, as I became entranced by all those veterans that I had only seen in pictures before.
‘Cops’ for the day included about 115 ex-North Eastern locomotives. I added another 20-odd ‘B16s’ to the collection but, more importantly, were classes completely new to me; ‘Q6’ and
