WHILE we are looking at railways, we accidentally discovered this picture in a 1953 edition of The Northern Echo. It shows an A4 Pacific pulling the new Elizabethan service from Edinburgh to London approaching Eryholme, to the south of Darlington.

The Northern Echo:
The opening sequence of the film about the Elizabethan

It serves as a reminder that this weekend is your very last chance to see the last two of Sir Nigel Gresley’s A4s at Shildon’s Locomotion museum before they return to their transatlantic homes.

Dwight D Eisenhower and Dominion of Canada are on display until tomorrow.

The A4s were the streamlined dreamliners built in the late 1930s. But they had a tough Second World War, like racehorses reduced to pulling a brewer’s dray.

The summer-only Elizabethan service was introduced as Queen Elizabeth was being crowned and was an attempt to recreate steaming style on the mainline.

It was the longest non-stop run in the world – 392.7 miles covered in 390 minutes – and really only the A4 was suitable.

Its tender had a narrow corridor built into it, allowing a relief crew to crawl through and take the controls north of York.

The Echo picture shows No 60031 Golden Plover pulling the train.

Yet the average speed of about 60mph showed what a poor state British Railways were in, and the Elizabethan – or The Lizzie – was really the death throes of mainline steam. The A4s were withdrawn on September 8, 1961, and a diesel Deltic pulled the 1962 service before it was removed from the timetables.

The Elizabethan, though, was captured on a 20-minute film, widely available on the internet, in 1954. With a poetic, plummy-voiced narrator, it is a splendid reminder of the lost days of steam.