Celebration of steam (From The Northern Echo)

Celebration of steam

10:22am Wednesday 23rd June 2010 in

• Skip social links
• Print
• Email
• Comments(0)

IT was a sight to quicken the heartbeat of railway enthusiasts of any age – two of the most famous locomotives in the world, together for the first time.

Although they were created generations apart, Mallard and Tornado are among the great icons of the engine world and their fame has spread far and wide.

Far more than just iron and steel, the blue recordbreaker and the apple-green whirlwind are the embodiment of all that was – and is – great about the railways and the men and women who built and ran them. Today, both will head north, when the young Tornado pulls the veteran Mallard to its temporary home at Locomotion, in Shildon, County Durham, and vantage points along the route are expected to be packed with enthusiasts.

However, yesterday the locomotives sat respectfully together at the National Railway Museum in York, where hundreds of people turned out to see the two together prior to the journey.

Today’s trip will be Mallard’s first outing on the main line in more than two decades – she hauled some specials between York and Scarborough in 1986, and undertook a couple of runs between York and Leeds the following year, and completed her 50th anniversary run in 1988.

She is still revered for her feat in July 1938, when she reached the then-awesome speed of 126mph on the East Coast Main Line, breaking a German record of 124mph set two years earlier.

With Hitler’s Third Reich then in the ascendancy, it was seen as a matter of national pride and rejoicing and the Doncaster-built streamlined A4, designed by Sir Nigel Gresley, still holds that record.

“Once over the top I gave Mallard her head and she just jumped to life like a live thing,” recalled her driver, Joseph Duddington, afterwards. “If I had pushed her a bit more, I think we could have done 130mph.”

Tornado’s fame comes from a different era and she displays the very best of modern, enthusiastic enterprise.

A new LNER Peppercorn Class A1, all the originals of which had been scrapped by 1966, she was built over nearly 20 years at a cost of some £3m by the A1 Steam Locomotive Trust in Darlington.

She hauled her first passengers in January, last year, she has since starred in her own TV specials and turned a new generation of rail fans into steam junkies.