David Element's Railway Web Page 26 - A1 Pacific 60163 Tornado

David Element's Railway Web Page 26...

Steam Locomotives 19 -

A1 Class 60163 'Tornado'

PEPPERCORN CLASS A1 60163

As a brand new steam locomotive No. 60163 cannot be considered to have been preserved per se. At the time that this telephoto photograph was taken on 'third rail' territory at Barnes early in 2009 the designated name of 'Tornado' had not yet been officially applied and there had been no association with 'Top Gear'. The construction of this additional member of a long-extinct LNER 'A1' (4-6-2 Pacific) Class has been a magnificent achievement and it completes the full set of A1, A2, A3 and A4 in a manner that could have never been envisaged not so many years ago. It must have been a matter of great satisfaction for the members of the A1 Steam Locomotive Trust to have been able to show the completed and fully functional locomotive to Mrs Dorothy Mather, the nonagenarian widow of A. H. Peppercorn, the designer of this LNER express passenger Class almost 60 years after the completion of the original series and 42 years after the last example had been scrapped. The construction has incorporated a number of modifications in order to comply with modern safety regulations and some improvements have also been made to the original design where mechanical weaknesses had been exposed during the service of the original A1s. However, there is little to distinguish this new locomotive externally from its scrapped classmates. A fuller account of the construction and modifications may be found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LNER_Peppercorn_Class_A1_60163_Tornado and at the A1 Steam Locomotive Trust's own website: http://www.a1steam.com/. The owners intend to portray this locomotive in a series of different liveries that would have been worn during LNER and BR service and in the pursuit of accuracy other structural details will be altered to match the paintwork - for example the position of the front numberplate and the type of chimney. As most of the currently preserved main line steam engines were built well over 50 years old the length of service of this locomotive should be considerable.