In 1937 the 100 th Gresley Pacific was built by the London and North Eastern Railway, and the railway honoured her designer by giving the locomotive his name. Sir Nigel Gresley , now bearing the British Railways number 60007, was saved from scrapping in 1966 by a small group of determined men, who set up the A4 Preservation Society. You can learn from books and film, enjoy the handsomely turned out locomotives gleaming quietly in museums, but it is only when a locomotive is in steam and in action and alive that you experience her in all her glory, feel all the magic.
Nothing can match the spectacle, the magnificence, of a great steam engine running at speed.
This is what the Trust aims to keep alive. The down side is that keeping a big express loco in good running order takes a lot of effort. Sir Nigel Gresley is now more than sixty years old. The work never ends. Cantering leisurely through the North Yorkshire countryside, or in full cry on the East Coast Main Line, she brings delight to thousands.