Raven

**Raven** is a North Eastern Railway heavy freight locomotive that lives on the Moorland Steam Railway. He's the only locomotive that has family ties to the MSR's resident Thompson B1 4-6-0, Stanford, in terms of designer.

## Bio

Raven was built by Armstrong Whitworth in 1920 as one of the last batch of famed T2 heavy freight locomotives built for the North Eastern Railway (NER). He made friends with many other locomotives designed by his designer (Vincent Raven), but made rivalry with the engines designed by the brothers, Wilson and Thomas Worsdell (e.g. P6 0-6-0s and E1 0-6-0Ts), since he believed that the Worsdells' time on the rival Great Eastern Railway (GER) had caused them to keep the small locomotive desing-style that the NER didn't need a large locomotive, which Raven reversed.

Upon the Grouping Act in 1923, Raven was lucky to keep his NER number of '2265' but the plates were removed and he was repainted from lined blue to matt black with the LNER's famed block letters.on his cab and tender. Like before the Grouping Act, Raven spent his life in Country Durham and even into BR days. He felt happy for his designer after he heard about his daughter (Guendolen Edith Thompson nee Raven) was married to Edward Thompson, but was sad when Raven himself left the UK (with Sir Sam Fay) for Australia in 1924 and his passing ten years later. When Thompson took over from Gresley in 1941, Raven hoped that his designer's son-in-law would create some perfect designs of North Eastern origin, which most ended up being failures (much to the Q6's disappointment) and the only designs he saw as successful were the B1 4-6-0 and L1 2-6-4T.

On Nationalisation, Raven was renumbered from his post-WWII number of 3422 to 63422 under the numbering scheme for ex-LNER locomotives. He was withdrawn from traffic in 1964 and spent most of that time rotting in a siding somewhere on a closed branch line in Country Durham. In 1968, he was discovered and sent to be scrapped at a diesel depot in the London, Midland Region, and spent just eight months in that yard when the MSR selected him for a restoration to operational condition. While being restored, he met up with his old favourite B1 Stanford, and the began calling each other by the connection of their designers. Raven was returned to service in 1973, and helped in the finishing of the Dentin extension.

## Livery

Raven is painted in LNER Pre-WWII Unlined Black.

## Basis or real locomotive

Raven is based on the real locomotive. It was one of 120 NER T2s built by Darlington Works and Armstrong Whitworth from 1913 to 1921 for heavy mineral traffic. They replaced Worsdell-era 0-6-0s and were based on the design of the T and T1 class 0-8-0s, which were also a product of the Worsdell brothers. A few were taken by the Railway Operating Division (ROD) during WWI and were reclassed as "Q6" under the LNER after 1923. Withdrawals for the class began in 1960 when No. 63372 (built in 1917) was written off in a incident. Official withdrawals began in 1963 and the last one was retired in 1967, the end of North Eastern Region steam. One, No. 63395, has been preserved.

No. 2265 was built by Armstrong Whitworth in March 1920 and was withdrawn as No. 63422 in May 1964. It was scrapped at Darlington two months later.

## Trivia

To Stanford, Raven is known as a "father-in-law" locomotive since Vincent Raven (Raven's designer) was the father-in-law of Edward Thompson (Stanford's designer).

Raven's model is a standard Hornby Raven T2/Q6 0-8-0 in LNER black.

Raven is the second NER locomotive introduced into the series, first being Johnny.

Raven is the third heavy freight locomotive bought by the MSR, the first being Capulet and second being Argus.

When things go wrong, Raven uses the English slang "That's torn it".