LNER A4

* #4468 'Mallard'
* #4464 'Bittern'
* #4489 'Dominion of Canada'
* #4496 'Sir Nigel Gresley'
* #4498 'Dwight D. Eisenhower'
* #4488 'Union of South Africa'
* #2509 'Silver Link'

The London & North Eastern Railway A4 Pacific's are coal-burning passenger streamliners built for the LNER's mainline routes. They were designed by Sir Nigel Gresley, who also designed the A3 Pacific's. The A4's were built from 1935 to 1938 and fully withdrawn in 1966.

## Design

The A4 Pacific's are streamlined 4-6-2 tender engines equipped with outside Walschaerts valve gear.

### Ingame Design

The in-game LNER A4 is one of the models which has a low amount of detail due to it presumably being an earlier model, and thus it doesn't have any form of valve gear, and it also has a lower quality compared to newer models. For some odd reason, if you look closely, there is no cylinder on the drivers side, in contrast to the other cylinder.

### Real Life Design History

The LNER A4's design is based primarily off of Gresley's P2 2-8-2 express locomotives, most notably the front portion. The colour of the A4's mostly depended on which service they operated on. The A4's all had some slight modifications during each ones lifetime. Probably most notably, the A4's had their sideplates removed in order to simplify maintenance, along with their single-chimney funnels being replaced with double-chimney's.

## Real Life History

In the year 1935, the LNER decided to experiment with streamlining, and ended up streamlining 2 of their locomotives and seeing how they go. The LNER chose 2 locomotives, an A1 Pacific named 'The Flying Scotsman', and an A3 Pacific named 'Papyrus'. First was the A1, managing to break the official world speed record for steam at the time and is officially the first locomotive to go over 100 miles per hour. Second was the A3, reaching 108 miles per hour, and also then breaking the record and completing the journey in under 4 hours. The test was considered a success, and Sir Ralph Wedgwood, Chief General Manager of the LNER, authorised Main Locomotive Designer, Sir Nigel Gresley, to build sort of a streamlined version of the A3 Pacific. The result was the A4 Pacific. Originally only 4 were made, being Silver Link (#2509), Quick Silver (2510), Silver King (2511) and Silver Fox (2512).

During a publicity run, Silver Link proceeded to break the world speed record, managing to reach 112.5 miles per hour, and on top of that managed to keep an average of 100 miles per hour for 43 miles. After the Silver Jubilee line, many more streamlined services were opened, of those being a London to Edinburgh service, named The Coronation and opening in July 1937, and a Bradford & Leeds to London & return service, named the West Riding Limited and opening in November 1937. For these routes even more A4 Pacific's would be built adding up to a total of 35 ever built and with 6 currently preserved, including #4468 Mallard, which currently holds the official world speed record for steam traction. The A4 Pacific's are definitely a major page in the book of steam traction.

## Trivia

* There are 7 total variants in-game, of those being Mallard, Bittern, Dominion of Canada, Sir Nigel Gresley, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Union of South Africa, and Silver Jubilee, the last of which is of Silver Link.
* This may be a bit of a boring one, but the Silver Jubilee Coaches are in the game as a reskin of the 'Large British' passenger rolling stock.

## Gallery

A real life photo of #2509 Silver Link pulling the Silver Jubilee.The LNER class W1 experimental in the A4 streamlining.#4489 'Dominion of Canada' and #4498 'Dwight D. Eisenhower' during a gathering.