''Silver Link'' was the first

London and North Eastern Railway The London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) was the second largest (after LMS) of the " Big Four" railway companies created by the Railways Act 1921 in Britain. It operated from 1 January 1923 until nationalisation on 1 January 1948. At th ...

(LNER) A4 Class locomotive, built in 1935 to pull a new train called the ''Silver Jubilee''.

History

''Silver Link'' entered service with a demonstration journey from King's Cross on 27 September 1935. It reached a speed of , breaking all previous UK records. The record provoked the LNER and their chief rival the

London, Midland and Scottish Railway The London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMSIt has been argued that the initials LMSR should be used to be consistent with LNER, GWR and SR. The London, Midland and Scottish Railway's corporate image used LMS, and this is what is generally u ...

(LMS) into a highly competitive speed war, each attempting to outdo the other by building ever faster locomotives. The main protagonists were Sir

Nigel Gresley Sir Herbert Nigel Gresley (19 June 1876 – 5 April 1941) was a British railway engineer. He was one of Britain's most famous steam locomotive engineers, who rose to become Chief Mechanical Engineer (CME) of the London and North Eastern Rai ...

, LNER's chief mechanical engineer, and his counterpart at LMS, Sir William Stanier.

Naming

''Silver Link'' was so named after a reference to love in Sir Walter Scott's poem '' The Lay of the Last Minstrel'', which reads: True love's the gift which God has given To man alone beneath the heaven; It is not fantasy's hot fire, Whose wishes, soon as granted, fly; It liveth not in fierce desire, With dead desire it doth not die; It is the secret sympathy, The silver link, the silken tie, Which heart to heart, and mind to mind, In body and in soul can bind. The engine was "officially named" (using its real name) in the opening scene of the 1937 comedy film '' Oh, Mr Porter!''.

Scrapping and legacy

Allocated to Kings Cross shed, it was withdrawn from service on 29 December 1962 when the

East Coast Main Line The East Coast Main Line (ECML) is a electrified railway between London and Edinburgh via Peterborough, Doncaster, York, Darlington, Durham and Newcastle. The line is a key transport artery on the eastern side of Great Britain running broa ...

express services were taken over by Deltic diesel locomotives. It was not preserved after withdrawal and was broken up for scrap at Doncaster Works on 7 September 1963, on the same site where it had been built nearly twenty eight years earlier. There was an attempt by Sir Billy Butlin to save the locomotive, but it was unsuccessful. Two examples of the ''Silver Link'' nameplate are on display at the National Railway Museum, York, UK. The Silverlink area of North Tyneside is named after the locomotive; the name of the area was taken after another A4 locomotive, ''Bittern'', had been displayed at the North Tyneside Steam Railway disguised as ''Silver Link'' in the early 1990s.

References

2509 Silver Link Railway locomotives introduced in 1935 Scrapped locomotives Standard gauge steam locomotives of Great Britain {{UK-steam-loco-stub