Power type Steam Serial number 1818 Configuration 4-6-2 | Builder LNER, Doncaster Works Build date September 1935 UIC class 2'C1h3 | |
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Silver Link was the first London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) A4 Class locomotive, built in 1935 to pull a new train called the Silver Jubilee.
History
Silver Link made its inaugural journey from King's Cross on 29 September 1935. It reached a speed of 112mph, breaking all previous records. The record provoked the LNER and their chief rival the London, Midland and Scottish Railway (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, LNER's chief mechanical engineer, and his counterpart at LMS, Sir William Stanier.
Silver Link was so named after a line in a poem about love by Sir Walter Scott, 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 dock 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."
Allocated to Kings Cross shed, it was withdrawn from service in 1963 when the East Coast Main Line express services were taken over by Deltic diesel locomotives.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 the same site where it had been built some thirty years earlier.
The locomotive made a brief appearance in the film Oh, Mr. Porter!. It was also the subject of art deco posters for the Silver Jubilee.
For a number of years, one of its sister locomotives, Bittern was painted to represent Silver Link in its original silver and grey livery.
Two instances of the Silver Link nameplate are on display at the National Railway Museum, York, UK.