Green leaves

Awaiting departure from London Victoria with the Cathedrals Express to Eastleigh is preserved London and North Eastern Railway B1 61306 'Mayflower'.

The LNER B1 Classes were built by the Thompson company between 1942 and 1952 as a mixed traffic equivalent of the highly successful LMS Black 5 and the Great Western Hall Class locomotives. The class made their initial start on the Great Eastern Mainline between London Liverpool Street and Ipswich, Harwich and Norwich, becoming an immediate success and being employed on London - Harwich 'Boat Trains', and the cheap construction costs ultimately resulted in 410 members of the class being built. The locomotive's had a relatively short life span much like many of the later LNER designs, with the final examples being withdrawn between 1961 and 1967 with only two members of the class preserved, including B1 number 61264 and 61306, which was initially never named but later donned the name of 'Mayflower' in preservation after the demise of original name bearer 61379.

61306 was in fact a British Railways built example, emerging from the North British Locomotive Works in 1948 after Nationalisation of the Railways earlier that year, and worked a charmed life in the Hull area throughout the 1950's before being transferred to Bradford in 1967 and withdrawn soon afterwards. The locomotive was immediately bought for preservation at Carnforth, where it was given the name 'Mayflower' and painted into LNER Apple Green, a livery it never wore due to the lateness of its construction. It was then transferred to the Great Central Railway between 1978 and 1989 before going into overhaul until 2006. The locomotive has recently undergone a 2 year overhaul at Washwood Heath in Birmingham and has returned in British Railways Apple Green similar to that worn by 60163 Tornado between 2009 and 2010.