LNER 60163 'Tornado' at Dawlish

See this locomotive in the video here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQE4CN…

Scooting along the Sea Wall and through Dawlish station is LNER rebuilt Peppercorn A1 Pacific number 60163 'Tornado', with the return working of the Torbay Express from Kingswear to Bristol Temple Meads.

60163's life began oddly enough not in 1948 like the rest of her sisters, but in 1990, when the original blueprints for the A1 Class were found in a skip at the National Railway Museum in York. After a fundraising campaign throughout the 1990s by the A1 Preservation Group, the money was eventually available to put together the 50th member of the class. Painstakingly, each individual piece was put together by hand, with boilers imported from East German steam locomotive manufacturers who had been building and maintaining locomotives behind the Iron Curtain till the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. All other components were meticulously crafted over a span of 19 years until in 2008, 60163 worked for the first time under her own steam. In 2009 she began work on mainline tours, and was named by HRH Prince Charles and HRH Princess Camilla as Tornado, in honour of the RAF Fighter Jet and the Squadrons that they served.

Since then she has been both the celebrity and the sinner. As one of the worlds newest steam locomotives she found her way onto the car show Top Gear where she raced a Jaguar and a Vincent Blackshadow Motorbike from London to Edinburgh with avid railway hater Jeremy Clarkson at the helm. Amongst enthusiasts she has received a mixed reception, with many not considering her a genuine steam locomotive and refusing to so much as take notice of her. But for me and the vast majority of others, I love this locomotive, to me it is one of my favorite engines.

Since being out-shopped in fictitious LNER Apple Green, the locomotive's livery changed to British Railways Brunswick Green in 2011, and the short lived BR Express Blue that was worn in the early 1950's, though was quickly removed due to bad wearing and due to protests by the former Great Western Railway management of the Western Region. It has now returned to Apple Green for the 2015 season.

Long may this beauty continue to serve the railways as one of the most fantastic steam locomotives of our time, and of course we must also thank the men and women who devoted so much time and effort into creating such a magnificent machine!