Evening Star, Evening Star & Evening Star Too Far?

Yes, other Engines exist

The National Icons do indeed run beyond the class of A3. Let's peer beyond this and look at the other strange incident of the past few days. We now have, as a nation, three 'Evening Star's.

Now the first one was built at Swindon in 1960 and is an undisputed national treasure that has become infamous for being flangeless. Those heady days in the 80s with this big Green 9F storming the mainlines of Britain will seemingly be no more. Network Rail are not ones to go back on their words now are they?

Then we all lost a Cock.

We were gutted at this, a big black 9F called 'Cock of the North'. It was a gift to the nation that kept giving. Unfortunately the 'Cock' was lost before The BM was even a small sidenote in 'Steam Railway' magazine. 

We miss the Cock

It headed on down to the Great Central Railway with promises of being called 'Central Star', nice name we thought.

Then it became Green and became 'Evening Star'. That dear old 9F in York literally weeped at this News. I hope you all feel happy now. The loss of Cock was hard.

So the Nation now had two 'Evening Star's, one you could see silent in York or alive and well at Loughborough. The choice was yours. Now creating choice is always a good thing, plenty of options for our lazy ways. 

Let's be honest folks, the magic of Evening Star wilted in the glean of it's newly recreated paint. It was the same as the day we discovered 'Daisy' was not kind of railcar you would want to bring home to your Mum. 

So with the magic of Evening Star ever so slightly split in two. You would think nothing else could take a chip out of the last steam locomotive built for British Railways.

Now we are a fan of iconic moments as much as the next woman, but seeing an icon of American Engineering in the home of the British National Collection left us feeling a little cold.

The argument is the last of the Class 66s deserves its rightful place as being 'iconic'. It is indeed a good statement of celebration that is deserving of British Railways logo and Brunswick Green.

But, at Toton lies more deserving subjects