63460 (NER 901, LNER 901, LNER 3460 & BR 63460)

63460 at South Shields - September 1963.jpg

NER 901 was built at Darlington where it was shopped from North Road in September 1919.

As the first engine of the class it was put on dynamometer car trails at first in the Tyne Valley between Newcastle and Carlisle and later between Newport and Shildon.

901 was originally allocated to Blaydon before been transferred to Hull Dairycoates in December 1923, where it was to haul coal trains between the South Yorkshire pits and the docks at Hull. By 1929 it was back in the North East, seeing service at Haverton Hill, Stockton, West Hartlepool and Darlington. Under a Wartime reshuffle of motive power all 15 members of the class were concentrated at Tyne Dock Shed, later to work the Consett iron ore trains, for which they were fitted with vacuum brake equipment and two Westinghouse pumps for opening and closing the air-operated doors on the ore wagons.

63460 remained at Tyne Dock until withdrawal in December 1962. Earmarked for preservation as part of the National Collection, the engine was stored at Darlington Works, being steamed in September 1963 and again in May 1964 to work railtours in the North East. Thereafter it was stored at Hellifield, Stratford – London and Preston Park – Brighton, before moving to York in 1978.

Whilst at Brighton the locomotive was inspected by North Eastern Locomotive Preservation Group (NELPG) volunteers. This revealed that the boiler had had a general overhauland had done little work since. When a washout door was removed to look at the foundation ring the volunteers got drenched as the boiler was still full of water nine years after it last steamed in April 1978 the locomotive moved from Brighton to York before being towed to Grosmont on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway. This followed a formal agreement between the National Railway Museum and the NELPG for a ten year loan of the locomotive.

Work started on the restoration in February 1980 but did not get fully underway until 1982 at Grosmont. It first steamed again in July 1990 and entered traffic in August 1990. The locomotive then worked on the heaviest trains on the North Yorkshire moors Railway until the boiler certificate expired in 1998. By this time it had covered 23,428 miles.

The locomotive remained in store in Deviation shed at Grosmont until June 2004 when it was moved by road to Shildon, and was the first steam locomotive to arrive at the National Railway Museum’s new museum Locomotion.