This was a lovely engine to research and as usual I found out quite a few things about railways that had somehow passed me by...and talking to people at the shows it sounds like I'm not alone....

The Grouping Bill

Before this happened in the 1920s, there were lots of little railways all over Britain and so the government decided to merge them into 4 main groups with their own colour scheme.

and Air Brakes !!

Before these were invented by George Westinghouse ( photo to follow), there were poor chaps who ran on top of carriages braking each van..5000 died in one year in America, and people thought trains were dangerous.