Above: Finsbury Park depot always seemed to make a special effort with its eight ‘racehorses’ and even though they consistently put in enormous mileages they almost always looked sleek and well groomed. This is very much as I remember them – seeing one at speed on the East Coast Main Line was a genuinely thrilling experience, matched only by hearing one start up under the low overall roof at Leeds Central amid clouds of pungent black smoke.
FOR AN 11-year-old railway mad boy, what could be more exciting than rumours that a brand-new class of high-speed express passenger locomotives would shortly be arriving on your own doorstep?
In the event, Uncle Harold (who lived not far from North Gate station in Newark) had the first sighting – D9003 Meld, the only mare among seven stallions. I had to wait an agonising month or two before catching D9009 Alycidon impatient to be off at Leeds Central’s main departure platform.
Accustomed to drab ‘Peaks’ and English Electric Type 4s, the slash of lime green, the bold red nameplate and the white window surrounds seemed astonishing amid such a drab, smoke-blackened setting.
Then as now, I was never one for tribal anti-diesel sentiments and to my mind the ‘Deltics’ slotted in well alongside the …
