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Two A4s WILL be repatriated from North America

The pair, No. 60008 Dwight D Eisenhower and No. 60010 Dominion of Canada will be loaned to the National Railway Museum from the National Railroad Museum, Green Bay, Wisconsin and the Canadian National Railway Museum, Montreal, respectively for a two year period, and play a key part in the celebrations to mark the 75th anniversary of Mallard’s world record breaking 126mph run down Stoke Bank on 3 July 1938.
    Steve Davies, Director of the National Railway Museum, said: “I am delighted that the two museums involved have shared in the National Railway Museum’s vision to make this happen and I have no doubt that what is being planned will be beneficial to all parties.”


  The two locos will be a central feature of a series of events being planned to mark this historic anniversary and full details of these events are still to be finalised. Discussions with the owners of the privately owned UK based locomotives are being conducted in order to generate a number of line up opportunities involving all six A4s at a number of locations, of which York will be the principal venue.


   The NRM aims to draw on rail industry sponsorship for much of the activity involved leading to the movement of both locos in autumn 2012. 
 Steve Davies added: “We hope that the entire UK railway enthusiast community will appreciate and applaud the ambition involved in taking forward this project, pay tribute to the willingness of the owners of these locomotives to be equal partners in this venture, and of course visit this never-to-be-repeated series of events in 2013”.

• The notification of this exciting news came to us just 10 minutes before the March issue of The Railway Magazine closed for press. Unfortunately the NRM's press release contained an error in that the numbers of the two locos were transposed. In the rush to get the page to the printers, we were unable to do our customary check and the error has, therefore, been perpetuated into the printed issue that goes on sale on February 1. We apologise for this oversight.