On this day in 1962 the first Peppercorn class A1 was withdrawn. Sixty-four years ago, on 1 October, No. 60123 H. A. Ivatt was condemned at Doncaster, barely three weeks after it had been badly damaged in a derailment at Offord on 7 September while working the 08:20hrs King’s Cross Goods to Leeds.

Built at Doncaster as works No. 2040 and put into traffic on 10 February 1949, it was named in July 1951 for Henry Ivatt, the last Chief Mechanical Engineer of the Great Northern Railway, and spent its career on the East Coast Main Line from Doncaster, Grantham, Copley Hill and Ardsley.

Its service life was only thirteen years and seven months, one of the shortest of the class, and it was the first of Arthur Peppercorn’s class A1s to be condemned. Cut up at the works where it had been built, it was last reported in the yard on 14 October 1962.

The anniversary is a reminder that the post-war ‘Pacifics’, successors to Gresley’s class A3s and class A4s, disappeared almost as quickly as they had arrived – and that not one of the original forty-nine class A1s survived. Thankfully The A1 Steam Locomotive Trust completed No. 60163 Tornado in 2008 which fills the gap.