Built in 1913, Topaz is a 1st Class Parlour car built at Birmingham Railway Carriage and Wagon Works Co. Ltd., Smethwick in 1913 and entered service with South Eastern & Chatham Railway in 1914. It ran on services between London and the South Coast, on pre-war continental boat trains and the Bournemouth Belle. The carriage was withdrawn in 1960 and restored by the Pullman Car Company. During this restoration Topaz’s livery was reverted from umber and cream back to its original pre1920s crimson. The carriage was then presented to the British Transport Commission at the Clapham Museum of British Transport in 1961.

Topaz ran in the Travellers-Fare Centenary Express in 1979 which marked the 100th anniversary of on-train catering and the Rainhill Rocket Cavalcade in 1980.

collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk

The London, Brighton and South Coast Railway (LB&SCR) A1 class is a class of British 0-6-0T steam locomotive. Designed by William Stroudley, 50 members of the class were built in 1872 and between 1874 and 1880, all at Brighton railway works. The class has received several nicknames, initially being known as "Rooters" by their south London crews. However, the engines were more famously known as "Terriers" on account of the distinctive 'bark' of the exhaust beat. Later in their careers, some engines were known as "Hayling Billy" on account of their work on the Hayling Island branch line.

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The Agenoria was an early steam locomotive built by the Foster, Rastrick and Co partnership of Stourbridge, England. It first ran on 2 June 1829 along the Kingswinsford Railway which was a 3-mile long (4.8 km) line linking mines in the Shut End area of the Black Country with a canal basin at Ashwood on the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal. It was withdrawn from service around 1864 and was donated to the Science Museum (London) in December 1884.

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Steam locomotive and tender, No 737, Class D, 4-4-0, South Eastern & Chatham Railway, designed by H S Wainwright, built at Ashford in 1901, withdrawn in 1956. Fifty Class D 4-4-0s were built. Length over buffers 57'; width 8' 6"; weight: 50 tonnes; area 42.89m square. Driving wheel diameter 6 feet, 8 inches.

In total, fifty D class locomotives nicknamed ‘coppertops’ were originally built. By 1913 Richard Mausell (Chief Mechanical Engineer of the South Eastern and Chatham Railway from 1913-1923) had begun the rebuilding of twenty-one D Class locomotives with Belpaire fireboxes in order to produce the more powerful D1 class. No. 737 is the only D class locomotive to be preserved.

The locomotives appearance is of great interest; the styling and finish were part of a successful attempt to create a favourable impression on the public, the railway concerned being the recent result of a joint management agreement between two smaller railways - the South Eastern and the London, Chatham and Dover - neither of which stood in high public esteem.

With its elaborate livery and sweeping brass edged splashers no. 737’s appearance is certainly unusual. Indeed, few railway companies adorned their locomotives to this extent and by 1914 the paintwork had been simplified on the South Eastern and Chatham Railway (SECR). Today no. 737 is displayed in full SECR livery.

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Diesel Locomotive Class 47/4 No 47798 'Prince William'. Co-Co 4 foot 8 1/2 inch gauge, built at Crewe by British Rail Crewe and Brush Ltd in 1965. Named 'Firefly' from August 1985 to March 1995; renamed 'Prince Willliam' in May 1995.

The Brush Sulzer Class 47 diesel-electric locomotives were first introduced in 1962. A total of 512 were built and employed on a wide variety of duties, including heavy freight traffic and express passenger services.

The class underwent a variety of modifications to meet the changing needs of the modern railway. This particular locomotive was built at Crewe Work in 1965 and numbered D1656. Subsequently the locomotive was re-numbered 47072 in 1974, and again to 47609 in 1984. It was at this time that the locomotive also received an electric train heat supply and an alternator, in place of the main generator.

The engine was named “Fire-fly” in August 1985, and finally renumbered to its present 47798 in May 1995, at which time it was given its current name, “Prince William”.

collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk

Steam locomotive KF class number 7, 4-8-4, Chinese Government Railways, designed by Colonel Kenneth Cantlie, built by Vulcan Foundry in 1935 (as number 607), withdrawn in 1981.

In 1979, KF no. 7 was presented to the National Railway Museum by the Chinese government as a gift from the people of China to the people of Britain.

Dr Sun Yat Sen (a founding father of the Republic of China, established in 1912) was a friend of Colonel Kenneth Cantlie’s father, James Cantlie. In 1896 James Cantlie led a media campaign to rescue Dr Sun after his abduction by the Chinese Imperial Secret Service. The Boxer Rebellion of 1901, an anti-imperialist revolt which marked the beginning of the end of Imperial China, was put down by an eight Nation Alliance of western powers. The Imperial Chinese government was made to pay reparations to these nations; in Britain this was held by the Boxer Indemnity Fund, of which one of the trustees was the KF class’ designer Kenneth Cantlie. From 1929, Cantlie was also the technical advisor to the Chinese Ministry of Railway.

The class was designed to meet the demanding requirements of the Canton to Hankow and Nanking to Shanghai railways. The locomotives had to combine high power with low axle loading and be able to contend with the low quality of coal and chemically poor water supplies available. They also had to be able to operate in climatic extremes.

collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk

6229 was built in 1938 at Crewe as the tenth member of its class and the last in the second batch of five red streamliners, complete with gold speed cheat stripes (the original five 6220-4 having been given a unique Caledonian blue livery with silver stripes). In 1939 no. 6229 swapped identities with the first of the class 6220 Coronation and was sent to North America with a specially-constructed Coronation Scot train to appear at the 1939 New York World's Fair.[1] There was therefore for a while a blue 6229 Duchess of Hamilton in the UK_and a red 6220 Coronation in the US. R.A. Riddles drove for most of the tour, owing to the illness of the assigned driver. The locomotive (though not its carriages) was shipped back from the US in 1942 after the outbreak of the Second World War, and the identities of the locomotives were swapped back in 1943. The carriages returned in 1946.

6229 was painted wartime black livery in November 1944. Its streamlined casing was removed for maintenance-efficiency reasons in December 1947 and it was then given the LMS 1946 black livery. In 1948, 6229 passed into BR ownership. BR renumbered the locomotive as 46229 on 15 April 1948. It was painted in the short-lived BR blue livery in April 1950, but was soon repainted on 26 April 1952 into Brunswick green. The semi-streamlined smokebox was replaced with a round-topped smokebox in February 1957, and in September 1958 the locomotive was painted maroon. The lining was BR style to begin with; then in October 1959 it received the current LMS style lining which it has carried for all the years in preservation

46229 was saved from the scrap yard along with non streamlined classmate 6233 Duchess of Sutherland, as a result of Sir Billy Butlin's efforts to place these locomotives as children's playground exhibits at his holiday camps. The third preserved member of the class 6235 City of Birmingham was donated by British Railways to Birmingham City Council for preservation within the Birmingham Industrial Museum.

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The British Rail Class 55, also known as a Deltic, or English Electric Type 5, is a class of diesel locomotive built in 1961 and 1962 by English Electric for British Railways. Twenty-two locomotives were built, designed for the high-speed express passenger services on the East Coast Main Line (ECML) between Edinburgh and London King's Cross. They gained the name "Deltic" from the prototype locomotive, DP1 Deltic (the running number DP1 was never carried), which in turn was named after its Napier Deltic power units.

At the time of their introduction into service in 1961, the Class 55s were the most powerful single-unit diesel locomotives in the world, with a power output of 3,300 hp (2,500 kW).[3] They had an official maximum speed of 100 miles per hour (160 km/h), and introduced the first regular 100 mph diesel passenger service to Britain, they were however capable of higher speeds than this, and often exceeded their official maximum in service, especially in their later years, with speeds of up to 117 miles per hour (188 km/h), being recorded on level gradients, and up to 125 miles per hour (201 km/h) whilst descending Stoke Bank.

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This powerful, aerodynamic masterpiece rocketed to 126mph in 1938, a steam speed record that was never surpassed.

Mallard is an A4 class locomotive designed by Sir Nigel Gresley. The A4s were built to power high-speed trains in the late 1930s, and their shape was honed in a wind tunnel to help them cut through the air as cleanly as possible—making speeds of 120mph and above possible.

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