Which A4 in OO

Sort-of answering my own question, I've found that Mallard had it's Garter Blue livery restored when it left the works as number 22 on 5/3/1948. It had previously been painted black during the war. So I now have some excuse for a Garter Blue painted Mallard running within a few miles of my layout...... Cheers, Bill.

Dunno about Mallard, but one of my earliest memories (I was born in

I already loved trains, and my father carried me as a babe in arms off the train at Leeds, and he stopped to show me the engine. It wasn't like anything else I had seen before and a few years later I realised it was a streak. My failing memory tells me it was light blue.

With hindsight I would guess it was LNER Garter Blue. It was certainly lighter than the streaks I saw in my train spotting days (I started when I was ten or eleven).

I always assumed that the LNER had repainted its prestige engines first, after the war.