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

1947) is of going with my parents to my father's family in Yorkshire. I would have been nearly two.

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.