The Stirling Single and its Tender

This time it is the Railway Magazine's July 2010 fascinating feature about GNR tender 1002 which has caught my eye. What an epic tale! The Stirling Single GNR No. 1 preserved since 1907 is a true icon of Victorian locomotive design. By a quirk of fate it has spent all its preserved life attached to the wrong tender, not one it worked with in service. Now thanks to the dogged determination of several individuals, it looks set within the next year to be re-united to the correct tender. In the first place we must thank Messrs Boddy and Leech who back in the mid 1960s, realised the error, discovered a correct survivor and ensured its then preservation (the exact narrative of where it then went and who "owned" it could be expanded I don't doubt). Anyway, neglect in preservation then followed until the Gresley Society Chairman took up its cause. Malcolm Crawley evidently would not take no for an answer. He was in absolute command of the facts and of the intellectual requirement that something had to be done. So to the moral of the story. Never listen to a no from the NRM (and I know that too in the cause of publicity ephemera). Persevere, lobby, refuse to go quiet, and eventually as the article narrates so long as your argument is sound, U turns are possible. The tender has now gone to Locomotion Shildon for full restoration and for myself I have no doubts Andrew Coulls there will appreciate its importance and why its restoration and attachment to GNR No.1 will be a worthy moment in the annals of railway preservation.