Salute to No. 44806 at North York Moors

END-of-Steam ‘Black Five’ No. 44806 retired from North Yorkshire Moors Railway traffic on January 1 at the end of its current 10-year boiler ticket.

For its final day the Stanier 4-6-0 carried Magpie nameplates, as worn during the 1970s when the ‘5MT’ was based at the Lakeside & Haverthwaite Railway and Steamport, Southport.

The nameplates had been borrowed from Graham Elwood, engineering manager at the Llangollen Railway, from where the loco came in 2013.

The following day the loco was stripped and prepared for temporary retirement, and was subsequently shunted into the ‘back field’ at Grosmont, where it will await its eventual turn in the overhaul queue.

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