Green Arrow and happy trainspotting memories – Yorkshire Post Letters

SEEING and reading about the Class V2 Green Arrow (The Yorkshire Post, February 23) brought back happy memories of trainspotting in the early 1950s.

At that time the LNER and LMS ran the railway system in this area. The Green Arrow was an LNER locomotive, along with Class A4 Mallard, the A3 Flying Scotsman and the A1 Kittiwake, the class recently resurrected in the form of Tornado.

We trainspotters had a close allegiance to either LNER or the LMS, collecting only the numbers of that company.

This was usually determined by where you lived. I lived in Wakefield where the prominent LNER London to Leeds line passed over the Ninety-Nine Arches. Although not as prominent as Doncaster, on the East Coast Main Line, we did see on a daily basis the Yorkshire Pullman and the White Rose trains, always hauled by well-known and well-loved locomotives like Mallard, the Flying Scotsman and Kittiwake but not, for some unknown reason, Green Arrow.

This was more likely to be seen at Wakefield’s Kirkgate Station hauling the Newcastle to Liverpool Boat Train. At Kirkgate, the LNER locomotive, very often a Class A1, was exchanged for a LMS one, usually a Jubilee Class, such as Leander or Mars.

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