No one at Doncaster Works could later remember exactly when the locomotive was finished.
The paperwork suggested March 1939, though the works foreman always insisted it had been earlier. The painters said they remembered applying the final coat of garter blue on a cold morning when the varnish refused to dry properly. The fitters remembered the valve gear going together more smoothly than expected. The apprentices remembered nothing at all — which, in its way, proved the locomotive had never entered ordinary service.
What everyone agreed upon was this:
The engine had been completed.
And then, for reasons no one ever properly recorded, it had simply stayed where it was.
Without a number.
Without a name.
Without a duty.
Full story coming here soon.
The Crazymad Writer Writes Again 