HUNDREDS of people turned out to see North Norfolk Railway-based WD Austerity 2-10-0 No. 90775 named The Royal Norfolk Regiment, in honour of a local army regiment.
Saturday, September 9, saw onlookers crowd every vantage point at Sheringham station to see the locomotive haul a special train carrying 170 invited guests to Holt, following the naming ceremony.
WD 2-10-0 No. 90775. LEIGH CALDWELL/NNR
No. 90775 was named by Brigadier James Woodham, with full military honours available to the Royal Anglians, the successor regiment.
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Brigadier Woodham, former commanding officer of the Royal Anglians, grew up in Norfolk and attended Paston School in North Walsham.
Old soldiers from the regiment attended, along with representatives from the Hellenic Railway Association, honouring the service of No. 90775 in Greece during the Second World War and from 1945-84.
The Peterborough-based Band of the Royal Anglian Regiment provided music on the platform.
‘Strong connection’
Neil Sharpe, chairman of the locomotive’s owner the Midland & Great Northern Joint Railway Society, said: “The naming honours generations of local soldiers who served in the regiment over almost 400 years and so cements a uniquely strong local connection between the locomotive, the NNR and our county.”
No. 90775 was the third of the first batch of 100 from the North British Locomotive company’s Hyde Park Works, Springburn, Glasgow in December 1943.
It has just completed an eight-year overhaul at Weybourne, having been taken out of Poppy Line service in 2009.
Following its repatriation from Greece in 1984, and restoration to working order, initially on the Mid-Hants Railway, it was given one number higher than the last BR engine of the class, and has also carried the name Sturdee.
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