Strange names

I believe the Castles were named during 1940 when the Lanc, Hallibag & Dak had not yet entered service.
Greene King came about as that brewery made a large contribution to it's restoration. Many of the LNER A3s were named after race horses.
The singer Jenny Lynd had a loco named after her when she became the mistress of a SE&CR director.

 

Liked the older woman, did he?

(She would have been 79 before the first SE&CR director was even appointed, had she not already been dead for 12 years ...)

Tom

 

Leaving aside the obvious jokers like 70001/38, I wonder which of the literary and military ones would be different today. Would Slim and Montgomery have a good case for inclusion? At whose expense assuming they had to come out of 70040-5?

In literature, fashions change but I don't really see Kipling making the cut today, whereas Blake and Keats's stock has probably grown. Then there is John Lennon...…

Some of the A4 bird names are a bit weird aren't they? Falcon, Bittern, Merlin, fine. But who dreamed up Mallard? And Seagull seems very generic.

 

Is this the only loco with the same name as a song title? (Flanders and Swan)

 

well there's Rule 70000, 70018 by Wagner, 70023 in Blue Jeans, 46200 is a Morris Dance, surely there must be a song called 45519. And then there is 70038...……..

 

I am surprised you have not put forward Sir Cosmo Bonsor, which seems to have made it onto the side of a 465 unit.

The A4 names are surprisingly poor for such a prestigious class. Setting aside the directors, some of who sound like the proprietors of MidWest hardware stores or turf accountants, many of the birds are, as you say, rather prosaic e.g. Mallard, Gannet, Seagull. The Locomotive Magazine reported at the time that one was to be named Hirondelle, but perhaps that was too exotic?

 

There are a few odd anomalies in naming a series of locomotives, the first B1s had antelope names but in the middle of them we have 61036 Ralph Assheton, Who was he? When naming Britannias it seems everyone’s idea was thrown in th pot, we have a the chairman of the BTC, a few literary figures, names revived from the GW broad gauge days, followed by some more literary figures a few military names from WW1 and finally five Scottish Firths except for 70047 where inspiration seems to have run dry.
The LNER named the first V2 after its premier freight service which was understandable but why then name four at random intervals throughout the series after army regiments and two after schools?
The one that puzzled me for many years was B1 61244 Strang Steel which I always thought was a spelling mistake until I attended the Scottish Steam Bash in 2003 when I discovered it was named after an LNER Director. The organiser, Bob Branch, invited some of the current Strang Steel family to travel with us over Rannoch more behind 61264, temporarily renumbered and named as 61244 which was always a Scottish engine.

 

At least they never stooped to Rock Dove.

Now, a Kittiwake (60120) is a Seagull (60033) and oddly, a Herring Gull (4468) is a Seagull as well. (According to wiki - I am happy to defer to any bird experts).

There seem to be a lot of Kitcheners and Gordons. I suspect that like Kipling they would carry a fair amount of baggage these days. No one is naming anything after Haig or French anymore.

Thomas Hardy and Kipling are the most modern of the authors that they named the Britannias' after, Kipling had been dead for 15 years, so I guess a good rule of thumb is you need to have been dead for at least a generation. And you need to be canonical (rather than just popular).

Priestly, Betjamin and L.S.Lowery got 86 named after them.

Perhaps these days there would be more gender balance - so Austin, Brontes etc (and hopefully something better than a Sprinter or Pacer).

Montgomery appears to have been the one WW2 figure who didn't get something named after him. (After all, the BB did a good job of ensuring no one forgets Frederick Pile).

On the subject of rubbish names: Pebble Mill and Brookside spring to mind.

 

There's an idea at the back of my head that the A4 birds were chosen due to particularly fast airspeeds, but I can't find green bible 2A right now to check.

(Feel free to insert an "unladen swallow" joke here)

 

But there was a Castle named Wellington. 5075 it was.

 

Some of them yes, but Bittern? Usually seen flopping through the air with all the elegance of an airborne sack of potatoes!

 

Oh go on then (I suppose we have had two "gulls")...I can offer you "Swallow" (the electric loco 91001 was named this for a while) but not an African or European Swallow...

 

Surely the most cheerful was the GW's Chough!

 

Monkey Magic noted :

Priestly, Betjamin and L.S.Lowery got 86 named after them.

Benjamin was honoured because of his support for St Pancras - both as a building and in support of the MML retaining a presence there following the Beeching Report which had suggested closure in favour of Kings Cross. Doubly apt was the naming to celebrate the electrification of the BedPan line hence the naming of 86229 at St Pancras by Sir John himself. Although wheelchair-bound at that time his presence during the day was much appreciated - as is my images of the train leaving St Pancras on the inaugural run to Bedford.

 

Thank you, I hadn't checked the list. So as 22A pointed out the answer was simply that they were named before Matt37401's favourite planes had been in action.

Hopefully no-one bound for Wellington boarded a train hauled by 5075 by mistake.

 

Wellington (Castle Class).

 

The possibilities are endless ; Bonxie , Shag...…………...

 

The Blackburn Bonxie would have been a much better name than the Blackburn Skua...

Tom
(One for the Ornithologists there ...)

 

As well as Chough, some other bird names that would fit well on a steam locomotive:

Coal Tit,
Shoveler,
Sooty Shearwater,
Sooty Tern,

And, of course,

Puffin.