[Rassy]

Are you sitting comfortably?.....yes?....Then I shall begin!

First I emailed several different departments of the MoD to verify the Ashchurch story. They never replied.

Then I spent hours & hours searching th internet and found nothing new. Apart from a man claiming he saw 55020 run light engine through Derby station in 1992.

Then I spoke to my great uncle who is a retired engine driver. He said he didn't know anything about it, but he had an old railway friend who worked at Swindon Works as an engineer. This morning my uncle called to say he'd spoken to his pal and this is what he had to say:

A year before the Deltics were due to be withdrawn, BR offered the entire fleet to a number of foreign railways. Shortly after the Doncaster Works 'final gathering', a single Deltic was selected from the fleet and shipped to mainland Europe. He does not know which Deltic or the specific foreign railway it was sent to, but he is 100% sure that a Deltic definitely went abroad.

A few weeks after it's arrival in Europe, the foreign railway in question took one look at the beast and decided not to purchase the whole fleet. As a result, BR brought forward the offical Deltic scrapping date, and the rest as they say, is history.

But this is the really interesting bit.....my uncle's friend swears blind that BR did not ship the Deltic back to blighty for scrapping because the cost would be treble that of the scrap price. It sorta became a white elephant for BR and lay abandoned on a foreign railway for 5 years until it was purchased by a 'private owner'. This, he is also 100% sure of.

Before you say anything, please remember the man who told my uncle all this informaion is 86 years old and was struggling to remember all the specific details. I pressed my uncle for more information but that was all he had to say.

My question is: Is there anybody on this forum who worked at Doncaster works around this time, or in the BR offices who can confirm this story?