Sir Nigel Gresley

This morning I visited Castor Flood Meadows SSSI, to scout access and ground conditions in preparation for the upcoming BSBI Dandelion recording weekend which I'm helping to co-ordinate. 

The Nene Valley Railway bisects the site, and while I was botanising, the Sir Nigel Gresley locomotive passed by twice. Built at Doncaster as works N°1863, the locomotive entered service in 1937 following a naming ceremony at Marylebone station on 26th November. The locomotive was mainly based at London King's Cross, with a spell at Grantham during World War II, and was briefly re-numbered as N°7 before becoming N°60007 when the LNER was merged into British Railways. On 3rd June 1956, Sir Nigel Gresley had the honour of hauling the Royal Train from King's Cross to York with H.M. the Queen on board. The "Stephenson Locomotive Society Special" of the 23rd May 1959 was the first train in the UK with a booked or advertised schedule of over 100 m.p.h. and during that trip, N°60007 set the official post-war speed record for steam traction of 112 mph.

After lunch Pete and I took a set of plants dug up from our garden over to Ben and Sarah's house and helped them plant up a newly cleared flowerbed at the front of the house. All the species we took are fairly troublefree, and will hopefully provide a long season of colour, together with plenty of pollen and nectar for invertebrates. It was lovely to catch up over tea and biscuits in the sunshine as I'd been too busy to drop by during the week.