The LNER Encyclopedia

The LNER gave their garter blue A4s bogie and driving wheels painted in a dark shade of red. All members of the class were so treated after the end of the war in the period 1946/7 with one exception, -Mallard.

No 22 as it then was, was handed over to BR in wartime black and was due for overhaul which it promptly received in March 1948. Still numbered 22, Mallard was given garter blue livery by Doncaster Works and released to traffic ready to take part in the Locomotive Exchanges, which it briefly did.

The question is, did the Doncaster paint shop also give No 22 the red wheels that it would have got a few months earlier in LNER ownership?

Do any of you gents know the answer?

If it did, it will have been a one-off as no further red painting of A4 wheels occurred for all the subsequent BR liveries.

(There's a well known colour transparency of No 60007 in garter blue with red wheels and 'British Railways' on the tender, but this was given its garter blue in LNER ownership and the wording on the tender will have been applied subsequently, after 1/1/48.)

30 views; no answers = no one knows. We can only speculate.

However, the question does need an answer for anyone who wants to model 'Mallard' as she was running during the Exchanges.

My guess is that No 22 was released from Doncaster in March 1948 with wheels painted red. The same people would have been making decisions as had been doing so in December 1947.

If the loco had NOT had red painted wheels, it would then be unique amongst the garter blue A4s and probably get a mention in the 'green bible' as such.

Red wheels seems a probability but not a certainty (unless anyone is around who remembers).

Painting of wheels very soon became a thing of the past under the new management. I don't know of any instance after March '48.

Colour Rail ref 98320 dated 1949 shows No. 22 behind a platform at King's Cross in monochrome, no other images in 1947-1950.

The small sample image is suggestive of the wheel centres not being black, but it would need a large format copy to study further and, possibly, form an opinion.

G'Day Gents

Logic would suggest Red wheels, 1, because other members of the class had them. 2, because they had plenty of red paint left over.

manna

So it should have looked something like this then:
This (b/w) picture taken at Exeter, getting ready to return to Paddington from Plymouth. No 22 failed soon after and was replaced by 60033.
Only A4s with a double chimney were used in the Exchanges.

Here's a colour photo of her during the exchange trials:

I think that confirms it. Red wheels.