40th of a Second by Roger Bamber

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It is the 14th of June In 1958 and a 13-year-old boy stands anxiously on the platform of the Down-line at Grantham Railway Station. The imminent arrival of a train was eagerly awaited ..Clutching a Kodak Brownie Cresta ll, this was not a passenger wishing to travel but a trainspotter excited by steam engines.

Roger Bamber was ready for any circumstance but as luck would have it, the train that was racing towards Grantham was the A4 Class Loco, the Golden Plover, which entered service in October 1937 and finished her work in October 1965. It was the non-stop ‘Elizabethan’ service from London to Edinburgh

Traveling at around 70 mph the Class A4 Locomotive took around six and a half hours to make the journey north from Kings Cross to Edinburgh and would not drop its speed as it passed through the station.

This was just one of the 35 A4 class Locomotives designed by Nigel Gresley and the sleek engine was built for speed.

Another of the A4 engines, The Mallard, broke the world speed record on the 3rd of July 1938 and still holds the record for the Worlds fastest steam train at 126 miles per hour.

So, it was just the one shot that the keen train spotter took to as it hurtled through Grantham Station.