Remembering The Leicester City Locomotive: 1937-1959

For 22 years, between 1937 and 1959, a frequent sight on the London North Eastern Railway (LNER) network and its British Rail successor was a passenger train hauled by a steam locomotive named after Leicester City Football Club.

2025-03-25T15:00+00:00

by John Hutchinson

Published

25 Mar, 2025

Remembering The Leicester City Locomotive: 1937-1959

For 22 years, between 1937 and 1959, a frequent sight on the London North Eastern Railway (LNER) network and its British Rail successor was a passenger train hauled by a steam locomotive named after Leicester City Football Club.

John Hutchinson

2025-03-25T15:00+00:00

Remembering The Leicester City Locomotive: 1937-1959

For 22 years, between 1937 and 1959, a frequent sight on the London North Eastern Railway (LNER) network and its British Rail successor was a passenger train hauled by a steam locomotive named after Leicester City Football Club.

John Hutchinson

2025-03-25T15:00+00:00

Remembering The Leicester City Locomotive: 1937-1959

For 22 years, between 1937 and 1959, a frequent sight on the London North Eastern Railway (LNER) network and its British Rail successor was a passenger train hauled by a steam locomotive named after Leicester City Football Club.

John Hutchinson

2025-03-25T15:00+00:00

Remembering The Leicester City Locomotive: 1937-1959

For 22 years, between 1937 and 1959, a frequent sight on the London North Eastern Railway (LNER) network and its British Rail successor was a passenger train hauled by a steam locomotive named after Leicester City Football Club.

John Hutchinson

2025-03-25T15:00+00:00

Many years ago, our heritage collection was presented with this framed picture of the locomotive. The collection also contains an image of one of the locomotive’s nameplates. The original nameplates could be worth anything over £20,000 each at auction.

The Leicester City locomotive, number 61665, was built in 1936 by the London North Eastern Railway Company. It was one of a new class of 25 steam locomotives, each named after a famous football club.

The other 24 football locomotives were named after Arsenal, Sheffield United, Grimsby Town, Derby County, Darlington, Huddersfield Town, Sunderland, Middlesbrough, Leeds United, Doncaster Rovers, Newcastle United, Norwich City, Hull City, Sheffield Wednesday, (which all entered service in 1936) and Manchester United, Everton, Liverpool, Nottingham Forest, Bradford Park Avenue, Bradford City, Barnsley, Manchester City and West Ham United. There was also a Tottenham Hotspur locomotive which was built in 1931 and which originally had a different name.

All 25 were designed by Sir Nigel Gresley, who was one of Britain's most famous locomotive engineers. They were all were fitted with two nameplates, each containing the club’s name, the club’s colours and a brass replica football. Until 2006, the whereabouts of the nameplate offered to City were unknown to the Club. However, after some research, we located it.

The nameplate.

When British Rail withdrew all 25 of the football trains between 1958 and 1960, they donated one of the two nameplates from each engine to the named club. The other nameplates went to private collections. Up to 15 of the 25 nameplates donated to the clubs are either still, or have been, on display at those clubs. ‘Norwich City’ has been installed just inside the players’ tunnel at Carrow Road and for many years, ‘Tottenham Hotspur’ could be seen outside the directors’ box at the old White Hart Lane.

Our enquiries indicated that, in 1959, the Directors of Leicester City Football Club turned down British Rail’s donation of the nameplate. Following a trail which led us to the museum curator at the Great Central Railway at Loughborough, and to an auctioneer in Sheffield, we finally located the name plate on the South Coast, where for the last 40 years or more, it has belonged to a life-long Leicester City supporter. An associate of his came across it at an auction in Huntingdonshire in the 1970s and sold it on to him.

As for the second Leicester City nameplate, this was on display (minus the brass ball) at the Great Central Railway Museum in Loughborough until relatively recently. It was on loan from the Leicester Railway Society, who purchased it when the locomotive was withdrawn in 1959.

The ‘Leicester City’ ran on the LNER network and its British Rail successor until it was withdrawn in April 1959. When it made its first journey in January 1937, we had risen to third in the table of the old Second Division, going on to reach top spot in the division for the first time that season on the last day of the campaign, beating Tottenham Hotspur 4-1 to become Second Division champions.

In the 22 years of its service, it was often used for taking holidaymakers to the East Coast. The Club’s archives contain a postcard depicting the ‘Leicester City’ pulling the ‘Holiday Express’ to Bridlington four days before the start of the record-breaking 1956/57 season when Arthur Rowley scored a Club record of 44 league goals in 42 games.

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