Tornado Steam Engine Pins and Buttons

The Seam Engine Tornado with a photograph of its nameplate too.

The new build steam locomotive Tornado may look like something from a bygone age but it was, in fact, completed in 2008, built from scratch by a dedicated team of volunteers. In the last decade the engine has found fame on large and small screen, appearing in the PADDINGTON 2 movie and starring in Top Gear’s ‘Race to the North’. Tornado is also famed for reaching 100mph in secret night time tests in 2017, making it the first steam locomotive to reach such high speeds since the 1960s.

A black and white image of Tornado on loan to the Severn Valley Railway leaving Highley station on an Autumn afternoon in October 2015. Tornado is a Peppercorn class A1 Pacific 4-6-2 completed in 2008 to the original specification. It's the only example of an LNER Peppercorn Class A1 in existence, as all the original A1 locomotives were scrapped without preservation.

In 1990 a group of people came together to share an extraordinary ambition – to construct a brand new Peppercorn A1 Pacific. They formed The A1 Steam Locomotive Trust and after nineteen years of incredible effort that locomotive, No. 60163 Tornado, moved under its own power for the first time in 2008.

A1 Steam Loco "Tornado" head towards Edinburgh as it passes Hett Crossing in Co Durham

Passing through Alresford Station, Essex.