LNER Green Arrow

On the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER), Sir Nigel Gresley's most famous steam locomotives were the A1/A3 and streamlined A4 Pacific (4-6-2) engines, which regularly set speed records on the East Coast Main Line.  His most useful designs, though, might have been the high-speed mixed-traffic V2 Prairie (2-6-2) engines introduced in 1936.  Almost 200 locomotives were built by Doncaster and Darlington to compete with the new trucking industry for intercity express goods traffic and double for Pacifics and 10-Wheelers on passenger trains.  The V2 Prairies performed almost as well as the Pacifics, with a tractive effort of 34,000 pounds and a top speed of 101.5 miles per hour, which proved invaluable to the Allied cause during World War II when 26-coach passenger trains and 700-ton military freight trains were among the V2 Prairies' duties.  The only survivor, class leader No. 4771 Green Arrow, is in the custody of the National Railway Museum and (as of summer 2015) on display at the Locomotion Museum in Shildon.  When I visited the museum, Green Arrow parked next to a British Railways APT driving motor car, Great Northern Railway Stirling Single No. 1, and U.S. Army Transportation Corps S-160 Consolidation No. 2253.