Station Name: MILDENHALL
[Source: Darren Kitson]  Mildenhall on 28 November 1959. The occasion is a Cambridge University Railway Club special using the very last 2-4-0 locomotive to run on mainland Britain's national network; Class E4 No.62785. Looking spruced-up and carrying an express headcode with equally spruced-up lamps, she was withdrawn from service immediately afterwards (officially w/e 30 November 1959) to enter preservation albeit not with a tender cab. The train comprises a Gresley composite in 'Blood & Custard' and a Gresley brake third in either that dreadful imitation teak livery (doubtful by 1959) or BR maroon. There are ways of telling, even with a black and white image, but on this occasion the carriage is too far from the camera and at the wrong angle. 'Blood & Custard' was BR's first coaching stock livery and it went by various names, some derogatory and some not. The livery suited pre-nationalisation stock, especially the Gresleys, but did not sit so well on the tidier lines of BR MkI stock.
Photograph by Peter Jamieson and reproduced with his kind permission
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