LNER Class A4 4468 Mallard
preserved LNER Class A4 locomotive
LNER Class A4 4468 Mallard is a 4-6-2 ("Pacific") steam locomotive built in 1938 for operation on the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) at Doncaster Works to a design of Nigel Gresley. Its streamlined, wind tunnel tested design allowed it to haul long-distance express passenger services at high speeds. On 3 July 1938, Mallard broke the world speed record for steam locomotives at 126 mph (203 km/h), which still stands today.
While in British Railways days, regular steam-hauled rail services in the UK were officially limited to a 90 mph (140 km/h) "line speed", before the Second World War, the A4s had to run significantly above 90 mph (140 km/h) just to keep schedule on trains such as the Silver Jubilee and The Coronation, with the engines reaching 100 mph on many occasions. Mallard covered almost one and a half million miles (2.4 million km) before it was retired in 1963.
The locomotive is 70 ft (21 m) long and weighs 165 long tons (168 tonnes, 369,600 lbs), including the tender. It is painted in LNER garter blue with red wheels and steel rims.
Mallard is preserved at the National Railway Museum in York as part of the National Collection.
History
In 1936, Nigel Gresley, the chief mechanical engineer of the LNER, ordered a new batch of six 4-6-2 "Pacific" Class A4 engines to be built at Doncaster Works. The A4s were known for their distinct streamlined and aerodynamic design and designed for hauling long-distance express passenger services at high speeds.
“LNER Class A4 4468 Mallard” enters the record as preserved LNER Class A4 locomotive. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what LNER, Class and Mallard can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1070761. The Library of Congress control number is sh2004008229. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1938, 1963 and 1936.
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This entry incorporates text from “LNER Class A4 4468 Mallard” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.