Willie Yeadon
English historian (1907-1997)
Willie Brayshaw Yeadon (28 June 1907 – 16 January 1997), was a British railway historian known for his magnum opus, Yeadon's Register of LNER Locomotives and other works.
Biography
Willie Yeadon was born in Yeadon, West Riding of Yorkshire on 28 June 1907. He trained as a mechanical engineer, initially working for the Bradford Dyers' Association Ltd. After being made redundant in the 1930s he joined the Hull firm Fenner in 1931.
Yeadon's initial railway interest was the London & North Western Railway. On moving to East Yorkshire he began to study the activities of the London and North Eastern Railway, starting to collect railway images around 1933. British Rail's 1955 modernisation plan prompted him to begin a systematic study of the locomotives of the LNER, during which he visited engine sheds and works, collecting locomotive related documentation such as works records.
He joined the Railway Correspondence and Travel Society in 1936 and made significant contributions to its multi-volume publication Locomotives of the LNER. In 1984 he was made an honorary life member of the society.
During his career at Fenner he ultimately became marketing manager, before retiring in 1972. After retirement he started work on Yeadon's register of LNER locomotives.
The public source identifies “Willie Yeadon” as english historian (1907-1997). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Willie, Yeadon and English.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q8021910. VIAF identifies the subject as 63512899. The Library of Congress control number is nb2001050939. None of the 3 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1907, 1997, 1931 and 1933.
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This entry incorporates text from “Willie Yeadon” 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.