We were delighted to be offered this gem recently – the original headboard carried on the named UTA Express Train “The Festival”, which ran between Belfast & Derry~Londonderry.
The Festival of Britain was a national exhibition held throughout the United Kingdom in the summer of 1951, organised to give the post-war country a feeling of recovery in the aftermath of the Second World War and to promote the UK’s contribution to science, technology, industrial design, architecture and the arts.
Although it looks a bit out of place on our tank engine compared to the Moguls it was originally carried on back in the day, there is a very real DCDR link to this train in the form of our carriage No. 728, which started life as a carriage on the named train – before becoming an MPD driving trailer, and finally an NIR 70 class intermediate trailer.
This new rake of carriages was built at the UTA’s Duncrue Street workshops in Belfast, based on older pre-war standard LMS (London Midland & Scottish Railway) designs and were used as one of Ireland’s few named trains.
The headboard was bought by a private consortium and was donated to the DCDR museum, after it was discovered by a signage collector in an attic!
Our cheeky CME posed this photo of the headboard on an unlikely locomotive next to carriage No. 728:
