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I am a bit of a Steam locomotive fan and I have been following the progress of this fantastic new locomotive with great interest for some time.

For anyone unfamilliar with it, The A1 Pacific Tornado no 60163 is a 4-6-2 Pacific mainline express locomotive, and is unique in that it is the first full-size, standard-gauge steam locomotive to have been built in this country for some time, The last one being Evening Star, which rolled out of the Swindon works in 1960.

For the past couple of years a group of dedicated enthusiasts and professional engineers from Darlington, have been busy creating, from scratch, the only example of an extinct breed of locomotives – the LNER A1 Peppercorns – which were all scrapped after British Rail’s switch from steam to diesel during the Sixties – the last surviving original – 60145 Saint Mungo – being scrapped in 1966.

This summer, No 60163 Tornado took its first tentative runs along the Great Central Railway between Loughborough and Leicester and now it has been unleashed on the mainline and was recently taken up to the National Railway Museum in York to begin speed and safety trials, and ran faultlessly from York to Scarborough, on a light test run at speeds of up to 50mph.

In the weeks to come Tornado will be pushed to her limits along the demanding and often steeply graded tracks of the North-East and in a weeks time, on November 18, Tornado will have her final test , when she will run to Newcastle-upon-Tyne and back at speeds up to 75mph.

After finishing trials, Tornado, will then be painted in LNER apple green, and will begin active service on chartered runs along the British network in January at speeds of up to 90mph, among these will be the York – Newcastle route, and in 2010, It is planned for her to go through the Channel Tunnel into France and Germany.

For more information on Tornado’s progress, see www.A1steam.com.

This historical epic is being offered for £2.99 this week when you buy it with the Times Newspaper. It is Kate Funivall’s second novel & concerns a character named Sofia Morozova, who has been imprisoned at Davinsky Labour Camp, Siberia and wants to escape. Only two things have sustained her through the bitter cold, aching hunger and hard labour – the prospect of one day walking free, and the stories told by her friend Anna- beguiling tales of a charmed upbringing in Petrograd and of Anna’s fervent love for a passionate revolutionary named Vasily.

Unfortunately Anna falls gravely ill, So Sofia makes a promise to escape the camp and find Vasily. But Sofia knows that times have changed. Russia is gripped by the iron fist of Communism and is no longer the country it once was.

Her perilous search takes her from industrial factories to remote villages, where she discovers a web of secrecy and lies, but also bonds of courage and loyalty and an overwhelming love that threatens her promise to Anna….