3201 - Photo: John Whiteley.

"The Queen of Scots Pullman" was a luxury train, with table service, which ran between London King's Cross and Glasgow Queen Street from the 1st May 1928 until June 1964. The service actually taking over and extending the path of "The Harrogate Pullman" which in turn had commenced in 1923. The Queen of Scots ran each weekday and Satrurdays (Bank Holiday excepted), with exception of the war years from 3rd September 1939 and subsequent years up to 5th July 1948, between London and Glasgow via Leeds and Harrogate until the 13th June 1964 when it reverted to the "White Rose Pullman" running between King's Cross and Harrogate only.

From the outset two Leeds sheds were responsible for the service between King's Cross and Newcastle, Copley Hill taking King's Cross to Leeds and Neville Hill in charge of rosters between Leeds and Newcastle. Meanwhile Edinburgh's Haymarket shed controlled the services between Newcastle and Glasgow. Gresley's Pacifics were mainstay of services north of Leeds, however, it was Ivatt's Atlantics that saw esteemed service in the south. In 1932 the train was given a very demanding schedule between Leeds and King's Cross of 193 minutes for the 185.7 miles non-stop run. The C1 Atlantics and crews taking great pride in recovering time and arriving on time or early, at times sustaining over 70mph with 290 tons. Often they were late leaving Leeds because of delays from Edinburgh. When on the 26th November 1950 BR 62822 made a last run for the Atlantics on the ECML some railwaymen along the way removed their caps in respect.
In the final years, from 1948, four loco depots provided Pacific engines for this 451 mile run: Haymarket, Heaton and Neville Hill produced for the various legs north of Leeds, whereas Copley Hill provided for the journey between Kings Cross and Leeds Central in both directions. The Pullman train was usually made up of eight cars north of Leeds, whereas the Leeds-Kings Cross run had ten cars weighing some 400 tons, the two additional cars being attached at Leeds Central where the train reversed.

Dieselisation dawned, along with the use of BR Mk I Pullman stock, in the early 1960's with the English Electric type 4 (later class 40) usurping steam to some extent, indeed the service becoming almost solidly class 40 from the June 1961 timetable. From the onset of the summer 1962 timetable, on June 18th, the service was booked for Deltic traction. Finsbury Park and Haymarket locomotives were the mainstay of locos used, with very few Gateshead allocated machines seeing use, this remained so until the final service on Saturday 13th June 1964 when D9000 "ROYAL SCOTS GREY" had the honour of hauling the service on the two sections between King's Cross and Leeds. However by 1963 although class 40 locomotives had also regularly appeared the use of Sulzer type 4 (Peak class 46) and the new Brush type 4's (class 47) were increasingly seen. It would appear that loco changes, even during the Deltic period, often also occurred at Newcastle which would result in no fewer than four locos seeing use on the sections King's Cross to Leeds, Leeds to Newcastle, Newcastle to Edinburgh and Edinburgh to Glasgow.

Deltic diagrams (June 1962 forward):

1. (HA2) Pass Loco - fuel
   1S57 12:00 King's Cross - Glasgow Queen St., to Leeds (15:22).
   1E14 11:00 Glasgow Queen St. - King's Cross, from Leeds (16:36).
   Pass Loco - fuel
    
2. (HA3) Pass Loco - fuel
   1N10 10:20 King's Cross - Leeds (14:31).
   1S57 12:00 King's Cross - Glasgow Queen St., from Leeds (15:39) to Edinburgh (19:59).
   Haymarket - fuel.
    
3. (KX8) Haymarket - fuel
   1E14 11:00 Glasgow Queen St. - King's Cross, from Edinburgh (12:05) to Leeds (16:27).
   1E68 17:10 Leeds - Doncaster (SX)
   1E31 17:08 Hull - King's Cross, from Doncaster (18:22) (SX).
   1Exx 17:42 Leeds - Doncaster (SO)
   1A49 17:10 Newcastle - King's Cross, from Doncaster (19:28) (SO).
   Pass Loco - fuel

The above image is of a locomotive, possibly D9018, at Finsbury Park circa 1964 sporting what was intended to be used as the headboard for the Queen of Scots service.
It is a fibre glass creation, akin to the Winged Thistle used on the Flying Scotsman service, though sadly its use was not employed.

The Following list commences in January 1961, just as the Vulcan Foundry was adding the finishing touches to the first of the production Deltics, and attempts to chronicle as many of the locomotives used. As usual nothing like this is possible without the help of others and I'm indebted to Nigel Pearson, who has submitted his late father Fred's extensive notes, Tommy Knox of the LNER database and the Class 40 'Motherlist'. Some information is also taken from David Hey's titled train section.
If you have any information on this service or lists of locomotives used on the dates between 1961 and 1964 please contact me here.

An image library of locos on this service can be found here.