The Class Forty Preservation Society has launched a 7-day New Year’s Raffle to raise funds for their locomotives.

The raffle started on Monday 6th January and runs until Sunday 12th January 2025, with 100% of all the donations going directly to the society, to be used on restoring and maintaining locomotives nos. 40106, 40135 and D345.

The top prize is a PROCAST replica nameplate of former Class 40 Diesel No. 40020 FRANCONIA

Full details are available over on their website at CFPS Class 40 Replica Nameplate Raffle – The Class Forty Preservation Society

Over 200 class 40s were built between 1958 and 1962 and they were briefly the mainstay of top link express passenger services on the West Coast Main Line, before being demoted to secondary passenger and freight services before the last of the class was withdrawn in the mid to late 80s.

The Class Forty Preservation Society was set up to save some members of the class from going to the scrapyard and thankfully of the 8 class 40s that have survived the Society owns 3 of them, keeping alive the age of the ‘Whistlers’ which were prominent on the UK rail network from the late 1950s to the mid-1980s.