- Class: GWR Saint
- Designer: George Jackson Churchward
- Wheels: 4-6-0
- Built: New Build
- Numbers Carried: 2999
- Withdrawn: 1963 (as 4942 Maindy Hall)
- Restoration Completed: 2019
- Arrived On Bluebell Railway: October 2025
- Current Status: Operational
- Left Bluebell: 1 October 2026
- Owned By: Great Western Society, Didcot
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No 2999 ‘Lady of Legend’ is a recreation of a Saint Class locomotive. The gap in the ‘line of succession’ created by the absence of a Saint in the Great Western Society’s collection (based at the Didcot Railway Centre) was identified early in the Society’s history and the Centre had long held an ambition to create a working Saint to help demonstrate the GWR story to its visitors. That ambition came to fruition in 2019 with the completion of a project, 45 years in the making, using parts from 4942 ‘Maindy Hall’ (one of the classes developed from the Saint design). No. 4942 had been purchased in the early 1970s with the specific purpose of recreating a Saint, by reversing the process the GWR had used in 1925 when the prototype Hall Class was produced by the conversion of ‘Saint Martin’, but early attempts floundered and the prospect of success remained a dream until 1995 when the project started in earnest.
The new locomotive has been numbered 2999, taking the next number in the sequence allocated to the Saints – the previous one, 2998 ‘Ernest Cunard’, having been outshopped in 1913! The winning entry in the competition to name the locomotive was ‘Lady of Legend’ as it evokes the GWR practice of naming early members of the class after mythological or historical ladies.
The locomotive is on loan to the Bluebell Railway courtesy of the Didcot Railway Centre.
