The Greendale Rocket

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The Greendale Rocket is a steam train driven by Ajay Bains. The train consists of 4-4-2 tank engine (2-6-4 in the Movie), which often pulls passenger carriages and sometimes a mail van for Pat.

Livery[]

The engine's body work is painted green with yellow stripes. It has green wheels and side rods, yellow and black buffer beams, a jet black smoke box and a brass funnel and steam dome. Its name is engraved onto a brass nameplate, which has been bolted onto its smokebox door. It also has another brass plate engraved with the letters G.R. on both sides of its coal bunker. The train's coaches have also been painted in the same colour scheme as the locomotive and also have the G.R. brass plates fixed to their sides. The mail van is painted red with the Royal Mail insignia painted on one side (in the movie it has the SDS logo in the back). It can be seen coupled at the back of the coaches.

Basis[]

The Greendale Rocket appears to be partially based on a LSWR 415 "Adams Radial Tank" Engine. However, the Greendale Rocket is shorter than its basis and lacks outside cylinders. The passenger coach and mail van appear to be freelanced.

Trivia[]

In the television series, the Greendale Rocket has only ever been known to pull one green passenger coach and a red mail van, but in the movie, we see that it is able to pull more than that.
The engine itself is over 100 years old, as revealed in Postman Pat and the Potluck Picnic.^[1]
The mail van's height is greater than it's length.
The engine's whistle sound is inconsistent; the whistle sound often changes in different episodes.
In real life, a locomotive would have a coupling on both front and back. But the Greendale Rocket only has one at the back.
In the Movie, the Greendale Rocket is portrayed with more driving wheels as a 2-6-4 with a sloping footplate.
For some reason, the couplings on the Rocket are not British.
Meera receives a toy version of the Greendale Rocket in the SDS intro.
A miniature model of the Greendale Rocket appeared on the garden railway layout at the Talyllyn Railway in 2022 during the Awdry Extravaganza 2 event, an event based around Wilbert Awdry, the author of The Railway Series.