Nicknames for specific engines or types of engine

[hexagon789]

I thought it was because the front of one kind of resembled the the front view of a rats face with teeth? And because they "skuttled" about a bit?

Having checked my list of nicknames, I note it does say "mixed etymology". The scuttling reason is given, but the "common as rats" seems to be the more usual given derivation of the nickname as, they were, commonplace and on a variety of duties hence as "common as rats".

I'd argue both are valid, sometimes it's not easy to tell whether one particular version is any more correct that the other.

 

[Harpo]

Those pictures of the Toffee Apple are interesting. I presume D5500 at the NRM still has one of these?

Hope so! The only Toffee Apple that lost its original desk was D5518 which became 31101.

 

[D1511]

In our little trainspotting group in the West of Scotland in the early 1970s, we took to calling class 27s 'buckets' after hearing an older enthusiast using that nickname at the end of the platform at Glasgow Queen Street one evening. It was quite some considerable time later that I met him again on a Scottish Railfans Society coach trip and realised in conversation that he had been referring to the class 40 awaiting departure from platform 7 with an Aberdeen express. Unfortunately by that time, the name had stuck with us and we continued to refer to class 27s as 'buckets'.

Another SRS member.......hello!