1) worked the last steam-hauled LT passenger train in 1961, and survived in use until 1965; it is now preserved at the Buckinghamshire Railway Centre.

L44 was preserved by a 19 year old London Transport Mechanical Engineering Apprentice Jim Stringer,[3] who started the Met Tank Appeal Fund in 1962.

The original objective was to save the only remaining 0-6-2T 'F' Class locomotive numbered L52 in the London Transport fleet.

Stringer was helped by committee members of the London Railway Preservation Society, and a locomotive fitter named Gerald Fitzgerald.

[citation needed] The LRPS had storage for the locomotive at Bishops Stortford, and also at Luton where it was subsequently moved to, but the Quainton Railway Society offered a secure and permanent base for it at their newly established museum in Buckinghamshire.

During August 2008, it visited Barrow Hill, and it travelled to Llangollen in October 2008 to participate in their heritage events.

Several preservation bodies were involved in providing or restoring the rolling stock for the event[7] and the operation was given added impetus by the enthusiastic support of then London Mayor Boris Johnson[8] and his commissioner of Transport for London, Sir Peter Hendy CBE,[9] himself a Transport enthusiast.

[11] This event was billed as being probably the last time a heritage steam train would be seen in central London on the Underground due to the impending installation of a new signalling system on the network.