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48773 was built by the North British Locomotive Co. in Glasgow as Works No 24607 of 1940. The locomotive was part of a War Department order for use in France, for which it was numbered WD 307. France fell to Germany before the locomotive could be exported, so it was loaned back to the LMS and numbered 8233.
Following the Soviet Union’s entry into the War, the locomotive was requisitioned and sent to Iran as Iranian State Railways No 41.109. There it worked on the Trans-Iranian Railway, hauling double-headed 700 ton trains of supplies intended for the Soviet Union up steep gradients in the searing desert heat. On 19th 19 August 1942, the locomotive was famously derailed after colliding with a camel, and later in 1944 was converted to oil-burning.
In 1946 the locomotive was sent to the British Army's Middle East Forces (MEF) in Egypt where, numbered WD 70307, it worked in the Suez Canal zone. For a while the locomotive was loaned to Egyptian State Railways, but by 1948 was in need of a new firebox and scheduled to be scrapped.
