This came about after I watched Jim Clemens 'The Withered Arm' for the fourth time. The narrator (his son Michael) made the briefest of comments that the ACE loco in view was showing the number 6, the reporting number allocated to the 'down' ACE. His comment from earlier viewings did not register with me so armed with this new information, well new to me, I browsed my railway books that I have scoured many times before and there in the ACE photos was the number 6, which had also previously escaped me. On another photo I discovered the 'up' ACE used the reporting number 7.
Now, I knew about reporting numbers, (They were read by signallers in particular to identify a specific train service and route the train correctly, mostly used on busy or congested routes) but I had not considered their use on the ACE, which with its massive name board could not be easily mistaken.
The number for the model was printed on a sticky label using 'Arial Narrow' font size 8, a close approximation to the prototype.
