It was commissioned by the Gresley Society in memory of Sir Nigel Gresley, a locomotive designer who worked in offices at the station and whose designs included Mallard, which set the unbroken steam locomotive speed record in 1938. The statue was designed by Hazel Reeves and cast in bronze at the Whitechapel Bell Foundry. A decision taken by the Society to omit from the final sculpture a mallard duck that had been shown on the initial design led to controversy.