On 21 October 2008, "Tornado" arrived at the National Railway Museum in York, and was first put on display in the Great Hall for a few days, where she was given pride of place on the NRM turntable for the annual railway industry dinner on 23 October 2008. "Tornado" then remained operationally based at the NRM behind the scenes, for final preparations and testing on the main line, reaching speeds of up to , before an expected main line debut in February 2009. The acceptance testing based at York would be conducted by EWS.