Flying once more

After undergoing the mechanical equivalent of a heart transplant, the locomotive that was saved for the nation with the help of Yorkshire Post readers, is almost ready for the next stage of its amazing journey. They’re working on a timetable which, in late summer, should see it return to the East Coast main line – the route synonymous with Flying Scotsman, and the Edinburgh-London express that once again carries the same name.

Together they became an indivisible power in railway culture after the engine emerged from Doncaster works in February 1922, at a cost of £7,944. It was the creation of a vicar’s son and brilliant engineer, later to become Sir Nigel Gresley, and since then has achieved a value beyond price.

In 2004, after a fund-raising campaign, it was bought for £2.2m by the National Railway Museum, in York, and two years later required an overhaul that was to prove anything but routine.

It’s taken five years, involved an internal rebuild, and a bill for £1.5m. The project has created controversy – nothing new in the long, turbulent career of Flying Scotsman. Some enthusiasts and specialist publications have argued that the work could have been done faster and cheaper in Germany. Instead, the NRM entrusted No.4472 to a firm of railway engineers in Bury, Lancashire, who have kept faith, as far as possible, with Gresley’s original drawings and components.

Helen Ashby, Head of Knowledge and Collections at the museum, said: “We’ve taken a lot of flak from some quarters because we didn’t go to Germany. Had we done so, Flying Scotsman would have been virtually redesigned mechanically. We were determined, for example, to retain its copper fire-box instead of using steel – more expensive, yes, but true to the original. As a national museum, we also felt we had an obligation to support British skills. Overall, we’ve achieved the best possible restoration, and raised most of the money to undertake it.”

Ashby’s colleague, Bob Gwynne, associate curator at the NRM, didn’t have room to mention the latest drama in a new booklet about the Flying Scotsman –a potted history of both train and locomotive. There was already more than enough to fill 56 pages with stirring deeds and marvellous anecdotes. He likens the engine’s life and times to that of a Hollywood screen legend whose charisma endures through different eras.

And Gwynne adds: “It’s been equally fortunate in having a machine’s equivalent of a succession of great agents.”

He has a terrific story to tell. The London and North Eastern Railway made Flying Scotsman an iconic symbol of thrilling, sophisticated rail travel. By the late 1920s, it was already featuring in Hornby train sets, and its fame grew when it became the first loco in the UK to reach 100mph. As driver William Sparshatt told bystanders at King’s Cross: “If we hit anything today, we’ll hit it hard.”

In the 1950s, its star waned as British Railways focused on modernisation, and diesel and electric trains. In an almost reluctant acknowledgement of the steam era, BR proposed preserving a few historic examples. Flying Scotsman was not on the list.

It was saved by a new owner, a former dive-bomber pilot-turned-swashbuckling industrialist, called Alan Pegler. His enthusiasm for steam led to his sacking from the British Railways Board by Dr Beeching, chief moderniser of the rail network, but Pegler and his engine had powerful allies in government.

In 1969, Flying Scotsman and a nine-coach train criss-crossed the United States, and diverted into Canada, promoting British trade. It was fired at by IRA sympathisers near New York, but from Texas to Toronto and San Francisco, thousands turned out to greet Doncaster’s hero.

The venture cost Pegler his personal fortune, and while he was in Britain filing for bankruptcy, his locomotive went to a US army base for safekeeping. It was four years before it came back, its reputation enhanced by all the adventures. Under its own steam it travelled from the dockside at Liverpool, to Derby for repairs, attracting tens of thousands en-route.

Then came Australia in 1988 for the country’s bicentennial celebrations. During that trip, Flying Scotsman performed in the Outback and established a non-stop record for steam of 422 miles, before heading home via Cape Horn.

Such is its enduring appeal, the National Railway Museum is awash with merchandise celebrating its return there. No other locomotive in the world can put its name to products as diverse as treacle toffee and clotted-cream fudge, thimbles, shortbread, T-shirts, mugs, wallets, washbags, hip flasks, train sets, and jigsaws.

As Gwynne’s booklet makes clear, the story of the train called the Flying Scotsman – first run as the Special Scotch Express in June 1862 – has been no less dramatic, or evocative of an idealised golden age of rail travel.

In the early days, the journey from London to Edinburgh took ten-and-a-half-hours, including a half-hour stop at York for lunch. Cynics claimed that the soup was served scalding hot to prevent passengers finishing their meal, and enabling food to be resold.

During the 1926 General Strike, Flying Scotsman was derailed by Northumberland miners who’d intended to halt a coal train.

In calmer times, it competed in the Railway Races involving the East and West Coast lines, raced an airliner between London and Scotland, and, in 1929, starred in a film which included a soundtrack. It was the first British “talkie”.

The train also introduced many innovations on its non-stop runs. It had an “all-electric” restaurant car, a hairdressing salon, served cocktails, and installed experimental radio equipment enabling passengers to hear commentary on the Epsom Derby.

Near Berwick-upon-Tweed, in 1941, it was shot at by German fighters, but gained its revenge the following year when the LNER paid for a Spitfire which was named Flying Scotsman.

Bob Gwynne says the train reflected a time when fiercely competing railway companies were rising to technical challenges and pushing boundaries. “It was often seat-of-the-pants stuff. It’s often forgotten that at 126mph, Mallard broke the world speed record for a steam engine nearly 30 years before Britain’s first official high-speed stretch of line – and that with a limit of 100mph.

“Mallard is a great locomotive, but surpassed in my opinion by Flying Scotsman. It’s always been a challenge to its various owners, but its fame and what it represents transcend mere nuts and bolts. It first ran nearly 90 years ago and is still working.

“As as has been said, steam helps to make people affectionate towards trains in general, and Flying Scotsman plays a major part in that process. Long may it do so.”

No disrespect to the electric locomotive hauling the Flying Scotsman service revived recently by East Coast Trains, but even in its smart purple livery, star quality is lacking.

Public reaction said as much. As the train cruised through York on its first four-hour, 394-mile journey between two capitals, just three enthusiasts with cameras were at the end of the platform to capture the moment.

Now if the other Flying Scotsman, the famous apple-green version, had been pulling its namesake…

The Flying Scotsman: The Train, the Locomotive, the Legend, by Bob Gwynne, £5.99, Shire Library in association with the National Railway Museum. Events are being held to mark Flying Scotsman’s return to the museum. Details www.flyingscotsman. org.uk