Flying Scotsman: the steaming celebrity comes to Shildon

Still, after all these years, it is a steaming celebrity.

First, perhaps, we should clear up the confusion that arises because there are two Flying Scotsmans (perhaps that should be Flying Scotsmen). The first was the “Special Scotch Express” which started in June 1862 running between London and Edinburgh. It was a premier service, first and second class only, taking ten-and-a-half hours (30 minutes stop at York for lunch), and by the 1890s had been nicknamed “the Flying Scotsman”, although it wasn’t until the early 1930s that the route became officially known by this name.

And then there was the engine called Flying Scotsman which is starring at Shildon over the next week.

It was designed by renowned engineer Sir Nigel Gresley and built in Doncaster in 1922. It wasn’t initially a great success, and immediately returned to the works with a fractured central piston – a major operation.

It re-emerged in December 1923, bearing the number 4472 and the name Flying Scotsman, but because it was out of service, its owner, the London North Eastern Railway (LNER), sent it to the British Empire Exhibition of 1924 at Wembley, which was to be a patriotic showcase of the most ingenious of British engineering and ideas.

Scotsman, in its eye-catching apple green livery, became the biggest star of the show. Seen by millions, it was heralded as a symbol of modernity in the brave new world emerging from the shadow of the First World War.

Like any successful celebrity, Flying Scotsman’s career and image had to be carefully managed by the PR-savvy LNER Advertising Department. Soon after the exhibition, the railway needed a little PR help: as the Great Depression bit, numbers travelling on the prestige route between the two great capital cities were dropping, and then, on May 26, 1926, striking miners derailed the Flying Scotsman at Cramlington – they had lifted the tracks to stop any trains running and the Scotsman, pulled by the Merry Hampton engine, toppled off the line.

Eight miners were sentenced to penal servitude for their part in the derailment, but none of the 281 passengers on board was injured.

To create positive headlines, on May 1, 1928, LNER launched its first non-stop train from London to Edinburgh. The 392 miles would take eight hours. A new eight-wheel tender would carry the nine tons of coal needed, and would have a small corridor through it so that a relief crew could squeeze to the cab so there could be a change without stopping. Water would be scooped up en route from the troughs installed between the tracks (see Memories from earlier this year about the trough at Wiske Moor, near Northallerton), and the inaugural train was hauled by the most famous engine of the era: Flying Scotsman.

So, yes, Flying Scotsman operated on the route of the Flying Scotsman – you can see where the confusion sets in.

On that inaugural day, Flying Scotsman arrived in Edinburgh 12 minutes early. Only later did it emerge that near Edinburgh, the tender was running red hot so Fireman Morris played a hose of water on it to cool it down.

The LNER publicity machine created an aura of glamour, speed and modernity around the “Flying Scotsman” brand that perfectly encapsulated the zeitgeist of the roaring Twenties and transformed the locomotive into a media darling – in 1929, it starred it in the first British talkie movie, which was called The Flying Scotsman.

In the 1930s, another emergency arose which only a celebrity could answer. The Germans’ diesel-powered Flying Hamburger was claiming to be the fastest scheduled train in the world, and so the Flying Scotsman was despatched from King’s Cross to Leeds to silence the boasts.

On November 30, 1934, the engine became the first steam loco in the world to be officially recorded doing 100mph. There are other claims to this record, principally City of Truro which was clocked by a journalist with a stopwatch doing 102.3mph on the Great Western Railway on May 9, 1904.

Despite the Scotsman’s triumph, its heyday was nearing its end. Streamlined engines, like Mallard, were faster and took over the running of the prestige routes. When the Second World War broke out, the steam star was transformed into a wartime workhorse. The loco’s previously iconic number 4472 became 103, and like the rest of the LNER fleet, it hauled heavier loads, was maintained less regularly, and was painted in Wartime Black to avoid being targeted by the enemy.

After the war came nationalisation. Flying Scotsman was repainted again, this time express passenger blue before going British Railways green, and it was renumbered once more, becoming 60103.

The two decades after the war were the golden age of trainspotting, but motorways and cars, diesel power and Deltics, Sir Richard Beeching and his axe all drove steampower into terminal decline.

In June 1958, the first diesel engine took charge of the famous Flying Scotsman route, and in June 1962, when the centenary of the route was celebrated, the most modern and powerful Deltic was put on show at King’s Cross and the Flying Scotsman engine was shunted into a out-of-sight siding to avoid sending an outdated message to the public.

It was no longer an aspirational symbol of the modern age, but a relic of a bygone era, and it faced the scrapyard along with many other steam locomotives once Dr Beeching unveiled his British Railways modernisation plan.

One witness to Flying Scotsman’s exile from the centenary celebrations was Alan Pegler, a British entrepreneur and railway preservationist. He had seen the engine in its apple green glory at the British Empire Exhibition, and now felt so sorry for it that he bought it for £3,000, and had it restored at Darlington’s North Road works and at Doncaster.

Renumbered 4472, by the late 1960s, it was the only steam engine left on British Rail and, like an Abba tribute band today, was already becoming a popular nostalgic symbol of a less complicated, more romantic past. In 1965, the children’s TV programme Blue Peter hailed Scotsman as the most famous engine in the world.

True to form, the locomotive legend ended the Swinging Sixties in style, setting off on a tumultuous three-year tour of the United States accompanied by a train including an English pub carriage, a Pipe Band Major, a Winston Churchill impersonator (a relative of the man himself), a bus and a group of tartan mini-skirted models.

Although Pegler and Scotsman’s American exploits brought international fame, the tour left Pegler bankrupt and the locomotive impounded on an army base. Thanks to British businessman Sir William McAlpine, Flying Scotsman returned to Britain via the Panama Canal and arrived to a hero’s welcome.

In the 1980s, the globe-trotting icon added yet another stamp to its passport with a bi-centennial tour of Australia, where it racked up yet more records. It smashed the world’s non-stop steam record, travelling a remarkable 442 miles in 1988. It then became the first locomotive to circumnavigate the globe when it returned from Australia to the UK via Cape Horn.

In 2004, Flying Scotsman hit the headlines again with yet another crisis over its ownership. A campaign spearheaded by National Railway Museum amassed the support of thousands and reached the purchase target of £2.2m, and in 2006, Flying Scotsman began another extensive, £2m, restoration.

That concluded in January this year, and it steamed in triumph, dressed in British Rail green and bearing the number 60103, from King’s Cross to York on February 6.

It is now a working museum exhibit, pulling steam tours and wowing visitors to York.

Flying Scotsman is still the world’s most famous locomotive, still a celebrity steamer with undiminished pulling power, as the week at Shildon will surely show – drawing the crowds to Locomotion just as it did to the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley when its star was born nearly 90 years ago.

BLOB Flying Scotsman and the Shildon Shed Bash is at the Locomotion museum, with other famous engines, from today until July 31, from 9.30am to 6pm. Admission is free, although there is a charge for steam rides.

For a From the Archive Flying Scotsman special, please see over; for The Northern Echo's coverage of Flying Scotsman's record-breaking heyday, please see the Page in History, and for other exciting things to do in Shildon today, please see further on the Memories supplement.

With thanks to Catherine Farrell of the National Railway Museum for help with this article.