FLYING SCOTSMAN steamed into Shildon this week to celebrate its centenary over Christmas at the Locomotion. It is the most famous steam engine in the world. Here's its story...
February 1922
No 1472 was the third of Sir Nigel Gresley’s A1 class Pacific engines to be built at Doncaster for the Great Northern Railway. It cost £7,944, but was not an immediate success. It soon suffered a fractured central piston and so was returned to the works for a major repair.
January 1, 1923
All the small railway companies were amalgamated to create four big ones. No 1472 was now owned by the London North-Eastern Railway and was given a new number: 4472. It was also painted in the new company’s eye-catching apple green livery, but it did not have a name.
February 24, 1923
Back from repairs, No 4472 went into service on the East Coast Main Line – it has been celebrating its 100th anniversary this year.
December 1923
No 4472 was chosen to represent the railway at the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley. The exhibition was a patriotic showcase of British engineering ingenuity.
LNER wanted to promote its London to Edinburgh express service, leaving the English capital at 10am. This Special Scotch Express service had begun in 1862 and since the 1890s had been nicknamed “the flying Scotsman” no matter what engine pulled it. No 4472 was renamed Flying Scotsman in honour, said the LNER PR department, of “the most famous train in the world”.
The engine, with its dynamic new name, became the star of the exhibition. In its new colours, it represented everything that was good about depressed Britain: it was powerful, modern and fast, and very quickly it became famous.
May 1, 1928
New innovations allowed LNER launched its first non-stop train from London to Edinburgh: 392 miles in eight hours.
Firstly, a new tender had been designed to carry the nine tons of coal needed for the journey, so now there was no need to stop at York to re-coal.
Crucially, this tender had a small corridor through it so that a relief crew could squeeze into the cab and takeover the controls of the loco without stopping.
And water troughs were installed between the tracks so that the driver could scoop up water without stopping (there was one at Wiske Moor, near Northallerton).
These innovations allowed engines and humans to reach Edinburgh without stopping.
Flying Scotsman – the most famous engine of the day – hauled the first non-stop train and arrived in Edinburgh 12 minutes early.
READ NEXT: 25 DEAD IN GREAT DARLINGTON RAILWAY DISASTER
1929
One of the first British talkie movies was called The Flying Scotsman and it starred the Flying Scotsman. The plot’s a bit thin, but the stunts included an actress walking in high heels along the outside of the speeding train. LNER’s PR department had turned the Scotsman into a movie star; it was the zeitgeist of the roaring Twenties.
November 30, 1934
The Germans were claiming that the Fliegender Hamburger – or Flying Hamburger – had become the fastest scheduled train in the world, as it dashed from Berlin to Hamburg. So the LNER wheeled out the world’s most famous engine and set it off on the run to Edinburgh where it became the first in the world to be officially recorded doing 100mph. That taught the diesel-powered Flying Hamburger a lesson! It also showed British railway bosses the potential of steam and they shelved plans to convert to diesel.
Second World War
By now, Scotsman was old technology. It was renumbered 103, painted black and turned into a wartime workhouse.
January 1, 1948
Scotsman emerged from the war rebuilt as a Class A3 Pacific – among its many modifications was a higher pressure boiler. The railways were nationalised, and the engine was renumbered as 60103. It was repainted in British Railways’ passenger blue for a couple of years in the early 1950s but then given a British Railways green coat, which was a bit darker than LNER’s original apple-green.
1959
The changing quality of British coal meant the smoke was no longer leaving Scotsman’s chimney with a great oomph. Instead, it was lying long along the top of the engine, obscuring the view of the driver in the cab, so a German device called a “witte” was fitted to its front to deflect the smoke upwards. This distinctive device was nicknamed “elephant’s ears” and can still be seen on the Scotsman.
January 14, 1963
Steam was dying, to be replaced by diesel, and Flying Scotsman was due to be scrapped. However, this most famous of engines ran its last BR service amid a blaze of publicity during which it was revealed it had been for £3,000 by rail enthusiast Alan Pegler. Having saved it from the scrapyard, Pegler had it restored at Darlington’s North Road works. When the engine starred in a works open day in April 1965, he told The Northern Echo: "At present there may be some feeling that we're spotlighting something out of date, but we will one day get to an era when this is recognised as historically valuable. Then its worth will be fully realised." He then put Scotsman to work, pulling the first steam nostalgia trains.
1969
Pegler sent Scotsman on a three year tour of the United States. It wowed the American audience, but left Pegler bankrupt and it became stranded in the US.
1973
Sir William McAlpine, the train-loving British businessman, paid off Scotsman’s debts and brought it home to Britain for restoraton.
1988
Flying Scotsman was now like a globe-trotting tribute band playing a lament for the lost days of steam. In Australia, it set the world’s non-stop steam record, of 442 miles, and then on its journey back to Britain it became the first locomotive to circumnavigate the globe.
2004
With its ownership again in crisis, a campaign spearheaded by the National Railway Museum raised £2.2m to buy the Scotsman.
February 6, 2016
After a £2m refit lasting nearly a decade, Flying Scotsman was back on track, dressed in British Rail green and bearing the number 60103. It had become a working museum exhibit, pulling steam tours as the oldest working mainline loco in Britain, and wowing visitors to the NRM in York and, in 2018, to Shildon.
2023
As eager as LNER in the 1920s to milk publicity from its most famous loco, NRM has had Scotsman on a centenary tour this year, although, in truth, there isn’t very much original still surviving from 1923.
But it is still the Flying Scotsman, and on its 100th birthday, it grabbed headlines once again at King’s Cross station where it stood beside the latest in mainline technology: an Azuma made by Hitachi at Aycliffe.
In a lovely video made on the platform beside the two engines, which can be watched on the NRM’s website (railwaymuseum.org.uk), senior curator Anthony Coulls says: “Flying Scotsman is more than the most famous steam locomotive in the world. It is the absolute flagbearer for industrial transport and engineering heritage. Whether you are an engineer or a schoolchild meeting it for the very first time, this thing is magic and it appeals to all ages on so many different levels.”
Scotsman is ending its centenary celebrations at the Locomotion museum in Shildon, where it is on display from today until January 7, with people able to clamber into its cab and see inside its firebox. Entrance the museum is free although tickets need to be booked via locomotion.org.uk
READ MORE: A LOST JOURNEY ALONG SOME OF THE WORLD'S GREATEST RAILWAY VIADUCTS
READ NEXT: DICING WITH DEATH ON THE LINE FROM DARLINGTON TO BARNARD CASTLE
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here