Centenary celebrations

This year, the most famous steam engine in the world – Flying Scotsman –is celebrating its centenary. After a successful restoration in 2016, the locomotive will be touring the country, pulling out of Temple Meads on 30 April before journeying down south. Here, Bristol-based filmmaker David Parker looks back at its fascinating history and looks forward to its now guaranteed future...

Can anything match the sight, the sound and the smell of a main line steam locomotive powering its way across the landscape? That’s the enticing prospect in store on the morning of Sunday 30 April when the world famous Flying Scotsman locomotive will be pulling out of Temple Meads station. You would have to pay a minimum of £185 to travel on it but you can watch it for free as it gathers steam and speeds through Bedminster and Parson Street stations, en route to Taunton and the South West. All part of its centenary celebrations.

No wonder it’s up there with Concorde and the SS Great Britain in the public imagination. Yet unlike those icons of British engineering, Flying Scotsman is, after 100 years and more than two and a half million miles on the clock, still working. It’s a phenomenal achievement, an incredible story of not just superb design and engineering skill but of passion, dogged determination, piles of money and huge doses of good luck.

Its story goes back to 1923, when the boom in rail travel after World

War One demanded bigger, faster and more powerful locomotives than Britain had ever seen. It was the railway engineer and designer, Nigel Gresley, who came up with a class of locomotives designed to do just that. They were known as A1 Pacifics and the one that was to become Flying Scotsman rolled out of the workshop in Doncaster in February 1923. Weighing in at 97 tons, it stunned the men who were going to drive and fire it. One of them called it a ‘colossal monster’. They had never seen anything so big, yet so beautiful and sleek in the apple green livery of the newly formed London and North Eastern Railway (LNER). It encapsulated perfectly the ‘modern’ in an age of modernism. It first came to the public’s attention in 1924 when it was seen by millions of visitors in the Palace of Engineering at the Wembley Empire Exhibition. In May 1928 it became a record holder, the first locomotive to travel between London and Edinburgh non-stop, a feat that made the front pages of the national newspapers. That was followed in 1929 by a starring role in its own feature film, alongside two big film stars of the day, Ray Milland and Pauline Johnson. Finally, on 30 November 1934 it achieved another huge record, becoming the first steam locomotive in the world to reach a speed of 100 miles-an-hour.

These well publicised firsts were to ensure that, in less than 10 years, Flying Scotsman became the world’s most famous steam locomotive. And that was only the beginning. A series of remarkable episodes after World War Two only served to enhance its reputation and image.

It all began in the autumn of 1962 when British Railways decided that Flying Scotsman would, like thousands of other steam locomotives, be sent to the scrap yard. There was a public outcry followed by a Flying Scotsman fairy story, the first of many that would keep it in the public eye. A knight in shining armour (and with lots of money) came to the rescue of this steaming damsel in profound distress. The knight in question was a seriously rich railway enthusiast, called Alan Pegler. He not only saved the locomotive by producing £3,000, to buy the Scotsman, he persuaded British Railways, much to the annoyance of those in the organisation trying to promote a ‘modern’ image of a diesel and electric future, to both overhaul it, and let him run it around the country. It lead to a five-year merry-go-round of steam travel. But it could not last. In 1968, when the last steam locomotives were consigned to the scrap heap, Pegler’s contract with British Railways was terminated, along with, they must have hoped, Flying Scotsman itself.

What followed was even more astonishing. With the backing of the Labour Government, Pegler took his beloved Scotsman to the USA. There he spent his fortune running it around the country on a series of tours, with him mostly in the cab getting his hands dirty, until he finally, inevitably, ran out of money. “He had no regrets”, his daughter Penny told me when I interviewed her for a film I made about the Scotsman’s restoration a few years ago. “Though it bankrupted him and he even had to work his passage back to Britain, he never regretted it, not for one minute.”

That could have been the end of Flying Scotsman. But it wasn’t. There seems to be no shortage of rich, steam enthusiasts who want to save old locomotives. The one who came to the rescue in 1973 was a self confessed steam obsessive, William McAlpine. The ‘steam-sexual’ as he referred to himself, dug deep into his very deep pockets and paid £25,000 to bring the stranded locomotive back to Britain. McAlpine kept it for 23 years, spending a small fortune to twice restore it and even taking it to Australia for the country’s bi-centenary in 1988. There it collected another world record, travelling 422 miles non-stop between Melbourne and Alice Springs.

None of this was cheap and in 1996, McAlpine, maybe looking back at Pegler’s experience, decided to cut his losses and sell the locomotive. In stepped another rich steam fan, Tony Marchington. He spent £1.5 million to secure the Scotsman’s future, then almost as much on its maintenance. Not surprisingly, it broke him financially. Another crisis ensued and in 2004 came a third rescue, the National Railway Museum (NRM) handing over £2.3 million to ‘save it for the nation’.

Increasing mechanical problems, more and more spending on patched up repairs and a blistering report on how the locomotive had been totally mismanaged by the NRM followed. Yet another crisis loomed. More money was raised and £4.5 million spent on a complete rebuild. In 2015, I filmed this major, year-long, restoration for a television programme I was making about its roller coaster history, a film that had almost as many ups and downs as the Scotsman itself.

Finally, in January 2016, after many set backs and bedevilled by problems, the restoration was completed and now, in its centenary year, with its future guaranteed, it will make a fleeting trip to Bristol. It would be nice to think that the visit will be, in part, a recognition of the role played by ordinary people in keeping ‘the most famous steam engine in the world’ alive. It would be nice to think that, but the need to earn its very expensive upkeep will be what will be uppermost in the minds of those organising this visit. Nevertheless, go and see it, after all you helped pay for it. n will leave Temple Meads Station en route to Taunton and the South West at around 8.45am on Sunday 30 April. Both Bedminster and Parson Street Stations will be good viewing points as well as other places near Long Ashton, Nailsea and Backwell and Yatton where it will stop to pick up passengers.

David Parker will be giving three illustrated talks about ‘Flying Scotsman and the Golden Age of Steam’ at Clifton Library, Princess Victoria Street, Clifton on Wednesday evenings at 7pm (Bar from 6.30) on 29 March, 5 April and 19 April. Tickets £5 from www.focal.com