The chuff of dreams ...after 50 years, steam is back!
TOOTING, whistling and steaming like a factory chimney, No 60163 Tornado powered out of Appleby station in Cumbria at 8.25am yesterday.
With its boiler bubbling, tender full to bursting and black and green livery gleaming in the morning sun, it was a majestic relic of the glorious Steam Age – pulling its eight passenger carriages as if they were made of balsa wood, travelling at speeds of up to 75mph and delighting everyone it passed.
The platform at Appleby was rammed full. Anoraked train enthusiasts were thrilled – brandishing cameras, smartphones and swollen hearts.
Hardly surprising, given that the last time a timetabled steam train huffed and puffed its way along the historic Settle to Carlisle line, Harold Wilson was Prime Minister, the Beatles had just released their album Revolver and the England football team was just coming down from World Cup triumph.
So how wonderful that for three magical days, this 164- tonne train will replace the usual diesel scheduled mainline service, chuffing for an hour and 48 minutes through the snowcapped Cumbrian hills, powering across the Ribblehead Viaduct and leaving a trail of joyous steam for the 70-mile journey across the Yorkshire Dales.
Everything has been a labour of love in the making of the replica Peppercorn A1 Pacific engine (based on a design by Arthur H Peppercorn, the last chief mechanical engineer of the London and North Eastern Railway).
It took a team of rail enthusiasts from the A1 Steam Locomotive Trust nearly 20 years and spiralling costs of nearly £3million to build the locomotive from scratch and get it moving under its own power by 2008.
Back in the day of films like Brief
Encounter and red- cheeked station-masters, the Peppercorn class A1 was the most reliable of the express passenger steam locos operated by British Railways.
But even that couldn’t save it – with diesel trains taking over, the 49th (and last model built) was scrapped in 1966. This week, however, thanks to the A1 Steam Team, this lovingly burnished replica Tornado was back with bells on – providing the first scheduled steam service in the UK in half a century to celebrate the reopening of the 141-year- old line, which had been partially closed following a landslide last February.
The weather held and the train was on time. In fact, the only problem was faced by those trying to secure a £17 return ticket because, naturally, both return journeys from Appleby to Skipton yesterday were sold out. Standing is not allowed. And according to Northern Rail, remaining services – it runs until tomorrow – are ‘all but sold out’. Passenger Graeme Bunker said: ‘It was like travelling in a time machine back to an era where people still needed to get from A to B on time but in a more relaxing way.’ Those without tickets happily shivered as they stood along the route, waving and cheering and recording everything on their phones for posterity as the Tornado thundered down the line and into a very special moment in British railway history.