Ashes to ashes on last journey of the Flying Scotsman’s saviour
Alan Pegler, the man who saved the locomotive, has last wish granted – to be put in the engine’s firebox
SHORTLY after 10.30am yesterday a prolonged and shrill whistle blasted from the Flying Scotsman as it powered through Lincolnshire, marking a poignant moment in railway history.
As the world famous steam locomotive climbed towards Stoke Bank, the ashes of Alan Pegler were placed on a shovel and lowered carefully into the searing glow of the engine’s firebox.
A second whistle invited the 478 passengers aboard this special London to York commemorative trip to toast with champagne the life of the eccentric and flamboyant businessman who saved the train from the scrap-heap.
Pegler’s ashes were committed to the fire on the very stretch of railtrack where the Scotsman entered the record books by breaking the 100mph speed barrier on November 30, 1934.
He had requested his ashes be placed in the firebox of the steam engine he called “old girl” before his death at the age of 91 on March 18, 2012.
In the cab was Penny Vaudoyer, his daughter. “Fulfilling his wishes has been tremendously important to me,” she told The Sunday Telegraph. “It’s been amazing because my father was somebody who dreamed of steam engines and was so passionate about their preservation. It’s been very emotional.”
Alan Francis Pegler was born into a family of manufacturers from Retford, Notts. During his childhood he played at being a porter at his local railway station at Barnby Moor, watching the trains on the Great Northern mainline.
He first saw the Flying Scotsman at the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley in 1924, when he was just four years old.
In 1946 he joined his family’s business, the Northern Rubber Company, after serving in the RAF. The Cambridge University graduate went on to join the British Railways’ Regional board in a part time and non-executive role. In January 1963, the Flying Scotsman retired from service and was destined for the scrap-heap. Pegler bought the Scotsman for £3,000 and restored the locomotive to its former glory and brokered deals with British Rail to allow it to venture out on the network.
He was regularly interviewed and photographed on the footplate promoting the engine that had done so much for the age of steam. He also took it on tours to America, Canada and Australia.
David Buck, chairman of the Steam Dreams Rail Company which organised yesterday’s trip, said: “I have been simply amazed by the sheer well of affection for Alan who is clearly the man the nation thinks of when talking about the Flying Scotsman and its post British Rail career.
“From top to bottom throughout the industry everybody has come together to make this possible and it has been a truly wonderful and emotional tribute to a great man.”
‘My father was somebody who dreamed of steam engines and was so passionate about their preservation’