MAKING THE NEWS
Fast forward a few weeks and we are on a family holiday in Brighton. One evening at the cinema, the newsreel plays and the narrative mentions Flying Scotsman leaving for the USA – but the footage included dad in the cab window at Twickenham, with me leaning out at the top of the steps holding onto to the handrail!!
Fast forward nearly 50 years to 2018 and I was fortunate enough to travel on the second day of that year’s Great Britain railtour, which began with Flying Scotsman hauling the train from Scarborough to York. Being there very early, I found the loco in the platform being prepared for its trip and so, with permission, I accessed the footplate to stand in exactly the same position as I did in 1969! MY father Ivor Laws began his railway career as a cleaner in the Southern Railway engine shed at Reading in 1936. With promotion through the grades, he became a driver and later transferred in that role to Ascot, a small depot of a dozen drivers, in 1960. Readers may know that rail vehicles for exhibition trains of the day were fitted out at either Fisherton Yard in Salisbury or Twickenham, with the latter location chosen to prepare some of the vehicles for Flying Scotsman’s tour of America in 1969. So it was for that reason the locomotive went to Twickenham to collect the coaches and convey them to Liverpool Docks on Monday, August 18, 1969. I recall travelling with dad to see Flying Scotsman at Twickenham that day, with him in uniform but not actually on duty. The loco and its train was in bay platform 1, and a press event was to include the train backing out into the headshunt siding and then pulling forward into platform 1 again. That move was still quite a while away, and dad got into conversation with the crew looking after No. 4472 in the meantime. “Wanna come off then?”, I eventually heard him ask, and their expressions changed from boredom to glee. After mentioning a few things to dad, and that their official relief crew were due in 90 minutes, they grabbed their gear and were gone. With dad operating the injector at intervals and placing some shovelfuls of coal into the firebox, he kept it simmering away until the relief crew arrived. Several photographers and reporters visited us, mainly asking questions about how a steam locomotive worked.