Fired up and back on track after 10 years
It might have spluttered a little, but the beloved old locomotive did not disappoint the thousands lining up to see its return after a lengthy restoration
AT FIRST, it could have been any station platform on a wet weekend morning. Waiting crowds impatiently tapping their feet. Apologies muttered over the Tannoy about “unexpected delays”.
The Flying Scotsman was due to leave Bury Bolton Street station at 9am yesterday for the first in a series of weekend test runs with passengers aboard, marking the end of a mammoth 10-year restoration. But the old warhorse was late for its grand departure. Even the greats are not immune to the curse of British railways.
Something to do with a faulty air brake pump and assisting locomotive, apparently. Not that any such technical details mattered when, approaching 10am, it finally thundered into view.
The Scotsman came wreathed in steam, whistles shrieking and its livery a sleek jet black against the grey Lancashire sky.
Coal smoke stung the eyes and clung to clothing as the crowd of several hundred that was clustered on the platform stood in awe at the 92-year-old engine nicknamed “Colossus”.
As yesterday’s stalled departure proved, the rebirth of the world’s first 100mph locomotive has not been a straightforward affair.
The £4.2million overhaul has been beset by delay and included reworking the old cast-iron cylinders and installing a new boiler, chassis, copper pipework, motion and bearings.
Finally, though, the Flying Scotsman is ready. Yesterday it bore the engine number 60103 – the last it ever wore during its remarkable career and the first it is carrying back on to the tracks.
Some of those riding on the train were lucky enough to have seen the Flying Scotsman in its pomp before it was decommissioned by British Rail in 1963 and sold into private hands.
Richard Foulser, a 65-year-old retired engineer from Hale, Greater Manchester, remembers seeing the locomotive at Crewe when he was a schoolboy train enthusiast. Yesterday he was there with his son Lee and fouryear-old grandson Charlie.
“It is an iconic engine,” he said. “I told an old friend I was taking a ride on the Scotsman today and he told me to make sure to bring my old trainspotter’s notebook.”
Richard Dunning, 66, was also on board with his three-year-old grandson Charlie. “Steam trains are noisy and dirty but are living, breathing things,” he said. “The steam and the noise and the smell is what it is all about.”
The test runs on the East Lancashire Railway come ahead of the first mainline journey later this month and a major national tour. Yesterday marked only the Scotsman’s first tentative miles but none the less several thousand people lined the route between Bury and Rawtenstall to watch it pass. It was far from the weather for it, but as steam billowed out of its chimney and fat raindrops fizzed off the engine one half-expected to see a pair of red bloomers to be waved by a spectator in the mould of Jenny Agutter in the film of
The Railway Children.
Speed restrictions on the line meant the train trundled past the birch forests and old mill chimneys of the Irwell valley at a steady 25mph but even that required half a ton of coal to be shovelled in. Could it still reach the record speeds it managed in 1934? “Certainly,” said engineer Simon Holroyd, who kept watch on the brass brake gauges and boiler pressure as it rattled on.
On board there were the die-hard train enthusiasts one would expect but equally the seats were filled with just as many young families. For ever since it was put on display at the British Empire Exhibition in 1924 as the pride of the London and North Eastern Railway fleet, the Flying Scotsman has always captured the public imagination.
Physiotherapist Katie Linas, her husband Stephen and children Daniel, four, and Imogen, seven, had paid £38 for a family ticket. “There is a romance to it and it takes you back to an age when we used to make stuff,” she said. “It is really important to have that connection to history.”
Bob Gwynne, assistant curator at the National Railway Museum in York, which bought the Flying Scotsman for the nation in 2004 and has spearheaded the restoration, puts it differently. “[The] Flying Scotsman is a memory machine,” he said.
For the many younger passengers, yesterday was nothing to do with nostalgia but simply experiencing the majesty of the Scotsman for the first time.
Jake Marsh, a 12-year-old from Worsley, Salford, arrived in a red T-shirt bearing the message, “Keep calm, I’m a train driver”. “To see it in real life is amazing,” he said.
After a journey that took an hour and a half, the Flying Scotsman trundled back into Bury station where several hundred more passengers waited to board. There is plenty of time to make up for, after all.