TRAIN RUMBLES
It's one of Britain's most celebrated marvels of engineering,
a machine that stirs passion in legions of steam fans
all over the world.
Even for people who don't know much about railways,
if you mention Flying Scotsman,
everybody will know what you're talking about.
She's the most famous and enduring locomotive on the planet.
This is a machine that's almost 100 years old,
and she's still bolting along the Main Line at 75mph.
WHISTLE BLASTS
Her story's remarkable one,
taking us on a journey through Britain, the United States,
and Australia.
In an action-packed life, Flying Scotsman has played her part
in the Second World War, defied attempts to scrap her,
and even bankrupted some of her owners.
Today, after an epic multi-million-pound restoration,
she's fully restored to her former glory...
WHISTLE BLASTS
..and now I'm getting a once in a lifetime opportunity to ride
on the footplate of the most famous steam locomotive in the world.
This is a little boy's dream come true right here, right now.
Oh, wow!
This is the story of Flying Scotsman.
She is without doubt one of the most beautiful and powerful
steam locomotives ever built, and incredibly,
she she's now closing in on her 100th birthday.
Built shortly after the First World War,
she's clocked up millions of miles.
That's meant the battle to keep her in prime condition has been endless,
and, at times, apparently hopeless.
When she was acquired by the National Railway Museum in 2004,
it was discovered that Flying Scotsman would need
her most extensive overhaul yet.
And after a decade of hard work from a dedicated team of engineers,
she finally returned to the rails in 2016.
And what a welcome she received.
Thousands and thousands and thousands of people
watched it go by.
It showed that love affair with Flying Scotsman,
and with steam, still goes on.
But how did that public love affair start,
and why is the passion for this engine
stronger than for any other?
The incredible story of the world's most famous locomotive
begins way back in the middle of the 19th century.
In 1862, a daily rail service was introduced,
linking London and Edinburgh for the first time.
Although initially known as the Special Scotch Express,
this journey soon acquired a popular nickname, The Flying Scotsman.
To understand the story of Flying Scotsman,
it's important to distinguish between a locomotive and a train.
Now, this is a locomotive, or an engine.
Only when it's attached to carriages or rolling stock
is the whole thing called a train.
So a train refers to any locomotive or engine
pulling carriages or freight.
The Flying Scotsman passenger service between London and Edinburgh
would set off at 10.00am every weekday.
Its carriages could be hauled by any locomotive
as long as it was powerful enough,
and there were plenty to choose from.
In the mid-19th century, the route from London to Edinburgh
was controlled by three separate companies.
You had the Great Northern Railway
for everything from London up to York.
Then there was the North Eastern Railway
from York up to the Scottish Borders.
And finally, it was North British for everything north of the border
all the way through to Edinburgh.
In fact, in Britain at that time, there were more than 120
separate organisations in charge of the railways.
The Edwardian railway in Britain was an absolute delight.
There were all sorts of colours all over the country,
all this myriad of companies that ran them,
and it looked like a gigantic great toy train set.
The reality was, though, that many of these railways
were too small, they were too competitive with each other,
so that by the beginning of the 20th century, this beautiful,
attractive-looking system was starting to crack.
By 1914, the cracks had widened,
and as war brought even further pressure on the rail system,
the Government took control.
If you think about it, they needed to transport materials, weapons,
coal, fuel, oil, troops, people, passengers, nurses,
up and down the country.
But the railways performed a heroic role,
and I think what's so important to remember - what else was there?
After the First World War, rail traffic increased enormously.
Carriages and freight became bigger and heavier,
and the railway companies soon realised they'd need locos
that were faster and more powerful.
For the Great Northern Railway, the man tasked with designing
bigger, better, more powerful engines was their new
chief mechanical engineer, Nigel Gresley.
Nigel Gresley took over the top job of the Great Northern Railway
aged just 35.
Now, this was a phenomenally young age to take on this job,
but ultimately, Gresley was to prove
one of the finest locomotive engineers of all time.
Nigel Gresley was faced with the challenge of designing
a new generation of locomotives
to haul the fastest passenger trains,
and he knew he had to come up with something special,
something revolutionary.
In April 1922, having spent years experimenting with several
different designs, Gresley was ready to test his prototype.
At the company's Doncaster works,
he created a beast of a steam engine.
Previously known as Locomotive number 1470,
she was named after the company, Great Northern.
She was bigger than any engine anyone had seen before.
But Gresley's Pacific locomotive wasn't just an engineering marvel,
it was also beautiful and elegant.
No-one, apart from the engineers who built it,
had seen an express passenger locomotive that was so long, so big,
so lithe, so impressive.
But, in fact, they'd seen nothing yet.
Just a year later, another of Gresley's Pacific locomotives
would roll off the production line, and it would change everything.
It would go on to set world records,
and ultimately become the most famous steam locomotive of all time.
Flying Scotsman.
More than any other engine, she typifies the golden
and romantic age of steam.
Once, all trains were powered this way,
but exactly how does a steam engine work?
Down in deepest rural Kent, I'm about to find out.
Righty-ho, Rob, let's see if we can get her out of the shed.
Once she's rolling, she rolls rather nicely.
Look at that! And she's gleaming out here.
One small engine for us.
Chris Vine is an engineer and author.
He's spent eight years lovingly creating this miniature loco.
This is a beauty.
So this is Bongo? Yes.
Though we need to get her fired up, because she's cold at the moment.
Yes, absolutely cold.
We'll light the fire. We need some charcoal.
Yes. Which we have here. And we've got to put some of that in the fire.
It's charcoal soaked in paraffin, so it lights really easily.
OK. Lovely.
So all this is going into the fire box? Into the fire box, yes.
So that's going to make all the heat to make the steam.
So, better light the fire, Rob.
A little bit of charcoal soaked in paraffin,
a cigarette lighter... Just to get her started.
..just to get that going.
That's burning. Lovely.
Oh, that's looking a toasty little fire in there. Is it warming up now?
That looks lovely.
Within a few minutes, the heat intensifies,
and then something magical happens.
Just started making steam now.
And I can turn that little valve there,
and you can hear now there's a little steam jet.
That's now it running. We're now in steam, we're on the up.
WHISTLE BLASTS
Off we go.
Woohoo, yay! See you later.
Oh, yeah!
This is an incredibly smooth ride, Chris.
It's good, isn't it? Oh, it's lovely.
ROB GIGGLES
This is brilliant!
Feels like we're zipping along.
In some ways, this is much better than riding a conventional
huge steam train, because here...
..you can feel all the steam, you can smell the steam,
you really feel like you're part of it.
This is fantastic!
This journey only came about thanks to us lighting the fuel
inside the engine, which heated up tubes of water,
which then created steam as they boiled.
But that was only phase one of getting the locomotive to move.
Phase two. Phase two - how to use the steam to drive the pistons,
to drive the engine.
And in the dome, which you can see in the middle of the boiler,
in the dome, there's a thing called the regulator valve.
OK. It's a tap.
And when you open it, when you turn it on,
it lets steam go down that pipe to the cylinders.
And the regulator valve is operated by a regulator handle
or lever in the cab. Yep.
And the driver's in control of how much steam is used
to drive the engine. So the lever is here.
Great. If I open it...
So now you're opening that lever, which is opening a valve here,
letting steam into our system, and... Hey!
If the driver wants more power, open the regulator a bit more,
you've got more power.
SMALL TRAIN PURRS
There's plenty of power. That's satisfying. Yes.
SMALL TRAIN GROWLS
And if we come here now,
you can't see the piston because it's inside the cylinder,
out of sight.
Yep. But you can see its piston rod.
And that's... So the piston is pushing and pulling,
and it's pushing and pulling on the piston rod.
So that's the piston rod right in there.
This part here, that's the connecting rod.
With the crank and the connecting rod,
you're converting push-pull motion from the piston
to rotary motion on the wheels to drive the engine.
What I love about this, Chris, I mean, this is your simple engine,
but it's so clear to see here when it's out in the open,
you can see this is how engines work.
This is how pretty much any engine.
It's one of the attractions of a steam engine.
Woohoo!
It's exactly this same steam technology that engineer
Nigel Gresley used when designing a fleet of full-scale engines
for the Great Northern Railway.
They began rolling off the production line in the early 1920s.
This was the first of a whole new generation of steam engines,
and they were called Pacifics.
The term Pacific refers to the number and configuration
of wheels that the engine has.
And Pacifics have what's known as a four-six-two configuration,
so four wheels at the front here, two on each side,
six of these huge big driving wheels in the middle,
and then at the back here, two smaller wheels supporting the cab.
As work began on building them,
a major change was taking place in the railway industry.
The huge number of companies that ran the railways were merging,
and fast.
Soon, there'd be only four,
with the one running the East Coast Main Line now known as the LNER,
or London and North Eastern Railway.
It came into being on January 1st, 1923.
Just six weeks later,
the first of a new batch of Pacific locomotives emerged
from the company's Doncaster engineering works.
Little did anyone know at the time she'd go on to become a legend.
She'd cost almost £8,000 to build.
That's around a third of a million at today's prices.
Known simply as Locomotive 1472 at this point,
she would go on to become the most famous steam engine of all time.
Heading up LNER's new fleet,
the company now needed to promote her to the world,
and the perfect opportunity was about to present itself.
The British Government had been planning to stage
an impressive exhibition for some time during the early 1900s,
but it took until 1924 to finally get the idea off the ground,
and it would be known as the British Empire Exhibition.
Among the companies exhibiting there was the mighty LNER.
It was keen to promote its flagship service,
the 10.00 am express between Edinburgh and London.
With Wembley, the LNER wanted to give number 1472 a name,
and someone in the marketing department hit on a brilliant idea.
The Flying Scotsman train was very much the flagship of the railway.
So what if you name the locomotive after the train?
And at that point, this otherwise unassuming locomotive
stopped being a normal fleet locomotive in the public's eye,
and became something of a locomotive legend.
The British Empire Exhibition at Wembley ran over two years,
and in that time, 27 million people passed through the gates
and the exhibition halls.
But in there, they saw Flying Scotsman,
this magnificent locomotive.
It was a pride of British engineering,
and it's what people love to see,
and Flying Scotsman was utterly magnificent-looking.
The LNER very soon had an idea to build up the image
of this product so that people associate it with speed,
for example, or with, you know, with comfort or with quality.
And it gave you that impression that here was a modern go-ahead
forward-thinking company, and that included advertising,
it included a celebrity endorsement,
all the kind of things which we recognise now,
they were doing then.
The Flying Scotsman, the locomotive,
actually becomes a sort of personality
that the company can sell.
It can show off Flying Scotsman as its sort of prestige locomotive,
and if you look at a lot of the publicity materials
for the train The Flying Scotsman,
it's pulled by Flying Scotsman the locomotive.
They were at the front of the marketing exercise to get people
to come and travel on a train, to go on your holiday, to go to Scotland,
be part of the fun and excitement of modern day railways of the time.
But Flying Scotsman was destined to make the company synonymous
with something else - speed.
One of the things that the London North Eastern Railway
did particularly well was marketing,
and in 1928, its marketing team came up with an absolute wizard idea
of running a train nonstop from London to Edinburgh.
On May 1st, 1928, Flying Scotsman was prepared for a historic run
up the East Coast Main Line.
King's Cross was packed.
Flying Scotsman was hooked up to the train,
and at 11.00 am prompt, she left the station
on what would then be the longest nonstop journey ever attempted
by a steam engine.
WHISTLE BLASTS
But one crucial issue still had to be resolved
if this historic trip was to work.
The problem was with the crew.
Even back then, with early 20th century health and safety standards
and allowable working conditions,
the LNER couldn't ask the crew to work full-on
in those trying conditions for the whole journey without a break.
Trains would normally stop and they'd be able to swap crews
en route, somewhere such as Grantham or York or Newcastle.
That wasn't going to be possible,
so how were you going to be able to handle this?
Gresley came up with an ingenious solution.
He figured that, as passengers moved from coach to coach
through corridors linking them,
then surely he could do the same with his crews.
He reasoned that he could possibly put a corridor down the side
of the tender, connect it to the front coach,
and the driver and fireman could go along the corridor,
they could relieve the crew,
the crew they replace could walk back into the coach.
And he tested this in his dining room.
He'd got his dining chairs arranged in a little alley,
the sort of size that he had in mind,
and he started crawling through this.
And what he came up with was this - the corridor tender.
This tiny passageway snakes its way through the tender,
which is carrying tonnes of coal and thousands of gallons of water,
and this allows for a driver and a fireman to make their way from
the service carriage behind through into the cab of the locomotive
to relieve the crew who were already working up there.
Now, crucially, because of this, all of that can be done
without the train having to come to a stop.
So let's go and have a look.
Oh, yeah, look at this!
I'm here, I'm on the footplate, Flying Scotsman...
..the world's most famous steam locomotive.
This is a little boy's dream come true right here, right now.
Oh, wow!
This is amazing.
I need to stay out of the way here, because, as you'll see,
there is a lot of activity going on in the cab all the time.
It's just brilliant to be part of it.
WHISTLE SQUEAKS
Gresley's clever corridor tender
had solved the problem of switching crews on The Flying Scotsman
as it pulled the first nonstop train between London and Edinburgh.
Now the time between the two capitals was about to be slashed.
Normally 8 hours and 15 minutes,
Scotsman arrived in Edinburgh a full 12 minutes ahead of schedule.
At 6.15 pm on May 1st 1928,
Flying Scotsman rolled into Edinburgh Waverley Station,
and into the record books.
She'd covered the 392 miles without having to stop even once.
The nonstop run proved hugely successful.
It generated a lot of publicity both for the LNER
and its flagship locomotive,
but it also exerted a powerful effect on the railway,
because it showed that journey times could start to come down.
It was the first element of chipping away at this
and starting to really speed things up for passengers.
It was a move that assured Flying Scotsman's national fame.
She was now becoming the must-see steam locomotive of the age.
But even at the height of her fame, Flying Scotsman's dominance
on the rails would soon be under threat from a new rival.
On the 30th of November 1934,
Flying Scotsman steamed out of King's Cross, heading north.
The driver chosen for this important test was William Sparshatt,
a legendary LNER employee known for his love of speed.
It climbed the great hill between Peterborough and Grantham,
called Stoke Bank, at over 80mph.
It might not sound so fast today in the age of high speed trains,
but I tell you, that was really fast in 1934.
Although she was reaching high speeds,
her driver believed she could go faster.
On her return journey to London, the crew gave it everything they had.
And after she leaves Grantham,
Sparshatt lifts his arm up and opens the regulator.
Fireman shovels furiously, trying to build up the fire.
They climb Stoke Bank and then, at the summit,
Flying Scotsman got her nose down, and started really, really charging.
The speed went up - 75, 80, 90, 95.
And it peaked - just for a fraction of a second -
it peaked at 100mph.
The first time this had been verifiably recorded by steam
anywhere in the world.
Flying Scotsman was yet again in the record books.
We are obsessed by the magic tonne,
and for a railway locomotive to do it,
everybody wanted to do it.
Scotsman is the first engine to reach 100 authenticated,
and that's something that's really important for the PR machine.
It's all about the headlines in The Times the following day.
Now one of the fastest machines on Earth,
Flying Scotsman rightly became the undisputed queen of the rails.
During the 1920s and '30s, she was pulling some of
the most luxurious express services in the country.
The height of the golden age of steam expresses
is really the inter-war period, and there were competing for businessmen
and they're also competing to be seen to be modern.
You had a restaurant car, at-seat dining on The Flying Scotsman.
You had cocktail bars. You had a cinema on the train,
so you could sit down and watch the latest movies rattling along.
Passengers could rent headphones, to listen to the wireless.
There was a hairdressing saloon on it.
Gentlemen could have a shave on board. It's a cut throat razor.
Having a shave with a cut throat razor on the train to this day
would sound crazy, but at that point, of course,
it's basically saying, "Look, we're able to do all of these things
"and our services are luxurious,
"and our train interiors are marvellous."
Flying Scotsman was now at the height of her fame,
but she'd soon have a rival.
Her own engineer, Nigel Gresley,
was developing a new and revolutionary locomotive.
He knew he had the basis of a truly astonishing design,
and so he developed it further.
He put an even higher pressure boiler on,
he tweaked the valve arrangements further,
and then he put a streamlined casing on the top
to minimise air resistance.
The result was one of the most beautiful types of locomotive
ever built.
What Gresley came up with was this,
the beautifully streamlined Class A4 Pacific.
It was a bit like science fiction at the time.
No-one had seen anything like it on Britain's railways before.
The A4s were a natural evolution from the earlier Pacifics
like Flying Scotsman.
But one in particular would stand out.
This is Mallard, a younger sister, of Flying Scotsman,
and like her older sibling, a steam loco world record holder.
On July 3rd 1938, a special trial for the A4s was arranged.
Engine number 4468, Mallard, was selected to run the test
between Grantham and Peterborough.
Tearing down the East Coast Main Line,
Mallard hit an incredible 126mph.
It's a record that has never been beaten.
And while Mallard might have looked very different from Flying Scotsman,
under the skin, she was very, very similar indeed.
She was a Flying Scotsman GTI, if you like.
But with the arrival of the new streamlined A4s,
Flying Scotsman was no longer the front line express locomotive
of the LNER.
She'd been replaced by these more powerful engines,
and now Flying Scotsman's duties were somewhat reduced,
it was a sign that this very special era in the history
of the steam train was coming to an end.
WHISTLE BLASTS
In the 1930s, the arrival of the new streamlined locomotives
wasn't the only change for Flying Scotsman.
NEWSREEL: The fateful hour of 11 has struck,
and Britain's final warning to Hitler having been ignored,
a state of war once more exists between Great Britain and Germany.
The golden age of steam suddenly came crashing to an end.
And, for the famed locomotive,
the future was set to become very different.
Instead of pulling luxury Pullman coaches on prestigious
express routes, Flying Scotsman found herself hauling
heavy troop trains and coal wagons.
Even Scotsman's livery had to change,
With her standard green paintwork too visible from the air,
she was painted black.
Now very much a workhorse, her golden era was well and truly over.
And during the war years, the company that owned Scotsman,
the London North Eastern Railway, suffered its own devastating loss.
In 1941, the acclaimed chief mechanical engineer and designer
of Flying Scotsman, Sir Nigel Gresley, passed away.
His death marks the end of an era for the steam locomotive business.
And, although his engines would still be seen plying their trade
on the tracks, the country had lost one of its giants of engineering.
Just a few years after Gresley's death, the war was over.
The task of rebuilding and modernising Britain's rail industry
began, and that would involve some dramatic changes.
In January 1948, the railways were nationalised.
The industry passed into Government ownership,
and British Railways was born.
The country's trying to recover, and you see the nationalisation
of the coal industry, the creation of the NHS.
It was felt that it would be apposite to put the railways
all together and nationalise them, bring them under central Government
control, and create the behemoth that became British Railways.
Following nationalisation, Flying Scotsman was worked hard.
She spent her days plying her trade, pulling express passenger services
up and down the East Coast Main Line for the newly nationalised
British Railways, but rail was now beginning to lose out
as other forms of transport became popular.
The 1950s is a period of change and adaptation for the railway.
Road transport is improving.
You've got the growth of air travel.
You've got people starting to look to foreign climes
for going on holiday.
So in terms of the British economy and social scene,
the whole country is at a period of change...
..and the railways are struggling to keep up.
A change was very definitely in the air, and in 1954,
the Government published details of a scheme to
radically upgrade British Railways.
It was called The Modernisation Plan.
NEWSREEL: British Railways' enormous modernisation scheme
goes full steam ahead.
To say farewell to the steam locomotive
was one of the many bold decisions in the campaign.
A central part of the plan was the introduction of diesel locomotives
to replace the steam engines.
The argument was that diesels were more expensive to build,
but cheaper to operate.
They didn't require such extensive servicing,
they didn't require the disposal of huge amounts of ash,
and they didn't require feeding with coal,
and BR was absolutely hellbent on doing this.
As these new diesels were introduced,
steam was gradually being run down.
Throughout the late '50s and early '60s,
thousands of steam engines were removed from service and scrapped.
The authorities did, however, come up with a plan
to save a few steam locomotives for posterity,
and to teach future generations about the age of steam.
But the decision on which ones to save and which ones to scrap
proved controversial.
As modernisation gathered pace, it was clear that, for the big express
locomotives, it was very much the end of the line,
and in normal circumstances,
Flying Scotsman, like all of her sisters,
would simply have been withdrawn from service and scrapped.
There was no plan to save her.
So of course, some enthusiasts think, "Well, that's outrageous.
"Flying Scotsman should be on the list. It's really important,"
because they're remembering all those glory days of the 1920s
and '30s, so they form up a society to buy Flying Scotsman.
"Save Our Scotsman," goes the cry.
The campaign to save the locomotive would need to work quickly
if they were to buy Flying Scotsman.
British Railways was demanding £3,000,
otherwise the engine was destined for the scrapheap.
The 1960s in Britain was an explosion of technicolour
and technology, modern, bright, and exciting.
But one industry was still living in the past.
British Railways, or BR as it was commonly known,
was seen as dirty, noisy, and outdated in this new period of cool.
Steam locomotives were being phased out,
and thousands were destined for the scrapheap.
Flying Scotsman's days looked to be numbered,
but a campaign was launched called Save Our Scotsman
to attempt to buy the locomotive.
The campaign starts to raise money, but time is running out.
Flying Scotsman would be withdrawn in 1963.
Money wasn't coming in fast enough, and here, a middle-aged
rail enthusiast called Alan Pegler decided to step in.
Alan Pegler was a wealthy industrialist
whose family owned the Northern Rubber Company.
Less concerned with matters of big business, Pegler spent a great deal
of his time indulging his passion for steam engines.
Outraged that Scotsman was for the chop,
Pegler decided to act.
He forked out the £3,000 that British Railways was asking
for Flying Scotsman,
and this is the official document that confirms that sale.
This is the engine record card for, here we are, the name,
Flying Scotsman, engine number 60103.
Sold to Mr AF Pegler here on January 15th, 1963.
Pegler got a quite astounding deal from British Railways.
He acquired the locomotive, and crucially, he managed to get
an agreement that would allow him to run this locomotive all over
the national network as a private engine on special charter trains.
It was a fantastic deal,
and it meant, at the very, very last minute,
Flying Scotsman had sidestepped the scrap man
that would wipe out all of her classmates.
I think it's the most famous locomotive in the world.
I've seen it running and the engines of its class, I think, all my life,
and when I heard it had got to be sold as scrap, I thought
it would be very nice to save it from that fate if I could.
Having picked up his prized possession for £3,000,
Pegler now wanted to do something for the loco's many adoring fans.
Ever the showman, he came up with a stunt
that would put Scotsman back in the headlines.
NEWSREEL: The Flying Scotsman, one of the most famous of all
steam locomotives, puffed impatiently,
eager to be on her way to repeat history.
40 years ago to the day, the mighty engine designed by Sir Nigel Gresley
had pulled the first nonstop train between London and Edinburgh.
Majestically, the beautiful engine eased out of platform two...
On May 1st, 1968, 40 years to the day after she made her first ever
nonstop run between London and Edinburgh,
Alan Pegler set out to repeat the feat.
He ran Flying Scotsman, 40 years on,
nonstop from King's Cross to Edinburgh.
The press loved it,
because the excitement of steam wouldn't go away,
despite what the railways wanted.
Having bought the locomotive, Pegler now planned to take her on tour
to the United States.
Alan Pegler was a very convincing man.
He persuaded, with Government help and of all Governments,
Harold Wilson's Labour Government,
with its commitment to the white heat of technology,
to take a trade show out by rail across the United States
pulled by Flying Scotsman.
Pegler convinced the Government to back his trade show to the States,
and the big names of the day signed up,
including the Royal Shakespeare Company, Lloyds Bank,
and Pretty Polly Tights.
So this was very much a way of promoting Britain
to North America at a time of the white heat of technology.
It might seem odd that you would use a steam locomotive to do it,
but such a recognisable icon globally
made a lot of sense in promotional terms.
In preparation for her American adventure,
Flying Scotsman had something of a makeover,
giving her a whole new look.
Among other things, she needed a cowcatcher to be fitted on the front
to conform to American railroad regulations.
It also meant having a bell fitted on the front, and a large hooter...
HOOTER HOOTS
..to replace her old whistle.
After yet another overhaul
and some vital boiler work to make sure she was in peak condition,
Scotsman was ready to begin her American adventure.
It was a mammoth task.
Flying Scotsman weighs over 100 tonnes.
It was a delicate operation lifting this beast of an engine
onto a cargo ship at Liverpool docks.
Sitting on deck, and open to the elements,
she then crossed the Atlantic Ocean bound for New York.
There she's unloaded, she's inspected,
fettled up, and she sets forth.
HOOTER HOOTS
And the Americans fell in love with this machine.
It's difficult to exaggerate the sheer numbers of people
that wanted to see Flying Scotsman.
In the first two months of her tour,
Scotsman travelled the length and breadth of the United States.
Over 60,000 people paid to see the engine.
It was like an Antiques Roadshow, but mixed with 1960s pop culture.
They had a riot.
I mean, Alan Pegler was a saucy fellow, lots of fun.
He thinks this is one big party.
The problem was it was ever so expensive to do.
It was a nutty thing to do
After the first tour, Pegler could quite reasonably have packed up
and taken Flying Scotsman back to Britain.
But Pegler was driven by something else,
and that was a desire to drive his own locomotive.
He would never be allowed to do that in Britain,
but in America, he could.
Pegler tried to find funding for a second tour,
and wanted another exhibition train,
but this time, the Board of Trade withdrew its support.
It didn't want Britain to be associated
with that golden age of steam.
It wanted it to be seen as modern, bright, and powerful.
To them, Flying Scotsman looked like a throwback.
It didn't deter Pegler. He got the best exhibitors he could,
although there were many fewer of them.
Pegler probably knew that he was likely to go bankrupt.
He certainly knew that the tour would cost him money this time,
but the allure of driving his own engine at speed over long distances
was just irresistible.
After this second tour, Scotsman ended up in Toronto,
and she spent a whole year off the tracks.
Financial disaster was looming
when Alan Pegler came up with a plan he believed could save the day.
He'd heard that there was to be a festival in San Francisco
called British Week, celebrating all things British.
Pegler believed Scotsman would fit right in.
So, in September 1971,
the world's most famous locomotive headed for San Francisco.
But with money in short supply,
this US trip was a lot less glamorous than the first,
and this time, Alan Pegler had a travelling companion -
his 17-year-old daughter Penelope.
There was only a skeleton crew by then,
and we went all the way across to the west
and down to San Francisco with a few of us on board.
And it was far less glamorous, because by then,
when we were crossing the Rockies,
we were sleeping on the train in sleeping bags.
As the tour went on,
the American railroads increasingly started withdrawing their support.
They wanted payment for coal upfront.
It became almost like a travelling circus with drifters and hangers-on
joining the train and trying to keep it going.
People had to share hotel rooms and wash their socks in sinks.
Flying Scotsman finally made it to San Francisco,
and for a brief period, she became the most popular tourist attraction
in the city.
To begin with, we had a wonderful spot on Fisherman's Wharf.
It was absolutely pride of place,
and so all the restaurants after a while got a bit cross
because, for one thing, we were blocking their view
out onto the bay.
And so we had to move off Fisherman's Wharf,
which was...a bit of a disaster.
That was definitely the start of...
..of things going wrong.
Once the engine had been moved away from the prestigious
Fisherman's Wharf site, Scotsman was no longer the popular
tourist attraction she'd been when she first arrived.
For Scotsman's owner, Alan Pegler,
the problems were becoming too great for him to manage.
I think, one, the money had been running out very fast.
It just was sand running through Pegler's fingers, the money.
But then something happened.
Edward Heath was Prime Minister then, said, "No.
"No more money for this travelling circus,"
which had partly been funded by the Government.
And once that money had been pulled out, that really, I think,
was the end.
The visitors dried up, the money dried up,
and Pegler knew he was going bust.
Soon after, the money finally ran out.
Alan Pegler had literally spent a fortune on his dream,
but now, declaring himself bankrupt, it was finally over.
By 1972, Scotsman was stranded in the States,
and fears were growing that she might never come home.
I suspect a lot of people were being a bit paranoid at the time,
but their worst fears looked as if they might now come true.
There was a real chance at this point that Flying Scotsman
would have stayed over in the United States.
The big worry was that Flying Scotsman would be bought by Disney,
and be in a theme park, and it would never come back to the UK.
With Flying Scotsman abandoned, her future looked bleak.
To her thousands of fans,
it looked like she needed a miracle to save her.
1972, and Flying Scotsman is stranded in San Francisco
following a three-year tour of North America.
To buy the famous loco and get her back to Britain
required an enormous amount of money.
There aren't huge numbers of sugar daddies who can buy a steam engine,
and there are a number of influential people
in the Heritage Railway world.
Not everybody's got a lot of money, but somebody who takes
a deep interest in it is Sir William McAlpine.
McAlpine was a former director
of the world-renowned McAlpine construction company.
He'd always had a passion for steam engines,
and had started collecting them in the early 1960s.
Bill McAlpine is a very passionate man.
He cares deeply for steam locomotives.
He cares deeply for railway heritage.
And the thought that that engine, Flying Scotsman,
could be lost to the nation, was anathema to him.
He felt, if nobody else could do it, he needed to step in
and save it for the nation, which he did.
To get Scotsman home from the west coast of America was no mean feat.
She was loaded onto a barge in San Francisco,
and then sailed across the bay to Oakland.
There, she was transferred to the ship The California Star
for her 8,000 mile journey home.
One of the highlights of the trip was navigating the Panama Canal,
the first steam locomotive ever to do so.
Finally, in February 1973,
Flying Scotsman arrived back in Liverpool
at the exact spot that she'd sailed from three and a half years earlier.
But her travels in the States and her gruelling sea crossing
had left their mark.
All along the track, from Liverpool docks back to Derby,
thousands of well-wishers lined the route,
overjoyed to finally see Flying Scotsman back on British soil.
Having made it to Derby,
Flying Scotsman was now returned to her former glory,
including being finished off in her beautiful apple green livery.
For the next 15 years, Flying Scotsman settled into her life
as a much-loved throwback to the golden age of steam,
but the world around her was changing fast.
The 1980s in Britain was a time when technology was booming.
Mobile phones were born,
and the internet was beginning to be thought about.
But despite all these advances,
some old technology was still making its mark.
Flying Scotsman, now 60 years old, was remarkably still going strong.
In 1988, Flying Scotsman was heading off on her travels once again.
To mark the bicentenary of Australia,
the authorities decided to stage a steam spectacular.
Originally, they'd requested for Mallard to be sent over,
but she was unavailable, so they approached Bill McAlpine
to see if they'd loan Flying Scotsman.
Now, McAlpine was well aware, having rescued Flying Scotsman
from North America, that he wanted it back,
but he agreed to the loan, providing there were funds to get it back.
The funds were raised, and Flying Scotsman was taken to Australia.
It was to be one of the biggest tests of Scotsman's career.
She set sail from London in September 1988,
bound for Melbourne,
and five weeks later, she finally arrived down under.
And she was planned to be unloaded at Melbourne.
Unfortunately, there wasn't a crane big enough to lift this
quite heavy locomotive off the ship and onto the harbour,
so she was unloaded at Sydney instead.
It didn't matter. The reception was still fabulous for her,
and after the checks had been made of the air brakes
and all the other equipment needed,
she was free to roam the Australian rails.
In the first two months alone, a staggering 130,000 people
paid to see the famous locomotive.
Even at 65 years old,
Flying Scotsman was still capable of amazing feats.
And in Australia, she was about to set another incredible record,
one that still stands to this day.
On a trip to Alice Springs, Scotsman ran a section of the line
that was 422 miles long...
..and she did it without stopping.
It was a world record for a nonstop run by a steam engine.
It's incredible. 20 years after she did her last nonstop run
from London to Edinburgh, Flying Scotsman goes and breaks
the world record for nonstop run by steam
as she does it without failing, without any problems at all.
Flying Scotsman had travelled an amazing 28,000 miles
during her year in Australia.
It was a trip that confirmed her unofficial title
as the most famous steam locomotive in the world,
and at the end of 1989, Flying Scotsman headed back to Britain.
Ever since steam had been scrapped in the '60s,
interest in steam railways and the history of steam
had been growing in the UK.
The burgeoning heritage railway movement was becoming big business,
and old abandoned lines were now being opened up all over the country
as the desire to see and hear steam engines again flourished.
Heritage railways offer the public a chance to step back in time,
look at the past,
sometimes a little bit with rose-tinted spectacles,
but we invented the steam railway in Britain,
and we like looking back on that.
And as such, heritage railway is a sort of part of the British psyche.
They're there through our film and our media.
The romance of steam - people love to go back and look at it.
WHISTLE BLASTS
And this new love of steam meant that Flying Scotsman would be
kept busy running on heritage lines all around the country.
Flying Scotsman's appeal hadn't diminished
during its trip to Australia.
The crowds at heritage railways were vast,
and the heritage railways really got a boost from Flying Scotsman's
visit, both in terms of visitor numbers
and in terms of the money they generated.
But it couldn't last forever, and in 1993,
it was very clear that Flying Scotsman would need
a major overhaul before she could work again.
Working steam engines need a major service every seven to ten years.
With major work needed yet again,
Bill McAlpine had a big decision to make.
After owning Scotsman for 23 years, Bill McAlpine felt that
his time with the locomotive had run its course.
It had been a long and fruitful relationship,
but he felt it was now time for someone else
to look after the world's most famous steam engine.
Millionaire businessman Tony Marchington looked after the engine
for a further eight years, but by 2004,
the famous old engine was put up for sale yet again...
..this time, to the highest bidder.
There was a fear that the engine could be bought by a foreign buyer,
and leave Britain for good.
Putting its bid in too was the National Railway Museum in York.
The bids had been placed.
The waiting began.
The National Railway Museum had put in a bid of something like
£2.2 million for the locomotive, way in excess
of what you would normally pay for one of its classmates,
but probably a fair price for the locomotive,
given its importance to the nation.
But the bids were opened,
and the National Railway Museum had won.
Finally, after all those years,
Flying Scotsman was back in public hands.
The people's engine was actually owned by the people.
With the National Railway Museum winning the bid to buy Scotsman,
a whole new lease of life beckoned for the famous green engine.
But little did anyone realise at the time that the locomotive
was about to face the most difficult period of its entire life.
Pretty swiftly, we discover how tired it is as a machine,
so we run it for a couple of years,
and then we put it into repair, to get it back into working order,
the kind of pristine working order it would have had
when it left Doncaster in the first place.
This overhaul would prove an absolute nightmare for the museum.
It would cost vastly more than was budgeted, and there would be
some very, very severe faults with this locomotive indeed.
In total, the overhaul took ten years.
A decade off the rails was the longest in Scotsman's history.
But while she was away,
a new 21st century steam engine was about to be launched...
WHISTLE BLASTS
..and I get a once in a lifetime chance to take the controls.
Flying Scotsman is now owned by the National Railway Museum
after they successfully won the bid to buy her in 2004.
But just two years later,
the world's most famous loco had to leave the rails
to undergo the biggest engineering overhaul of her life.
The challenge of keeping engines like Flying Scotsman
in peak condition is a full-time job.
Not all steam engines that you see on the Main Line
are like Flying Scotsman, relics from the past that have
painstakingly been restored through blood, sweat, and tears.
There's now a 21st century steam locomotive that draws in huge crowds
wherever she runs up and down the country.
This is number 60163, AKA Tornado,
and she is magnificent.
The great granddaughter of Flying Scotsman,
Tornado is almost exactly what the old lady was when she was built
almost 100 years ago, a Class A1 Pacific.
Tornado and Scotsman are very much complementary partners.
Scotsman has a very long history.
It's still contributing to that own history.
Tornado is making history as it goes.
But the two engines together complement what they're doing.
They're running on the national network,
they're running at high speeds, delighting thousands of people.
Having had the honour of actually riding on the footplate
of Flying Scotsman, I was desperately keen
to relive the experience on her 21st century equivalent,
and on a trip up the famous East Coast Main Line, I got my wish.
This is such an amazing experience, because, yes, you feel that
you're moving at high speed, with the countryside zipping past you.
But it's that noise and the vibrations and the heat,
just this whole environment just screams exhilaration at you.
WHISTLE BLASTS
You can really see the joy that this engine brings
on the faces of people as we speed by them.
Little hose down.
Keep the dust out.
Having felt the thrill of riding on the footplate of Tornado
at 80mph, and watching the driver hard at work,
I couldn't help wondering what it would be like to actually drive
one of these powerful beasts.
David Wright is an engineer whose company maintains Tornado.
He's also one of the engine's regular drivers.
Hello. Can I come in? Yeah. Lovely. Oh!
Oh, it's warm in here.
David, it's been a while since I've had a driving lesson,
but this is a bit of a different vehicle.
Indeed. Talk me through,
what are the main controls I need to be looking at?
Main controls for you for driving,
you've got forward and back, like the gears in your car.
Yep. Safety catch there.
Lift it fully up.
And then as per the labelling, to go forwards, that way,
to go backwards, that way. And that's this gauge here
that I'm looking at? Yep, and you follow it there.
So you've got neutral in the middle, full forward gear, full back gear.
So this is like your gearbox in the car? In essence, yeah.
That's you regulator, which is like your accelerator.
Press the steam just to start it going like you would in your car
with the clutch, just ease off, like that, just ease it, ease it,
ease it, you'll feel it bite, hold it there,
and then you'll see the steam.
That gauge there gives you the steam in the cylinders. OK.
So you press the steam, and you'll see that rise, and as it gets to
about 50, you'll actually feel the engine start moving.
OK. But gentle. Gentle.
If you give it too much, the wheels spin, and we'll be off.
OK. We don't want that. I'm not a boy racer. No.
This is your brakes on the engine. Off. On.
You've got two whistles on this engine as well.
So before we move off or if you see anybody on the line side
or see anything we need to whistle at, two whistles.
You've got a chime whistle.
WHISTLE CHIMES
WHISTLE SQUEAKS
And then the original LNER squeak whistle.
So it's the moment of truth, is it? Yep.
Can I jump in the hot seat?
Woo-hoo-hoo! OK.
Er, right.
Try and remember everything you've just been taught. Yeah. Thank you.
I'm going to go forward, so pop it up.
So put it into full gear.
That comes off. Yep.
Want it to about 55. 55%?
Yeah. About that? Yeah.
Make sure it locks in.
Yep, OK. Brakes are on.
Have a look, make sure you're safe to move.
Safe to go?
Yeah. And give a little toot.
Yeah.
WHISTLE SQUEAKS
Lovely. And then brake off.
Brake off, and then slowly over the regulator.
You feel the power... OK, that's happening.
Then ease back a bit. Oh, yeah!
Pulled away a bit quick there, maybe!
It's all right. Didn't slip.
Didn't slip, yeah, I was watching this. It didn't shoot up.
No, no, you're all right there.
So where do I want that pressure?
You want the pressure about 50 to 75.
So pressure in the cylinders, about 50, 75. Yeah.
I mean, it's quite... It's really a little micro...
It's very responsive, yeah.
I mean, wow, yeah, that's a tiny little touch,
and you feel the acceleration. You're almost pushed back a bit.
Yeah, yeah.
Hey-hey-hey, all right! That is good fun.
When we get to the top end,
we're aiming to stop somewhere about halfway down the platform,
so get in your mind where you're wanting to stop. OK.
Then fully shut it.
That's it. See how it drops off,
and then your speed'll start to drop off.
OK.
Get your hand on the brakes ready.
That's it. OK, come to the platform.
That's not too bad. Into a nice controlled stop, hopefully.
Nice and steady as you come to a stand.
So I bring it down to a stop.
Oh, yeah.
That's it, as soon as it stops, fully on. Safe and secure. Yeah.
Oh, great! Oh, that was good fun. How did we go?
That was good for a first effort.
It was a bit of a overly powerful pull away, maybe.
Yeah, yeah, that comes with practice.
Well, I mean, that was so much fun.
Can I, erm, can I take it back down?
I think I'm done yet. I don't think I want to leave the hot seat.
Yep, no problem. So...
WHISTLE SQUEAKS
Just being around these beautiful steam engines is a real thrill.
WHISTLE SQUEAKS
And when the world's most famous locomotive, Flying Scotsman,
finally made it back onto the rails after her ten-year lay-off,
the reaction from the public said it all.
She's the one locomotive that you can ask anyone in Britain
whether they've heard of it, and they will say, "Yes".
This is a machine that's almost 100 years old,
and it's a truly incredible story
and it's one that should have many, many years left to run.
Flying Scotsman was always almost alive.
She is a living creature that, if you touch her,
if you touch her side, you can feel the energy inside.
This magnificent, highly developed, powerful beautiful express
passenger steam locomotive that set records,
and a record it will set in future will be
the express steam locomotive that lasts the longest
and takes us into a beautiful steamy future.
Now, nearly 100 years after she was built,
Flying Scotsman, the world's most famous steam locomotive,
is back where she belongs.
Not simply a relic in a museum, but doing what she does best -
steaming up and down the Main Lines of Great Britain.
Subtitles by Red Bee Media