Flying Scotsman (train)

:"This article is about the railway passenger service known as the "Flying Scotsman".
For the LNER locomotive of the same name, see: LNER Class A3 4472 Flying Scotsman."

The "Flying Scotsman" is an express passenger train service that has been running between London, England and Edinburgh, Scotland since 1862. It is currently operated by National Express East Coast.

History

The East Coast Main Line over which the "Flying Scotsman" runs was built in the 19th century by many small railway companies, but mergers and acquisitions led to only three companies controlling the route; the North British Railway, the North Eastern Railway and the Great Northern Railway. In 1860 the three companies established the East Coast Joint Stock for through services using common vehicles, and it is from this agreement that the "Flying Scotsman" came about.

East Coast Joint Stock

The first "Special Scotch Express" ran in 1862, with simultaneous 10am departures from the GNR's King's Cross Station in London and North British's Waverley Station in Edinburgh. The original journey took 10½ hours, including a half-hour stop at York for lunch; however, increasing competition and improvements in railway technology saw this time reduced to 8½ hours by the time of the Race to the North in 1888.

From 1900, the train was dramatically modernised, introducing such features as corridors between carriages, heating, and dining cars. As passengers could now lunch on the train, the York stop was reduced to 15 minutes, but the overall journey time remained 8½ hours.

London and North Eastern Railway

In 1923, the railways of Britain were 'grouped' into the so-called 'Big Four'. Consequently, all three members of the East Coast Joint Stock became part of the newly formed London and North Eastern Railway.

It was the London and North Eastern which, in 1924, officially renamed the 10 AM "Special Scotch Express" linking Edinburgh and London in both directions as the "Flying Scotsman", a name under which it had been unofficially known since the 1870s. To further publicise the train, a recently-built Gresley A1 Class locomotive was named after the train, and put on display at the 1924 British Empire Exhibition. Due to a long-standing agreement between the competing West and East coast routes since the famous railway races of 1888 and 1895, speeds of the Scotch expresses were limited, the time for the 392 miles (631 km) between the capitals being a pedestrian 8h-15m. However following valve gear modifications, the A1 locomotive's coal consumption was drastically reduced and it was thus found possible to run the service non-stop with a heavy train on one tender full of coal. Five special tenders were built with a coal capacity of 9 tons instead of the usual 8; means were also given to access the locomotive from the train through a narrow tunnel inside the tender tank plus a flexible bellows connection linking it with the leading coach. This avoided engine crew fatigue by enabling a replacement driver and fireman to take over halfway without stopping the train. The A1 class locomotive number 4472, "Flying Scotsman" was used to haul the inaugural train from London on 1 May 1928, and it successfully ran the 392 miles between Edinburgh and London without stopping, a record at the time for a scheduled service (although the London Midland and Scottish Railway had four days earlier staged a one-off publicity coup by running the "Royal Scot's" Edinburgh section non-stop from Euston - 399.7 miles). The 1928 non-stop "Flying Scotsman" had improved catering and other on-board services - even a barber's shop [Brown F.A.S : "NIGEL GRESLEY, Locomotive engineer", (Ian Allan, London 1961 pp. 85,86, 120] . With the end of the limited speed agreement in 1932, journey time was down to 7 h 30m and 7h 20m by 1938. The "Flying Scotsman" would remain a non-stop service right through past nationalisationFact|date=November 2007 (with the exception of the Second World War) until the early 1960s when the Deltic diesel locomotives took over.

British Railways

In the late 1950s British Railways were committed to dieselisation, and began devising a replacement for the Gresley Pacifics on the East Coast Main Line. The result was the Class 55 'Deltic', and the Deltic-hauled "Flying Scotsman" became a centrepiece of British Railways advertising, as it had been for the LNER.

After privatisation

The "Flying Scotsman" name has been maintained by the private operators of Anglo-Scottish trains on the East Coast Main Line; the former Great North Eastern Railway even subtitled itself "The Route of the Flying Scotsman". Now operated by National Express East Coast, the northbound service departs from London King's Cross at the traditional time of 10.00, while the southbound service leaves Edinburgh daily at 13.00 (having originated from Glasgow Central at 11.50 on Mondays through Saturdays ).

The present-day "Flying Scotsman" is usually operated by an InterCity 225 ‘Mallard’ set, and the journey takes around 4½ hours.

Locomotives

As a major link between the capital cities of England and Scotland, the "Flying Scotsman" was an extremely long and heavy train, especially in the days before road and air transport became common. As such, it has required very powerful locomotives. Locomotives used to haul (and in some cases, specifically "designed" to haul) the "Flying Scotsman" have included:

* Stirling 4-2-2 'Singles' (GNR 1870).
* Ivatt Class C2 (GNR 1897), the first British Atlantics.
* Gresley A1 and A3 Class Pacifics (LNER 1922), including the eponymous locomotive.
* Gresley A4 Class Pacifics (LNER 1935), the holder of the steam rail-speed record.
* British Railways Class 55 'Deltic' (BR 1961).
* British Rail InterCity 125 (BR 1976).
* British Rail InterCity 225 (BR 1990, GNER from 1996 until 2007 and National Express East Coast since December 2007).

References

External links

* [http://www.lner.info The LNER Encyclopedia]
* [http://www.nationalexpresseastcoast.com/ National Express East Coast Website]
* [http://www.nrm.org.uk/home/menu.asp The National Railway Museum]
* [http://www.trainformations.co.uk/LNER/LNER_Express_1.php Train Formations]
* [http://www.ssplprints.com/search.php?keywords=flying+scotsman&page=1&numperpage=8&idx=4&ref=wiki&ad=sspl01 The official National Railway Museum print website] containing many Flying Scotsman prints and posters