Flying Scotsman

1923 · LNER Class A3 · Work 1 of 1,871

What it was used for

The London–Edinburgh night service, 632 kilometres non-stop from 1928 — with a corridor through the tender so the crew could change en route. She later became the most expensive monument in British railway history: Alan Pegler bought her privately in 1963, sent her on a promotional tour of some 15,400 miles across the United States and Canada from 1969 to 1971, and was bankrupted by it in 1972 with debts of £132,000. The locomotive then stood in an army depot in California, out of reach of the creditors, until William McAlpine bought her back and brought her home in 1973.

What was new

The locomotive was not new; the corridor tender was. It made workable a run longer than a single crew's shift.

Connections

Every connection names its kind. “Forerunner” on its own would be a claim.

1. Follows fromPacific Chapelon1940In 1959 Flying Scotsman herself received the double Kylchap chimney (National Railway Museum) – the exhaust André Chapelon had developed in 1926. Gresley had tried it on an A3 in 1937 on Chapelon's advice and adopted it for the A4s; from 1956 Peter Townend at King's Cross pressed for all A3s to get it. The date of work 23 is that of the rebuild, not of the exhaust.Source: National Railway Museum blog: The many guises of Flying Scotsman · Heritage Railway Magazine: Flying Scotsman – More regenerations than Dr Who! (Gresley, Chapelon, 1937) · The Gresley Society Trust: Class A1/A3 (Townend ab 1956, Humorist 1937) · Advanced Steam Traction (AST Group): Kylchap, Kylpor and Lempor Exhausts