Flying Scotsman

Or this (Note the correct number of tenders):

 

Pah! A mere amateur in the tender department.



Tom

 

Is that Henry the Gammon Engine?!

 

Yeah he was on Question Time the other week, moaning about immigrants from Barrow taking jobs on Sodor....

Edit - actually looking at that photo it would have been immigrants from Swindon and Doncaster!

 

And the correct livery and lack of smoke deflectors.

 

So your name is Sssmith.

 

Ignoring historical accuracy ( and the wrath of some ) I quite like FS like this.

 

Nah... it's all the letters that you get left with in Scrabble and can't use

 

Where's the Anderson shelter...?

 

Totally agree, the problem being whilst it is used on the mainline with a double chimney, it has to have the deflectors apparently in order to lift the exhaust sufficiently for vision not to be impaired. Thus, with the NRM bound by integrity to keep it authentic, its present form will endure unless some funding to change it back to single chimney is sourced - can't see NRM stumping up from its own coffers, centurion or not.

 

"Authenticity" is an interesting concept when applied to Flying Scotsman. The loco has run in preservation for longer than it ran under "railway company" ownership (for want of a better phrase). Since the late 1960s, it has run with just about all possible combinations of Apple Green / Chrome Green / No. 4472 / No. 60103 / Single chimney / Double Chimney / Smoke deflectors / no deflectors / single tender / double tender / air brake / vac only / etc etc. About the only thing it hasn't done in preservation is swap from left hand to right hand drive.

Given all that - whose authenticity do you want? Pretty much any way you turn the loco out has some precedent in operation over the last few decades, so can be said to be authentic - just not necessarily authentic for any point within the 1923 - 1963 period. More or less the only forms of the loco that would be near impossible now to represent "authentically" would be how it ran in early LNER days: sadly we are never going to see the loco as built. Whereas apple green, numbered 4472 with two chimneys and smoke deflectors - just as historically accurate as any other form, unless you want to pretend that the loco's preservation history is unimportant. For Flying Scotsman above all other locos, denying the validity of the preservation era as somehow "inauthentic" is a hard case to make.

By all means, have an aesthetic argument about one's favourite form for the loco (as built numbered 1472 with tall cab and boiler fittings and coal rail tender, please). But just recognise that such preferences are aesthetic judgements, but can't be justified by pretending that one form is somehow "authentic" while another isn't.

Tom

 

Yes please

It looks so elegant in that form.

 

Have to disagree. The locomotive's status changed in 1963 when it ceased to be used for what it was built for and became a museum piece albeit a working museum piece. The remit of a museum is to conserve and display artifacts from a previous age for future generations.

We then have a dilemma, in either of it's basic configurations post preservation (single/double chimney) it can only appear in BR livery (A3 and RHD) and then it's taking liberties with the tender. I personally had no problem with single chimney numbered 4472, not correct for this particular loco but a typical representation of an A3 in the 1930s. Add double chimney and smoke deflectors and it represents nothing of the class history and in that respect becomes a meaningless hybrid.

 

But the NRM is the “National Railway Museum”, not the “National Museum of Railwsys as they were between 1804 and 1968”. Preservation is a part of the whole railway story.

Given that, there has to be some recognition of preservation. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe in a free for all - but if preservation is going to have any representation, then the ideal locos to demonstrate that are those that have achieved greater or equal fame in preservation than they did in their first working life. In that regard, the form they gained in preservation becomes authentic. I’d put Stepney in that category: a Marsh rebuild A1x running in Stroudley livery totally “inauthentic” for the Victorian LBSCR, but now a form it has had for longer, and to greater renown, than any form that it had in the 1875 - 1960 period.

Flying Scotsman is the same. Whatever the record breaking achievements of the 1930s (now rightly celebrated), by all accounts it was unheralded by the early 1960s, destined for scrap. Had it been scrapped, 4472 would just be another number slowly fading from history and known only from dusty history books. Fortunately it had another fate, but then gained a huge renown in preservation. That is itself a remarkable story, and far from universal for locos preserved at that time, many of which are loved by their adherents, but none has the fame and recognition of FS. (Where is “King George V”? Preserved about the same time as Flying Scotsman and notable for early post-steam mainline running, but now near anonymous and half hidden in Swindon). That renown is intimately bound up in the second history of Flying Scotsman, not the first.

Tom

 

As 4472 but with left hand drive, she went to and ran in the USA and Australia. Has any other preserved main line loco achieved that? IMO that alone would justify a return to pseudo LNER condition even though she never ran as LNER 4472 with left hand drive in LNER days. I'm with you, 4472/60103's story didn't stop in 1963.

 

KGV needs to be let loose with a world tour to boost it's profile then.

First stop, Brisbane please. Just saying....

 

Our interpretations of authenticity don't matter a jot. My own view is that it is a good representation of its final BR form at the moment and simply repainting it as 4472 would not achieve any positive outcome or fit with NRM values.

 

This engine is the general publics introduction to and perhaps the greatest ambassador for railway preservation to the masses, it has spent longer in apple green as 4472 than in a dull green its currently painted as 60103 and the majority of the public expect to see it as 4472 including me...….

 

From comments made by my, non-railway friends, as 60103 Flying Scotsman is seen as just another BR green engine unless I tell them the photo/video their looking at is Flying Scotsman. But if I show them a photo of 4472 in apple green and they know immediately that it's Flying Scotsman.

 

Ahhh..so that's why the trains it pulls as 60103 are always empty and no one turns up to watch her go by!