AFP
YORK (UK), JANUARY 8
Britain’s Flying Scotsman, the first steam locomotive to reach 100 miles an hour, was making its first run for more than a decade on Friday after a £4 million upgrade programme to bring it into line with modern regulations.
“Once Flying Scotsman’s restoration is complete, it will be back hauling mainline rail tours, steaming proudly into the 21st century,” said an official at the National Rail Museum in York.
The locomotive, more than 90 years old, made its first test run on the East Lancashire Railway following restoration at the Bury workshop of Riley and Son.
Next month, Flying Scotsman, newly clad in green British Rail livery, will make a run between London King’s Cross and York ahead of a programme of events throughout 2016.
Built in Doncaster in 1923 for the London and North Eastern Railway, the A1 class locomotive became famous when displayed at the British Empire Exhibition is London the following year. In hauled the first ever non-stop London to Edinburgh service in 1928, reducing the journey time to eight hours.
In 1934, Scotsman officially became the first locomotive to reach 100 mph (160 kilometres per hour).
British Rail retired the locomotive in 1963 and it went on tours to the United States and Australia under until a successful fundraising campaign brought Flying Scotsman back into public ownership in 2004.
In Australia, it recorded the longest ever non-stop run by a steam locomotive, travelling 422 miles.
Seventy feet (22 metres long) and with a tender capacity of eight tons of coal and 5,000 gallons of water, Scotsman is estimated to have travelled 2.5 million miles.
A key stage in the work at Riley and Son’s workshop was the fitting of equipment needed for the locomotive to operate on the mainline under 21st-century regulations: a train monitoring recorder and a train protection and warning system.
