This year marks the centenary of Britain’s top mechanical celebrity: the Flying Scotsman locomotive. It emerged from the Doncaster works of the London & North Eastern Railway (LNER) in 1923 and is celebrating its anniversary with an exhibition at the National Railway Museum in York, special excursions and visits to heritage railways around the country.
Scotsman is often described as an icon, but what exactly does it represent? I would say early British PR. There were Flying Scotsman ashtrays, jigsaws and paperweights – and the loco often hauled the train of nearly the same name, the Flying Scotsman (train names being preceded by the definite article), which was glamourised by the LNER, with its onboard barber, cinema carriage and Louis XIV-style restaurant car. But why all the glitz?
