The Flying Scotsman: The Train, the Locomotive, the Legend

Flying Scotsman is probably the most famous railway locomotive in the world. When it was new in 1923 it caused a sensation for its beauty and its speed, and the engine found itself at the center of media attention that continued throughout the decade and made it a household name - to see it was the ambition of every young trainspotter.

But The Flying Scotsman was also a train. Since 1862 the 10am departure from London Kings Cross and Edinburgh Waverley had been the fastest and most comfortable way of travelling the length of the nation, and in 1923 it was officially titled The Flying Scotsman - a nickname it had been given many years earlier - and was confirmed as the most famous and prestigious train in the British timetable. Over the next fifteen years the train got faster and more luxurious, in response to competition from other routes, airlines and the motor car. From 1928 it began running non-stop, an achievement that earned it yet more attention. Until Mallard and its streamlined sisters took the train to even greater heights in the later 1930s, the apple green locomotives and teak carriages of The Flying Scotsman were a national icon, and never more so than when 4472, Flying Scotsman - the first locomotive to achieve an authenticated 100mph - headed the train herself.

This superbly illustrated book introduces the route of The Flying Scotsman the development of the train from 1862 to the present, and the extraordinary story of the locomotive that now forms the centerpiece of the British National Collection.

Bob Gwynne is Exhibitions and Creative Content Developer at the National Railway Museum in York.