Chapter 5: Continental Scotsman: The 1975 European Tour
Following the trips to Australia and Japan, Flying Scotsman returned to a more straight forward life back on British rail network hauling charter trains for the next few years. However just after Flying Scotsman returned from Down Under in 1973 and on her 50th birthday, the United Kingdom would enter the European Economic Community (EEC) in the hopes of boosting trade in Europe and hopefully help improve relations between rival nations in post war world. It wouldn't be long towards the end of 1973 that some members in government and in the business community looked over to what Flying Scotsman's worldwide adventures had done in helping British business and with the UK's entry into Europe, what about the idea of a European tour to help perform similar wonders that seemed more than ever to help a stagnating economy?
Peglar was quite excited by the idea and buoyed by the success he had achieved with Scotsman and with patriotism to help his country, he threw his weight behind the idea to take Flying Scotsman around Europe. It wouldn't be long until news of this leaked out into the railway press with many enthusiasts outraged that the locomotive would be out of the country yet again and that trouble was bound to happen, though Peglar did his best to assure them that this was likely the last international adventure Scotsman would take part in he would find out that the enthusiasts weren't the only ones not backing the idea.
Randolph Churchill, the prime minster who had been a great friend to Peglar and had done most of the bankroll for Scotsman's adventures would step down before the 1974 general election and with him would be any thoughts that anyone might've had on what some saw as a ego stroking trip around Europe in which some newspaper would describe the idea when plans of the venture were being leaked out further. The Conservatives would, against the odds some would say, win that election being led by a certain Margaret Thatcher who by all accounts was one of the few in her party that thought that Scotsman's proposed European adventure seemed like a ridiculously idea and wouldn't push forth funding in which seemed like the dream was dean. Though Churchill had shrewdly planned for just this.
Prior before leaving office, he had stashed away secret funds that would cover the cost of such a tour and there was no excuse that Thatcher could say that there was 'no money for it'. Adding to this, Peglar would make one TV appearance on the BBC shortly after the election in which he stated why such a tour was important for the UK's place in Europe that if the country was not to make the most of it and not promote it's industry in Europe then businesses would suffer and that after all the headway they had done in North America, Japan and Australia, it would seem foolish if they couldn't do something with Britain's neighbours. This had the effect he wanted as it struck a chord with the British public for a European tour and with a sudden public appetite wanting British business to remain strong, it was then decided that a tour in 1975 would be planned, though it would become more than just a jolly around Europe.
What started at first as a mere trade tour suddenly would involve as a goodwill trip of a very different kind as thanks to recent cordial talks between East and West, there was suddenly the head turning idea of taking the Flying Scotsman behind the iron curtain, specially Poland, East Germany and Hungary just to name a few. At first it was an idea that would've been laughed into oblivion, but when such talks between Bush and Andropov needing to find a way to kick start, the idea of using Flying Scotsman as a way of gesture towards a détente now gave the idea of a trip behind the iron curtain a unlikely possibility. So while Flying Scotsman was being given a light overhaul at her new Carnforth base in the north of England prior before her big tour, route plans were being laid out where the tour should go and despite Thatcher, now slowly warming to the idea of a European tour, saying that going to Eastern Europe was too much of risk and a pointless venture it would be ironic that this refusal would catch the attention of political leaders behind the iron curtain and that they insisted that this would be a great idea for East/West relations.
One can imagine the reaction Thatcher had when the request arrived on her doorstep asking for this and quickly over Tory MP's saw a good chance to make the most of it by showing western magnanimity and prestige over the East and admittedly it did almost descended into a 'Little England' mentality. Amazingly though, Thatcher would not only back the tour but allow for Peglar to take his locomotive and all British business hopes behind the Iron Curtain, though a lot of permission and political red tape had to be done first. So at the start of June 1975, Flying Scotsman travelled down to the south coast with it's travelling exhibition train to catch a ferry to France and the train stock this time would be quite different to the previous tours. Gone were the LNER built Pidgeon cars that had been converted to exhibition cars that went with Flying Scotsman to North America, Australia and Japan, now in their place were seven British Rail built coaches that were in fact converted postal vans that would house the exhibitions onboard the train and also included would be two MK1 coaches with one being a support coach and the other the administration car. The only coach from every tour since was the ex-Devon Belle observation car, still converted as a pub, would be there promoting British drinks and there was the surprise exclusion that the second tender would be on the tour due to the fact there were more watering facilities in Europe but also for weight reasons. This time around, the whole stock would be painted back into a lovely colour choice of Chocolate and Cream that had been used in the States and a much better choice than the dreaded BR blue look that it had been part of it previously.
One of the exhibition cars from the European tour seen here years later in 1985
While all the usual suspects were backing this trip such as BP, British Leyland and Glenfiddich would be on the tour, it would however see something different as it included this time as now the Scottish Tourist Board (STB) and the Wales Tourist Board (WTB) would also be part of this tour and there was a good reason to do so. Following Scotland's stunning success at the 1974 World Cup, many around the world began to notice Scotland and it did rub the hands of the STB with glee at the attention and when a European wide tour was being planned for the following year, the timing was perfect to really promote Scotland to the world. Incidentally following the World Cup victory, Peglar would take his locomotive to Scotland as a part of a victory tour with the players on board and with a locomotive called Flying
Scotsman, how could one not make the most out of it? Not to be left out however, the WTB also got in on the act to help promote Wales to the world and while both sides may have had different forms of success they both wanted to help destroy the myth that 'London was Britain' and that there was more to the country than just that.
So on a wet day in June, Flying Scotsman and it's train was rolled onto one of train ferries from Dover to begin it's crossing of the channel to France to begin it's tour and that alone would be very different and a much easier task than before. Compared to the usual crane lifting that was needed to get the engine and train on board a ship, here everything was simply rolled on and that alone made the tour party think that this tour was going to be a success. After the short crossing, Flying Scotsman was unloaded at Dunkerque were she would remain there to be steamed up for the start of the tour the following day, though word got round the area that a British steam locomotive had arrived and a crowd of curious locals would take the chance the admire the locomotive as the engine was steamed up.
Some eagle eye observers would notice that on the back of her tender of the left and in keeping with the idea of British cars having a 'GB' sticker placed on them, someone thought it would be a fun joke to do that on Scotsman, but then someone else (no one knows who to this day) had the idea of having stickers of flags of the many countries Scotsman was visit and as they had arrived in France, a French flag sticker was placed on the other side on the back of the tender. It was a quirky thing to do that many would remember fondly on.
While it was the first time an LNER A3 had landed on French shores, it was not the first time an LNER had been in France as back in the '30's, a now deceased locomotive, Cock o' the North, was sent out for trails in France and for the Doncaster LNER minded crew that would join Scotsman around Europe must've felt they were following in footsteps of that engine. Finally on the 23rd June, Flying Scotsman was now fully steamed up and with some high quality Yorkshire coal still in her tender, she set off through the French countryside towards Paris and one could say that she looked right at home with her gleaming apple green colours and her matching chocolate and cream coaching set.
A long journey of over 3 hours followed in which a crowd followed her as she reached Paris there was to be a grand welcome there with the British ambassador to greet them and for the visiting public to exhibited the train. It is unknown how much was made during that first stop over, but according to Peglar, it would a 'bloody lot!' Scotsman would eventually head to the South of France later on in the tour, but now the engine and train headed eastwards towards Luxembourg where that part of the tour would be a purely business one to find any client out there and it was here that the European tour would be know by the crew as the 'stop/start tour' as Scotsman would have to stop many times throughout her journey either crossing borders or going onto different rail networks that were either private or nationalised and the less said about the paper work the better...
Still despite this, Flying Scotsman travelled north towards Belgium and then heading over towards the Netherlands in which both would se large crowds as they welcomed this beautiful locomotive from across the channel and during a stop in Belgium, there was the chance to have Scotsman photographed with a visiting French and German locomotive which all helped showed the different design styles from each country. Next stop was then to West Germany with the train heading up towards the German/Danish border visiting places such as Dortmund, Düsseldorf, Bremen and Hamburg to name a few and at this point the Yorkshire coal she had at the start of the tour was gone and now she was using German coal which did have mixed affects on the engine's steaming performance and when the train arrived in Denmark, she was tried when she got there. That was only a handful of the problems that were to be encountered...
Scotsman (centre) somewhere in Belgium with a visiting French (left) and German (right) locomotive
While the tour rested in Denmark with a stop over in Copenhagen, the chance was taking to scout for a better supply of coal needed for the next leg of the trip and if that wasn't bad enough, it was found out the water supply for the locomotive was a lot stronger than what Scotsman was use to and it would require an unexpected earlier boiler washout. Nonetheless all these problems were solved and Flying Scotsman proved to be a hit with the Danish public and the train headed over towards the coast where, thanks to another rail ferry service, she became the first British locomotive to travel over the Nivå Bugt straight and would descend on Swedish tracks in Helsingborg in which the trip headed towards Stockholm via Malmo, Kalmar and Norrkoping. The tour round Scandinavia would be remembered fondly by the crew on the tour as thousands of people lined the track to welcome this famous engine to their country as well as examine what the British were willing to show to the public, and this was thanks to Alan Peglar in a small way. Prior before Flying Scotsman left British shores, Alan Peglar would release the short films that had been made of his locomotive during the time he bought from the early 60's onwards out to any TV network on the continent who were interested as part of a build up for the tour. While most networks would pass on the idea, it got the interest of the networks in Denmark, Sweden and Norway who with subtitles would help promote the locomotive to the public and judging by the attention Flying Scotsman was getting in Denmark and Sweden so far, it looked as though that Flying Scotsman was becoming a household name in those countries.
Along the way whenever the tour made a stop at a major destination, the crew would often meet local politicians, British ambassadors and in the case when they arrived in Stockholm or Copenhagen, members of that country's royal family in which one David Perkins, one of the Doncaster born drivers on the tour, would remark that he lost count of the amount of royal families they encountered. Many orders for clients were met and Scotsman carried onto Karlstad in which she headed eastwards towards the Norwegian border onwards to Oslo in which at this point, the infamous steep climbs of Norway's mountain ranges did cause the locomotive problems and the crew a headache trying to work her with the best way of describing it being akin to trying to drive a family car up an icy hill. Clearly Flying Scotsman was built to run on the flat at high speed, not scaling up mountains like this and all in front of excited railway fans who followed the train by road hoping to get a goo picture of it and only witnessing a struggling A3 making heavy work of it.
Despite this, Flying Scotsman wheezed in Oslo for the opening of the tour in Norway and it had been a good thing to stop there as the long and steep climbs for the locomotive were starting to get to the engine and it was found out that one of the springs under the cab was broken and it looked to be a pretty horrendous scenario to be in, thankfully a local blacksmith helped repair the spring and with 24 hours, Scotsman was off again and headed towards the Norwegian oil capital of Stavanger in which was something the Scottish contingent on the trip wanted to make the most of as with Oil being found in the North Sea it was hoped that relations between Scotland and Norway would be settled here, though most of the public wanted to see the engine than discus any trade deals much to the annoyance of the touring party.
After that, Flying Scotsman then had to make the long and winding journey back, this time round up to Bergan and with that line having the steepest gradient on the line, it was decided that Scotsman would be assisted to help make the trip less harsh on the engine and while some would've liked to have seen the engine go at it alone, no chances were to be taken and thankfully there were no mishaps this time round as she rolled in Bergan. Finally Flying Scotsman's trip round Norway came to an end and after making one final stop in Oslo, Scotsman carried on over the Swedish border and down the Eastern coast stopping at Gothenburg to rest for the evening before catching another train ferry over to Denmark and finally out of Scandinavia. No other British locomotive could ever claim they had pulled off such a feat and that alone might've been the highlight of the tour, but in fact, they were only getting started as they prepared for the most ambitious part of the tour...steaming behind the Iron Curtain.
When the idea was actually given permission for Scotsman to do it, there were fears in the UK that she would trapped over there and that it was a fate worse then scrapping or lost at sea despite Peglar trying his best to calm these fears down that everything would be ok. At Hamburg, Scotsman was given many checks before leaving and her brave voyage into the Unknown caught the attention of local media who couldn't believe that some steam locomotive from another country was about to cross the divide from West Germany to East. Without further delay, Scotsman travelled to Berlin and with the Scotsman in Germany, it was something of a strange irony for those in the know as during WWII, the locomotive spent a lot of the time running from German bombs and now here she was travelling to Berlin as part of a goodwill gesture. Funny what life can bring.
It would be quite an emotional moment for the crew as when the train rolled into Berlin, they were amazed by the welcome they got by the Berlin citizens which in a city that was right in the eye of the storm of the Cold War, seeing something like this come round was a well needed feel good factor for the Germans and following the Scotland football team's victory in German the previous year, there had been many Germans both East and West wanting to know more about the country and the STB were only too happy to promote Scotland as did the WTB for Wales in turn. The one sad thing about it though was that with travel restrictions for people behind the Iron Curtain, it would be unlikely any would visit so the best they got was pretty much a nose up agasint the shop window. There was also the small matter of promoting British products there and find themselves a potintial uptapped market, though a cynic looking at the presentations would argue that it was nothing more that a subtle way of saying 'we're better than you'.
A stop down in Dreseden followed before the train crossed further east into Poland and that part of the tour would prove to be something of a dissapointment as hardly any marketing had gone into promoting the tour and any costs made when they arrived in Warsaw proved to be poor and thus, any further advetnures in Poland were cancelled and the trip headed south to Czechosloakia, though there was always the amsuing sight of seeing people being caught by suprise seeing some forgien locomotive travelling through the countryside heading south. There would be a better reception when the train made to Prague but the locomotive would find it hard to steam on some Polish coal which was actually that hot to burn that it melted the led plugs on the engine and repairs had to be carried out by the small crew of volunteers that had been with the engine around Europe.
Flying Scotsman ended up going through quite a fair bit of countries behind Iron Curtain heading further eastwards to Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and eventually would leave the Iron Curtain and travel to Yugoslavia, the latter being something of a running joke with the crew as when asked what language they should speak the respond would always be, 'what language?' as then they would discover the many nationalities that would make up that country. All in all, the tour behind the Iron Curtain was something of a mixed bag for as groundbreaking as it was and woul hopefully see warmer relations between East and West, sales numbers would be rather dissapointing which did leave the tour running into a bit of a loss, now that they were back over in the west they had to earn that lost money back.
The next leg on the journey would be Austria and this would be a more succesful venture as a number of business came to see the train and it was always a funny thing that Scotsman always drew a crowd everywhere it went. Now orginally in the first plan of the tour would've been for Flying Scotsman to head into Switzerland before heading down to Italy as far as Rome before heading up towards the South of France, however when the traction inspector for the tour witnessed some of the eyewatering figures for the steep climbs then the Swiss leg of the tour was cancelled and given the struggles the engine had in Norway, it was a wise call.
So off the Scotsman went travelling down towards Venice, Bologna, Florence and finally Rome in which by now the touring group must've been having of radical culture shocks with the amount of countries they had been too and Italy would be no exception. On a personal note for Alan Peglar was that it was in Italy that he owned a Villa and made a sneaky trip away from the tour to visit it with his family and even had to admit that the idea of taking Flying Scotsman to Italy was something that he never thought would ever happen, but here he was living the dream!
It was in Italy that a number of succesful orders were made that helped put the tour back into the black in terms of costs, but now the epic two month voyage was coming to an end. Heading towards the south of France passing via Milan and Turin on the way, Flying Scotsman looked right at home it and it's train arrived into Nice and to say that the engine crew, all Doncaster men, must've felt like filmstars as they travelled along the south coast heading to places such as Marseille, Montpellier, Toulouse before then heading north towards Bordeaux and Nantes. Though there was some regret that a trip to Spain couldn't been done due to the fact that Spain had a different gauge of track compared to the rest of Europe and with many British expats in that country, one could imagine what might've been made.
Apart from one leaky steam pipe at Le Mans, Flying Scotsman performed fantasticly for the rest of the tour and in the late sunny afternoon in late July, Scotsman arrived back at Dunkerque ready for the final voyage home. However Peglar would gathered everyone together for a final toast to the engine, crew and the goodwill they hoped they performed to help relations between nations and that Flying Scotsman was a great ambassdor for the United Kingdom. Without question, Flying Scotsman was now the most famous locomotive in the world and some would say that the tour would lead, in a small way, help show people around Europe that everyone is not so different. A hero's welcome awaited for them as they arrived back in Dover and it was only dawning on the now tried crew at what they had just pulled off an while Flying Scotsman would end up going for a more relaxed life hauling charter trains around the country, it was clear that this was the end of Scotsman's worldwide adventures and never would something like this be ever repeated again.
Next time: Epilogue
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So there we have, that's the end of this supplment TL and I hope many of you enjoyed reading this and thanks to @President_Lincoln for giving me permission to make this part of his TL and that maybe we might get a mention in BSiC for what Scotty did? Hehe
Anyway, one final update to come in which will show how different Scotty's life in presevation differs here in this TL. So until then, see you soon!