On Friday I went off to Norden at some ungodly hour in the morning to grab a parking space before it filled up with rail enthusiasts. Where’s Norden? It’s the park and ride at the northern terminus of the Swanage Railway. The Swanage line was closed due to cuts in 1972 and by 1979 had already begun reopening as a private heritage railway. It’s taken a long time to restore – by the time I was a kid on the Santa Special in the late 80s or early 90s they’d only restored it to Herston Halt or maybe Harmon’s Cross, about halfway up the current line. Corfe Castle and Norden reopened in the mid 90s. The line is now joined to the mainline at Wareham but those last few miles are only opened to rail traffic once in a blue moon – such as when they’re bringing the most famous locomotive in the world down to Swanage.
The Flying Scotsman is visiting the Swanage Railway right now – yes, right now. Today is Monday, I was down there three days ago and it continues running until tomorrow. It’ll be on display until April 10th.
So why is the Flying Scotsman the most famous locomotive in the world? Mostly because it was the first steam loco to hit 100mph – well, no. First to be authenticated at 100mph which I guess is technically slightly different. It also set a distance record, 422 miles non-stop across Australia but that wasn’t until 1989 when it was already famous and had been saved from the scrap twice. It’s now internationally beloved. I can’t see it facing the scrap ever again.
Not only was I going to see this most venerable and beloved of overgrown kettles, I was going to ride on it. Even better, my ticket included free rides on the steam-hauled feeder trains between Norden and Swanage, so two return trips for the price of one! Well, if you look at the price on a normal day, two return trips for the price of two and a half but whatever.
I took the feeder from Norden at 9am in time to get down to Swanage for my Flying Scotsman trip at 10:05, the first trip of the day and the first trip of the entire event. As it turned out, that meant the volunteers at the Swanage Railway hadn’t quite figured out crowd control. They’ve done steam events before but nothing on this scale. At one point there were 1200 people milling around on the platform at Swanage. That’s 12.5% of the entire population of Swanage, all squeezed onto a single heritage railway platform. It was, as described by staff, “heavily congested and getting dangerous” as rail enthusiasts gathered around to see the Flying Scotsman up close. It’s big – three feet longer than Battle of Britain Class “spam can” Manston that usually does a lot of hauling at Swanage, taller (although I can’t find Manston’s height) and with a general appearance of being bigger. It’s also a much more conventionally shaped than Manston, which is shaped more like an After Eight box on wheels.
Anyway, I boarded in plenty of time because the platform was a bit chaotic. It was cold – no heating on the Flying Scotsman. I guess the driver and fireman don’t mind, they’ve got a nice bit of warmth coming off the loco, but I found it very cold in the carriage. It filled up – not full to the brim, there was an empty seat next to me but not many others. A lot more small children than I’d expected. I’d imagined a lot of Men of a Certain Age and a few bored wives but it turns out fans of the Flying Scotsman are a little more diverse than that. I mean, yes, the vast majority of them are indeed past, at or approaching a Certain Age but there were a lot of grizzly toddlers and small boys. Not so many independent younger women.
Considering the Flying Scotsman is known for its speed, it would have been nice to have got a taste for it. You can’t get up a lot of speed on five and a half miles of track but 28mph was the highest we got up to, according to my GPS. We clattered gently across the countryside, six ordinary carriages and the all-glass Pullman observation coach filled with people who’d paid a small fortune to be carried eleven miles with three white-suited stewards whose principal job seemed to be acting as personal photographers.
Because there’s no way to turn the locomotive at Norden, it went north facing backwards, nose to the train, tender to the front. Once we arrived, we all piled off so we could run up the bank to watch it be taken from what was now the back of the train to what was now the front, now pointing the right way for good picturesque photos. This was the point at which it occurred to me to put on my extra layer because it was still freezing.
On the way back, I decided to abandon my nice window seat in favour of standing at the end of the carriage where I could stick my head out of the window. It turns out there’s a lot of heads poking out of windows. Being able to see and smell and taste – and yes, be blinded by – the loco felt a lot more like I was actually on the Flying Scotsman than just sitting in a carriage. The wind in my hair, trying to freeze my face off, the particles of soot and ash blowing into my eyes, the smoky-chocolatey smell of the smoke, the clickety-click of the rails, the shouts of all the spectators standing at every single level crossing, many in fields, campsites otherwise abandoned in March, farmers who’ve driven their tractors down to the far end of their fields, the people who live alongside the railway standing in their gardens with cameras, accepting payment from people to come and stand in their gardens.
Once I was done with my ride and standing among the 1200 people on the platform to see it up close, I took the feeder train back to Norden and then walked down to the field to watch the third services of the day come in and out. Actually, I ran down to the station at Corfe to watch it go back out. Then I got the bus back to Swanage to go to my favourite chocolate shop and my favourite cafe and look at the sea.
As I said, the Flying Scotsman is still running until tomorrow. As I write this on Sunday afternoon, there were still seats available on two Tuesday services so if you want to ride on the Scotsman, get down there quickly. If you’re happy just to see it, it’ll be sitting there (maybe even in steam?) for the next two weeks.