The Sunset Scotsman

A new photograph from Trevor Ermel

Gresley’s A3 Pacific 4472, Flying Scotsman, crosses the River Tyne on the King Edward Bridge at Newcastle on 28th September 1975, running south out of Newcastle Central with the LNER Society Railtours’ Rail 150 Steam Special, bound for London St Pancras.

The King Edward Bridge carries the East Coast Main Line across the Tyne on a run of steel lattice spans, high above the water and close enough to Newcastle Central that a train crossing it is still finding its feet after leaving the platforms. Central itself, designed by John Dobson and opened in 1850, was already well over a century old by the date of this photograph, its great curved train shed having seen every kind of East Coast working from the age of the Stephensons to the last main line steam. Below the bridge, the river runs between the city and Gateshead; above it, a Gresley Pacific in full cry sends smoke and noise out over the water in a way nothing else on the route in 1975 could manage.

This was a heavy train to haul. Thirteen coaches were booked for the special, with the possibility of two more being added at Sheffield to cope with the demand the Rail 150 celebrations had brought, and a load of that size tells on a Pacific working out of a major terminus. Earlier that day, working north out of York, 4472 had struggled with it. Here, having just pulled away from Newcastle Central and out across the Tyne, the locomotive seems to be getting to grips with the job, the steelwork of the bridge passing beneath a Gresley Pacific finding its rhythm again after the effort of the outward leg.

The date sits inside 1975’s Rail 150 celebrations, the year the railways marked a hundred and fifty years since the Stockton and Darlington Railway opened the world’s first public railway to use steam locomotives. Excursions and specials ran across the network that year, drawing enthusiasts in numbers the operators had not always planned for, which is why a train booked for thirteen coaches carried the possibility of two more being added along the way. Flying Scotsman was a natural choice for the LNER Society’s own steam special that year: few locomotives in the company’s history carried more public recognition, and putting 4472 on a working the length of Newcastle to London St Pancras was itself a statement about what the anniversary was for.

4472 was one of Nigel Gresley’s Pacifics for the London and North Eastern Railway, built to the A1 design and later rebuilt to Class A3, and by 1975 the locomotive was already the most famous name in British steam, kept in the public eye long after most of its classmates had gone for scrap. Withdrawal from British Railways service in 1963 did not end the story; it began a long private life under successive owners, kept running on specials of exactly this kind, crossing bridges like the King Edward long after the railway that built it had ceased to exist. Flying Scotsman has now been preserved for longer than it was ever in service with the LNER and British Railways, a fact that says as much about what people have been prepared to do to keep this one locomotive running as it does about the locomotive itself.

Why this photograph?

What stays with you in this photograph is the effort rather than the fame. Flying Scotsman on a special working is nowhere near a rare sight in the record of the last fifty years, but a photograph that catches the strain of an early struggle out of York and the visible recovery of it over the Tyne is a rarer thing: the best known steam locomotive in the country, for one crossing of one bridge, simply working hard for its living, the way everything else running for Rail 150 that year had to.

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The photograph

• Locomotive: Gresley A3 4472 ‘Flying Scotsman’
• Location: Newcastle, crossing the River Tyne on the King Edward Bridge
• Date: 28th September 1975
• Working: LNER Society Railtours ‘Rail 150 Steam Special’, Newcastle to London St Pancras
• Photographer: Trevor Ermel

Copyright Notice

This photograph is the copyright of Trevor Ermel. It is reproduced here by permission and offered as fine art prints and framed editions by Memories of Motion.

The image may not be copied, reproduced, redistributed, transmitted or used in any form, in print or digitally, without the prior written consent of the copyright holder. All rights reserved.