No not Arabian Ian... Just watched Michael Portaloo on Yesterday visiting Donny. Brought back some memories. It showed Flying Scotsman outside Donny running sheds. Back in 1969, me and my mate Chris Guest used to cycle to Donny (from Bolton on Dearne) most sundays to visit the sheds and Donny Plant. One day we sneaked round the sheds and found Scotsman in it's own little shed at the side. We sat in the cab to eat our sarnies. Then I remembered the day that the Blue Peter engine was renamed in Donny plant, complete with John Noakes et al. We all mobbed the engine and many lads climbed on it. It was all on Blue Peter on the telly.... Great days.
Spent many happy hours with my mates and other trainspotters overlooking the main London line at Hexthorpe Bridge in Doncaster. The shout used to go up " streak" and we all used to then clamour forward to catch sight of "the Flying Scotsman", " Sir Nigel Gresley", "Mallard" or one of the other fast trains in that class. One of the lads went on to work at the Plant and was involved in building railway carriages. Along with other apprentices as lads do , they enjoyed " snowball" fights with the white granules they used to insulate the cavities in the carriages. In his early fifties he developed a chest condition. Tragically, after a series of tests, he was told the white granules were asbestos and in keeping with around fourteen former workmates he was diagnosed with asbestosis which lead to his untimely death at the age of fifty three.
We used to sit on the old cattle dock, where the bus station butts on to the railway station having arrived on the 14 service from Barnsley oh and Flying Scotsman isn;t a "streak" it's an A3
What a sad story. One of my mates died of asbestosis 4 years ago. Apprentice electrician served his time and worked for a couple of years then packed it in . Went to uni and qualified as a teacher which he stuck at until retirement. Unfortunately his early working life meant he suffered a terrible breathless end at the age of 66.
I still have my original black and white photos from visit to Doncaster and York from the sixties. 60103 was quite a regular locomotive - it must have been shedded at Doncaster, or Grantham, I would guess (I have the old shed book, so could check). I think that all the A3s were named after race-horses, which explains the strange names, like Saint Mungo, Tracery, Ladas and so on. I also had the honoured of being pulled back from Doncaster to Wakefield at the end of one such trip by none other than 60022 Mallard. It crawled the distance (so much for holding the world speed record) and reached Wakefield about fifteen minutes late, but we'll have to put that down to signalling, rather poor locomotive performance. I just loved Doncaster as a venue for train-spotting. You had about three miles view of straight track from Carr Lane bridge to the south to the Don Valley bridge on the north side of the station. You used to hear the bell-tone whistle of the A4s before they appeared and were at their best at speed on one of the non-stop trains on the middle two tracks. I got in the way of an attempted photo by Eric Treacy on one occasion. He was not best pleased, but at least he did not swear at me. I got the brilliant shot of A1 Redgauntlet at top speed (still got the photo in black and white) and he didn't. I am sure that he forgave me and took many other photos almost as good as mine with my Zeiss Verra camera. Happy days. Ah, the smell of the steam and oil.
Can you explain why the loco was renumbered so many times ... 60103, 103, 4472 etc. What was the point of that? There was a very interesting programme on tv last night about the FS presented by Rob Bell. Has been on a few times.
It was built by the Great Northern Railway (GNR) and originally numbered 1472. Then in 1921 the old independent railways were amalgamated into 4 big companies the GNR became part of the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) so some engines were renumbered because numbers would otherwise have been duplicated on several engines. Scotsman became 4472 at that time. After WW2 the railways were nationalised by the Atlee government to form BR. All the Great Western engines retained their numbers, but all the rest had to be renumbered so Scotsman became 60103 (briefly E103). Edit. It was briefly 502 and then 103 just before nationalisation when the LNER did some renumbering to rationalise their numbering system - the A3 engines were originally class A1 but were rebuilt with higher boiler pressure amongst other improvements. BR simply added 60000 to all LNER numbers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LNER_Class_A3_4472_Flying_Scotsman
