All aboard the Flying Scotsman for cocktails, movies and dinner!
Research for my 1920s murder mysteries
I had a plot (family secrets), a setting (a castle in Northumberland) and all I needed was to transport my sleuth there from her usual setting of Bloomsbury in London. I began with a search query: how would I get from London to Newcastle in 1925? And before I knew it, I was aboard the runaway train of research into the Flying Scotsman, probably the most famous train in the world.
I know that long east coast journey to Newcastle well. My grandparents lived in Whitley Bay when I was a child, and I was occasionally packed aboard the Intercity 125 at Kings Cross with my little suitcase, sandwiches, and instructions not to get off until Grandma met me at Newcastle. I’m pretty sure I was eight the first time this thrilling solo journey happened. Times change.
I travelled it again last summer, for a cycling holiday that introduced me to plenty of Northumbrian castles and sparked the idea for the book. It’s a glorious journey through splendid countryside and fine cities like York and Durham, and the coastal section is amazing.
But I’ve never been a trainspotter, so my research into the Flying Scotsman was from a standing start. First question, did I mean the train service or the locomotive? The Flying Scotsman was originally a train service which left Kings Cross every morning at 10am bound for Edinburgh, starting way back in June 1862. The 392-mile journey in 1862 took 10.5 hours. But it wasn’t until 1924 that the locomotive named after the route took to the rails.
The Flying Scotsman locomotive was one of a new type, the ‘Super-Pacific’ engine, commissioned by the new London & North Eastern Railway in 1923. It became famous largely because it was a star exhibit at the 1924 British Empire Exhibition, where it was exhibited alongside Stephenson’s Rocket - the newest and the oldest railway engines side by side. King George V visited and (of course) went into the cab to play at being a train driver.
Don’t worry; I have about as much interest in the specifics of the engine and its revolutionary tender corridor, increased boiler power and, um, so on, as the next non-trainspotter. I’m certainly not going to tell you about it. If you like that sort of thing I direct you to the Railway Wonders of the World website, which I’m sure is very sound on engine numbers and tonnage.
What I needed to know was what it looked like (original livery was a pleasing apple green), what it felt like to travel on the Flying Scotsman, and how long it would take for my sleuth Marjorie Swallow and her companions to reach their destination. Most of the histories I came across quoted the time from London to Edinburgh (or the record-breaking non-stop run that saw the train reach 100mph for the first time in 1934, on an experimental run between London and Leeds). However, some determined digging found an old pamphlet with timetable for the early 1930s in the Science Museum collection, which allowed me to make the necessary calculations.
More importantly, the pamphlet listed the onboard attractions: hairdressing salon (3 shillings for Waving and Curling) and ‘Ladies Retiring Room’ with attendant and all conveniences.
There was an ‘all electric kitchen’ with ‘a first class chef in charge’, and food served in First Class in ‘a private dining room decorated in Louis XVI style’. High tea of ham, bacon and eggs with bread and butter cost 2 shillings sixpence, and you could have tea with a cake or pastry for a shilling. Even more exciting, there was a cocktail bar, with a full cocktail list including the signature Flying Scotsman cocktail, although sadly it doesn’t list the ingredients.
A trawl through the British Newspaper Archive discovered ever-more ways to make the journey fly by: a special ‘cinema saloon’ for the showing of a film in 1924, reported in the Motherwell Times.
The new rolling stock caught the imagination of many newspapers in 1924, particularly the all-electric kitchen with ‘ranges and ovens, grills, tanks and hot plates for the warming of sauces’. The Daily Chronicle’s special correspondent had a tour and marvelled at the ‘mechanical marvel’ with its ‘little switches that control all these appliances’ and lack of ‘dirt and fumes’.
This all sounded absolutely glorious, but I came up short on illustrations or photographs of the interior of the train’s carriages. YouTube is stuffed with videos of the train gliding through the countryside, or of men having a lovely time shovelling coal into the firebox, or tooting the whistle. There aren’t many of ladies sipping cocktails or having their hair Waved and Curled in the salon. And what I probably need is to know about travelling third class, as my characters were likely to do. The 1932 brochure promised that the third class dining cars ‘surpass any previously supplied on this train’, but it doesn’t say what they are like.
The final piece of the jigsaw fell into place with a rather splendid Warner Bros thriller made in 1930, just after films transitioned from silent to talking movies. The Flying Scotsman was filmed largely on the famous train itself. Finally, a view of the third class restaurant! (No Louis XVI, although it does have tablecloths.)
One other item about the Flying Scotsman in the British Newspaper Archive caught my eye: when it was late, it made the papers. Imagine if the hour-long delay of a train from London to York made the papers today!
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Next time: indie author superstar Jo Penn shares her research loves and secrets.
I once had dinner on The Flying Scotsman as we glided through the Surrey Hills it was lovely.
We had the window slightly open and a piece of soot landed on our pristine white tablecloth.
A new book is exciting.
A new Marjorie Swallow novel ? Wonderful!. We stood on the foot plate of the Flying Scotsman when it came to Hartington Steam Fair years sgo