UPDATE: Flying Scotsman not coming to Peterborough tonight after mechanical breakdown
This morning passenger carriages for the special trip were pulled from London King’s Cross to York, where the engine is kept at the National Railway Museum, by diesel locomotive.
The Flying Scotsman was due to depart York at 4.35pm to make the return journey and sources had told the Peterborough Telegraph that it was due in the city shortly after 7pm.
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Hide AdA spokesman for British Transport Police Peterborough said: “We’ve had official confirmation the Flying Scotsman engine is NOT on track tonight due to a fault; the carriages are behind a Diesel engine.”
Built in 1923 for the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) at Doncaster Works to a design of H.N. Gresley, it was employed on long-distance express trains on the LNER and its successors, British Railways Eastern and North-Eastern Regions, notably on the London to Edinburgh Flying Scotsman train service after which it was named.
The locomotive set two world records for steam traction, becoming the first steam locomotive to be officially authenticated at reaching 100 miles per hour (160.9 km/h) on 30 November 1934, and then setting a record for the longest non-stop run by a steam locomotive when it ran 422 miles (679 km) on 8 August 1989 while in Australia.