Flying Scotsman in America

A fascinating collection of previously unpublished images documenting the Flying Scotsman in the United States, with a particular focus on the 1970 tour. Published to coincide with the hundredth anniversary of the locomotive being built.

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In 1970 two unlikely characters were part of Flying Scotsman’s tour of America and Canada. Describing their adventure of a lifetime are Richard Hinchcliffe, who was the thirteen-year-old son of tour manager George Hinchcliffe, and Bill Wagner, at that time a twenty-one-year-old train-chasing college student from Illinois. Their intense experience from the summer of 1970 is still very much part of their lives. Now, over fifty years later, they come together again using Wagner’s magnificent photographs and Hinchcliffe’s inside story to bring you their extraordinary record of how the world’s most famous steam locomotive captured American hearts.

This is the untold story of Flying Scotsman’s 1970 tour of America from Texas to Wisconsin and into Canada. It hauled a trade mission along the eastern seaboard in 1969 – good for British business, but bad for the finances of the owner Alan Pegler. In 1970 the train set off again without the trade mission, calling at smaller venues, travelling on the cheapest tracks and meeting thousands of people along the way.