Granddad, Grandma and Uncle Wayne travelled behind Flying Scotsman not too long after the engine was purchased by the National Railway Museum in York. Prior to this, the loco had been owned by a few private individuals - two of whom went bankrupt due to the loco. It wasn't in a great state then, and a little while after it was dismantled for a full restoration due for completion in 2012. Unfortunately that restoration was botched, and a lot of things had to be done all over again which is why it has taken until now for Flying Scotsman to hit the tracks again. Although its had a number of 'test' runs (carrying paying passengers in carriages during some of these 'tests') both on a heritage railway and the main line, the loco was having is 'debut' on a run from London's Kings Cross to York, billed as "The Inaugural Run". At £450 per person, riding this train was out of the question for me - and I didn't win tickets to be on the train (I tried!) - but I thought I might try and see it. Given all the hype and publicity, it seemed certain that it would be bedlam at Kings Cross the morning of its trip - but I knew it would be relocating from York to London the evening before, and that seemed like a better chance to see it. So I attempted to do so.
I don't expect this will be the only time I get to see it. In fact, I hope to ride behind Granddad's favourite steam locomotive while I am over here. However that hope is possibly a bit naive now, for two reasons - reason 1 being virtually all of the opportunities to ride behind Flying Scotsman are already sold out; and reason two being that virtually all the main line trips behind it have been planned with West Coast Railways, a company which in the last few weeks been banned from operating trains on the main lines. So those excursions surely must be up in the air - the Inaugural run only managed to run because the organisers switched to DB Schenker to run the train (the only other company able to run steam on main lines) but they don't have the scope nor interest to do all of them. Maybe that's partly why the Inaugural Run cost £450 per person - but I'm sure the NRM hiked up the charges because they could. Its price gouging, sure but when the restoration has gone massively overbudget at a cost of £4.7 million, I suppose you want to recoup the costs as much as possible. All of the other excursions are reasonable prices, but yeah I don't know. I really want to. We'll see, but at the very least I must go see it somewhere properly at some point. At the very least, I can say I've seen it now...
(PS: I don't like doing things out of chronological order - Sweden and Norway should be before this post, but writing that is a mission so this one gets to sneak ahead).