Steaming ahead to a bygone age

Jul 30 2008 by Peter Elson, Liverpool Daily Post

After steam trains were banned 40 years ago by British Railways, Peter Elson experiences their triumphant return to Liverpool

Click here to see the The Art in the Age of Steam express gallery

SEEING sunrise over Scarborough was, I confess, never on my must-do travel experiences, but I can now tick it off the list.

There I was, at 6am with around 300 other passengers, both bleary and bright-eyed, milling about on the excursion platforms at the famous Yorkshire resort.

We were getting steam up to board The Art in the Age of Steam express for Liverpool, which is part of a new imaginative wave of attracting tourism to the city.

With the added incentive of visiting the Tall Ships’ Races event in the city, the 360-seater train, mainly of first class dining coaches was sold-out.

This trip and a following series of excursions from Liverpool in August was the brainchild of Claire Rider, marketing manager of National Museums Liverpool.

Not content with promoting the Walker Art Gallery’s highly successful exhibition themed on steam trains, Claire wanted to involve real trains too.

For this she enlisted Nigel Dobbing, managing director of The Railway Touring Company, which had run Britain’s longest steam train Great Britain excursion from Penzance to Thurso.

The result is that in the month marking the 40th anniversary of British Railways’ official last mainline steam train (which started and ended at Liverpool), we have a feast of steam from Lime Street station.

For the first time in decades, Liverpool passengers can travel directly to North Wales and Carlisle on return services.

With the trains supported by the Liverpool Daily Post & Echo, obviously it was essential I rail-tested this inaugural run.

I took along as my one man control group, tourism expert and train buff Stephen Done, curator of Liverpool FC Museum and Stadium Tour.

But as we stood on the platform at 6am in the Scarborough sunshine there was no sign of Claire. Stephen raised her on the mobile. Where was she?

“I’m just finishing my Tesco run. Got to get the stuff to entertain 15 young boys at my son’s birthday party tomorrow.”

That’s what I call multi-tasking. No wonder Nigel capitulated so readily to her demands. As you gathered, this trip was not for wimps. It embraced the Victorian steam age ethos that a good day out means commitment, hard work and endurance – for the passengers as well as train crew.

With a departure at 6.41am, most passengers were up by 5.30am. We stayed in the delightful Warwick House B&B, in Westborough road, conveniently by the station.

The evening before, we had smelled the drifting smoke from the steam locomotive simmering at the station ready for the next day’s early start.

Like kids in a cartoon strip attracted by the aroma of a newly-baked apple pie cooling on a window sill, we couldn’t resist following this trace in the air.

Soon we were leaning over the station’s picket fence gawping at the great locomotive. This dark green, man-made slumbering green dragon was the 1937-built, streamlined pacific No 60009, Union of South Africa.