The world's most wonderful Peppercorn

Standing proudly in its sparkling new green livery, it is the ultimate big boy’s toy – the first steam locomotive built in more than 40 years.

And the privilege of getting it under way on its first official journey will go to Prince Charles.

Charles, whose investiture as Prince of Wales came months after the last steam train service was scrapped, has agreed to name – and drive – the Tornado steam engine at a special ceremony next year.



The Prince will ride on the footplate as the 105-ton engine pulls the Royal Train – with Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall as a passenger – on its inaugural journey in February.

The engine, whose full title is Peppercorn Class A1 Pacific 60163 Tornado, was built for £3million following donations from thousands of enthusiasts.

Tornado was unveiled while undergoing tests last month and will go into active service on the East Coast Main Line, pulling ‘specials’. It will leave its home at the National Railway Museum in York for the Royal journey before embarking on a series of tours between York, Newcastle and London.

Perhaps unsurprisingly for a man who often champions traditional architecture and farming methods, the Prince has an abiding passion for steam engines.

He makes sure that at least one of his public appearances each year involves riding or driving a steam locomotive. The Royal Train that took him and Camilla on their honeymoon at Balmoral was pulled by a steam engine.



The A1s were among the last steam engines to be withdrawn from service in favour of the more reliable but less romantic diesels.

British Rail scrapped them in 1966 and the final steam-powered journeys took place in November 1968, a few months before Charles’s investiture as the Prince of Wales.

No A1s survived, so in 1990 a group of railway enthusiasts began their project to build an engine from scratch. They set up the A1 Steam Locomotive Trust, asking supporters to donate the price of a pint of beer a week – £1.25 at the time – and slowly completed Tornado. After 18 years, the engine made its first run, of 120 yards, along track in a rail yard in Darlington on November 4.

It completed a further successful test run two weeks later, reaching 75mph between York and Newcastle.

Since the tests, Tornado has been given its new coat of Apple Green paint, the same shade as the first 30 A1s and the original colour of the Flying Scotsman.

Tornado will reach top speeds of up to 100mph with shorter ten-carriage trains.

Trust chairman Mark Allatt said: ‘The steam locomotive is the nearest thing Man has created to a living thing. You can’t turn it on. You can’t turn it off. You coax it along and it hisses and it bubbles and that is not like a modern machine.

‘A child when they first draw a picture of a train, they never draw diesel, they draw a steam engine. And that is what it is all about.’


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