Technically The Flying Scotsman was a passenger train service that operated between London and Edinburgh. The famous loco we all know and love adopted the name in 1923 but, let's be honest - when you think of The Flying Scotsman you're thinking of the classic LNER Class A3 4472 Apple Green design. And what a beauty she is! (Anyone else think it's weird we personify locomotives as female?)

Anyway, it was designed by Sir Nigel Gresley and it became widely known as the fastest train in the world after cutting travel times from London to Edinburgh significantly, hitting a record breaking 100mph in service.

Nerd Alert. Let's talk wheel arrangements and the Whyte notation, as it's quite important when talking about steam locomotives. The Class A3 4472 is a 4-6-2 denoting that it has 4 'Pony' wheels underneath the smoke box; these are unpowered wheels and denote the 4. We then move on to the 6 powered 'Driving' wheels connected by the coupling rods to the cylinders, denoting the 6 and finally we have the trailing wheels on a single axel giving us the 2.

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