Cycling home last night I saw a bunch of amateur paparazzi standing by the road, cameras poised. I stopped and asked “Who’s coming? Is it Beyonce?”. A lady pointed to the train line on the bridge and said “No – the Flying Scotsman is due here in about 2 mins”.

Well, that seemed well worth waiting for so I spent a few minutes chatting to the very friendly train spotters. As it came past, I grabbed a quick video of it zipping through to the right, then eclipsed by a modern electric zipping through to the left. Impressive speed, but smaller than I imagined.

Coincidentally or not, on the radio this morning (Today program on R4) I heard a spokesman talking about trying to re-introduce steam into the current rail network. An interesting idea, but hard to see how it could easily be achieved without burning fossil fuels, so on the opposite path to a more more renewable based electric society.