Alan Pegler

Alan Pegler0:00

Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Disc's archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen sixty nine.

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Each week, a well-known person is asked the question, if you were to be cast away alone on a desert island, which eight gramophone records would you choose to have with you?

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As usual, the castaway is introduced by Roy Plumley.

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Our castaway this week, ladies and gentlemen, is the owner of the world's best-known steam locomotive, the Flying Scotsman.

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Alan Pegler.

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mister Pegler, I know you'll have many interests apart from steam locomotives. Is music one of them?

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Yes, it is. I've always had uh music as a bit of a relaxation in the background. Have you ever studied it?

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Only the piano as a as a child at school and not very successfully. Do you play records much? Yes, quite a lot.

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How have you chosen your eight records for this desert island? Nostalgically?

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Mostly, yes. I haven't uh chosen them on the basis that I'm going to sit down every night and play the records. I'm sure I'm not. But uh I would like, from the nostalgia point of view, to be able to

Alan Pegler1:13

The

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Recapture

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memories of earlier days and all this kind of thing when I was with other people. What's the first one you've chosen?

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The first one I've chosen is Stranger on the Shore.

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Because I like it anyway, and I think that in this situation of being cast away, one's got to perhaps look on the funny side, and it seems to be awfully appropriate as a title.

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This is the old Akka Bilk recording, is it? That's right, yes.

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Stranger on the Shore played by Aka Bilk. What's your second choice?

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Well, my second choice, I go on to Handel. I've decided, after going through this in some detail, that Handel appears to be almost my favourite composer.

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And uh I've chosen from um

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Solomon, the arrival of the Queen of Sheba, which has always been a tremendous favourite of mine.

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Handel's Arrival of the Queen of Sheba, played by the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields.

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Mr. Baker, what part of the country do you come from?

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I lived for many years in North Nottinghamshire, but I was born in London, and for the last four years I've been living in London. What was your very first ambition?

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To be an engine driver, strangely enough. And you're one of the few who's really achieved that, Alice. Yes, I have, just about. Were railways always a hobby as a small boy? Yes, from a very, very small age indeed. In fact, from my earliest memories, really, I can remember wanting to go and watch the trains and then taking engine numbers and all that kind of thing. Yes.

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And when you left school, you went to university?

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I just had a year at university, a student of the war. Mhm. Where did you serve?

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Uh well, I had a short time in the Middle East and uh then I was invalided back to England and then got into intelligence in another form of the services and

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Generally rather a sort of messy war fiddling around. Yes, and when the war was over? When the war was over I went straight into the family business. But you kept up your interest in railways? Yes, it was always there and uh strangely enough got even worse I think after the war than it had been before.

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What practical form did it take?

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Uh uh after the war I think um all the interest of

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The fact that the railways were being nationalised and all this kind of thing, perhaps not the sort of things that one had hoped were going to happen, but nevertheless it was a very interesting period to see how things were developing and reshaping. Yes. You used to run excursions. Yes, I started that around about 1950, finding an excuse to run a special train. For example, the Festival of Britain in 1951, I decided this was a very good excuse to run a special train from the north of England to London.

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And so I laid on a special train and that really started a whole series of trips that I've been running more or less ever since. What was there special about them?

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Special inasmuch as they either had a special type of locomotive hauling them or special kind of food served on the train or a special type of thing laid on when the passengers arrived at their destination in the way of a theatre or whatever it might be. Yes.

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You became an executive of British Rail. Yes, in 1954 I was asked by Sir Brian Robertson to become one of the first members of the

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Area boards that were being set up.

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And I did in fact serve for nine years as a member of the Eastern Area Board of the British Transport Commission. This was a paid post. Yes, it was. Now, you were taking a lofty executive's eye view of a big railway system. At the same time, you were having a great time messing about with a very small system. Yes. Yes, I'd been lucky enough a few years earlier, about 1950.

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to make the acquaintance of the Festiniog Railway Company, which is a small railway company in North Wales.

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which is still a statutory company, in other words, operating under its own Act of Parliament.

Speaker 26:26

Mm-hmm.

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and this line had been closed down in 1946, hadn't had any passenger services since 1939.

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And with the help of a friend in the legal profession, I was able to do a takeover.

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and make myself the chairman and appoint a new board of directors.

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And then I approached the Ministry of Transport to see if one could get this line reopened.

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And we've been gradually reopening it in sections ever since. Yes. This is a purely a tourist railway. Purely a tourist railway now. Yes, it was originally built to carry slate, but we don't do any freight traffic at all on it now. This is mountain scenery. Mountain scenery at its very best. I've been on quite a number of narrow gauge lines in places like Switzerland, and I don't know any line that's got finer scenery than this one. Yes. And a splendid attraction for Wales in having a licence bar on every train. Yes, indeed. This is a very, very good selling point indeed. And I'm sure has something to do with the enormous increase in traffic that we've had in recent years. Let's break off your third record. What next?

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Well, I am quite unashamedly a terrific sentimentalist and I know there are going to be times on this island of mine when I'm going to feel a little bit sad and a little bit lonely and I'm going to think of all the things that I might have done.

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Had I only got around to doing them.

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And I have always loved the voice of Kathleen Ferrier, and I have always loved the song What Is Life?

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Kathleen Ferdy are singing What Is Life from Glux, Orpheus and Eurydice.

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Now in 1963 you bought the only remaining A3 Pacific locomotive, the Flying Scotsman. Was it advertised for sale or was it your idea to buy it?

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Now it is my idea to buy it. The fact that I was at that time serving on this particular board of British Railways, I could see the way things were going and what was going to happen really at the time that we've arrived at now.

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The time was going to come, in other words, when steam locomotives were going to vanish altogether.

Speaker 29:25

Yeah.

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And this particular class of locomotive appeared to begin to have become extinct. There was no particular preservation plan for one of these engines.

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So I set about trying to preserve one of them and this seemed to me, out of the 80-odd in the class, the one to try and preserve. Yes. Now all steam has gone from the British Rail system. Yes, British Railways ran their last main line steam train on the 11th of August 1968 and since then there's been nothing at all on the main lines apart from number 4472 Flying Scotsman. Yes, was there only one Flying Scotsman? Surely many locomotives pulled that train? Yes, many locomotives hauled the train. There is still to this day a train service between London and Edinburgh called the Flying Scotsman, but there was only one steam locomotive ever given that name and this is the original one built in 1922, entered service 1923 and it's that original one that I've got. Yes. It was the first locomotive to officially run at 100 miles an hour, wasn't it? That's quite right, yes. How much did you pay for it? I paid £3,000 for it. Well this is a scrap price isn't it? Well it was an absolute bargain price really. It was in good condition. Apart from being serviced it's also been repainted in its old original livery. Yes it has. In fact at this very moment it's due to go in for yet another repainting. It'll be either the fourth or fifth repaint it's had in a matter of six years. Who does all this work for you? British Railways do the painting work. Do they also keep it for you?

Alan Pegler10:51

Do you

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They do, they house it and they do day-to-day maintenance on it. All that kind of thing is covered by the contract.

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And you've had it back on the London to Edinburgh run? Yes, we did London to Edinburgh and not only London to Edinburgh but non-stop London to Edinburgh on the 1st of May 1968 and then back again non-stop from Edinburgh to London on the 4th of May. Isn't there a technical difficulty here that with the passing of steam the water trucks have been removed from the track? Yes, it's a very major difficulty and what I've done, I've had a second tender supplied to the locomotive which carries water only.

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So instead of carrying around about 5,000 gallons of water, we now carry around over 11,000 gallons of water, which of course is terribly heavy. It cuts down the payload a bit. Of course. But it does mean one can go very much greater distances without stopping. Who drives?

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British Railways provide the crew, driver and fireman, and an inspector because of course you can get a driver put on these days who may not have been on a steam engine for perhaps four or five years.

Alan Pegler11:49

Yeah.

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You're on the footplate yourself always? I personally am. I have a permanent pass to ride on the footplate and I never let the locomotive go on a run unless I can go myself.

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As a passenger or do you have a job to do?

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Well, I assist as best I can. If the farmer's getting tired, I take a hand with the shovel. I get coal forward in the tender so that the farmer can get at it. And if everybody on the engine is thirsty, I go off and get some tea for them.

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Can you get through the tender? Yes, the original Flying Scotsman locomotive had what they call a corridor tender.

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of which about a dozen were built, and I have now got two corridor tenders you can get right through from the footplate into the carriages.

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You have a plan to take it to the United States, I believe? Uh yes, provided the money can be raised. Um it's an enormously expensive operation to do. I couldn't possibly do it myself.

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And it's entirely dependent on whether one could get enough backing from other people.

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Let's have your fourth record. What shall we have?

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Well, I think it's an appropriate moment to have a little bit of the voice of 4472 herself. And this is a flying Scotsman pulling away from Durham on a test run in February 1968 when we were seeing whether London-Edinburgh non-stop was a practical proposition or not. This is the automotive really working quite hard pulling away from Durham station coming south.

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4472 The Flying Scotsman Herself

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Now

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With the Flying Scotsman, we've been looking back. Now let's look forward. You are no longer a member of the British Railways Eastern Region Board.

Speaker 214:16

Yeah.

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Um what

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What kind of future do you see for British Rail? Is it ever going to be...

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economically self-sufficient.

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I think as far as main lines are concerned, there's a tremendous uh potential because there's been all this legislation that took place in 1968 and I think that there's no doubt at all that

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There are terrific possibilities for British Railways from 1969 onwards.

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And of course on the passenger side, this plan that's been announced for things like turbo trains running at speeds initially up to 125 miles an hour, later up to 150.

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I have no doubt at all that these things will be enormously successful.

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Do you think Lord Beeching was justified in cutting out the branch lines?

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I think he was justified in terms of the general concept. I'm sure the general concept was right.

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But I think, as so often happens, I think perhaps he went at it a little bit too vigorously and perhaps cut down more than was strictly necessary. I mean, let's face it, if you've got a tree and you decide there's one or two withered branches on it, you can chop off those branches and that's fair enough. But if you go and chop the lot off, you've got rather a ridiculous looking tree trunk left at the end of it.

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Right, let's have another record. What number five?

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Well, here again, slightly with railways in mind, I've had one or two films made about Flying Scotsmen, and one particular film opens with a very fine aerial shot of the locomotive running at high speed, between 80 and 90 miles an hour, and the accompanying music to it after a great deal of searching.

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Um we decided on uh Haydn's Symphony number 88.

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And it's a magnificent bit of music and I think very, very appropriate. It always reminds me somehow of a steam engine tearing along.

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The opening of the last movement of Haydn's Symphony No. 88 in G major, Otto Klemperer conducting the new Philharmonia Orchestra.

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Let's go straight into record number six.

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This I've chosen simply because it's one of my favourite pieces of music, Handel's water music.

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The air from Handel's water music

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The Baal Scholar Cantorum conducted by Auguste Benzinger.

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You have a great fascination for the 18th century, haven't you? Yes, I seem to have. On this desert island, could you adapt yourself to the loneliness? I think so, yes.

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Are you a practical man? I know mechanically you must be good with your hands. Could you do things like building a shelter? Well, I'm not all that good when it comes to the using my hands, but I think I could manage a shelter all right, yes. I think I'd get by.

Alan Pegler18:46

Not

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And living off the land. Well, obviously if if you can handle a shovel so expertly, you should be able to cultivate. Yes, I I think I'd manage.

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Would you try to escape? No.

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I've always found in life that um life takes all sorts of very strange twists and turns, but it's usually much better to accept what comes along and make the best of it. I think I try and make the best of this. Right. Record number seven.

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Uh well now, I think that perhaps I'm getting to enjoy this island, and uh getting a bit idle, and every now and then I shall want waking up and need to prance around a bit and take a bit of exercise.

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So for my number seven I'm going to choose Super

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Light cavalry, which to my mind is very much a sort of waking up number. I can imagine myself leaping along the shore listening to this.

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Soupe's Overture Light Cavalry conducted by Henry Cripps.

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What's your last choice, mister Pegler?

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Uh for my last choice, I want to go to Gilbert and Sullivan. Um I make no bones at all about being a sentimentalist and I make no bones at all about being

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I suppose very patriotic and all the rest of it. I I love England. I'm proud that I'm English. I know all these things are supposed to be very unfashionable these days.

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But, um, nevertheless, I do have these feelings.

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And of Gilbert and Sullivan, I think my favourite is Iolanthe.

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And in Aliente, I think the the the song When Britain Really Ruled the Waves.

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I like the sentiments expressed in it and it also rather amuses me that in this day and age they're still having their problems with the House of Lords.

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Rittle really rolled the waves in good Queen Bears' time The House of Peers made no pretense To interlake

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All scholarship sublime, Yet blitz won her proud space, Endored Queen Verse's glorious day.

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Let them won her pride.

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Dennis Darling

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in a number from the Saddler's Wells production of Ilante.

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If you could take just one of the eight records you've chosen, which would it be?

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I think the water music has always been a great favourite, and I am surrounded by water anyway. Indeed. And one luxury to take with you.

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Well, I've got a great respect, having been a fisherman at one stage of my life in Scotland, I've got a great respect for the Scottish mid.

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And I can think of nothing worse than being on this lovely island and being devoured all the time by winged insects. So I would like to take a huge barrel of some sort of aerosol fly spray, as it were, right.

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You'll find it there.

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Putting aside the Bible and Shakespeare.

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Here again, not going back quite as far as the 18th century, I think Conan Doyle, the complete works of Sherlock Holmes.

Presenter23:08

Thank you, Alan Pegler, for letting us hear your Desert Island Disc.

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Thank you very much. Goodbye, everyone.

Alan Pegler23:20

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk/slash radio four.