YESTERDAY evening Abergavenny became a nation of trainspotters, as hundreds, some estimates suggest thousands, of men, women, children gathered at various vantage points in the area to watch the legendary Flying Scotsman steam through the ‘Gateway to Wales’ on its ‘epic’ journey to the ‘big smoke’ and Paddington Station.

The build-up had been immense, and anticipation was as hot as the big old sun which blazed fiercely in a sky free of clouds - almost as if the big old ball of fire remained as determined as the rest of us that nothing would obscure its view of the nation’s favorite locomotive, back on track and roaring down the line like a rooting, tooting icon from a bygone age.

Nothing quite quickens the blood and enflames the passions of this rare breed of men who refer to themselves as ‘train enthusiasts’ and never the more derogatory ‘trainspotter’,than the romance and nostalgia inherent in the form and force of a vintage steam train.

Whether you’re a train enthusiast or not, few people can remain unmoved by the sight of these rolling monuments to another era pulling liveried coaches across open country.

The sublime splendor, rolling thunder, and the haunting cry of an old steam engine speaks to the ‘inner anorak’ in us all.

As a former Abergavenny steam engine driver once said, “Until you have hurtled down the tracks in the early hours of the morning going hell for leather in a ‘Great Western’ you haven’t lived.”

Or as Johnny Cash once sang in the ‘Orange Blossom Special, “Look a-yonder comin’ comin’ down that railroad track.”

From the cities to the country, from the mountains to the sea of this fair country, people have been appearing mob-handed to catch a glimpse of the Flying Scotsman following its £4.2 million refurbishment

In Penpergwm, the crowds gathered at the old train station in hushed expectation, to bear witness to the triumphant return of the Flying Scotsman as a working museum exhibit, conquering yet another record as the oldest mainline working locomotive on Britain’s tracks.

Leaving the works for the first time on February 24 in 1923, and retired in 1963 by British Rail, the Scotsman has the rare vintage of being the first locomotive in the UK to have reached 100mph in 1934. Many hoped it would adopt far more gentle speeds as it rolled through leafy Monmouthshire and its thriving population of wild bunny rabbits.

Earlier that day, there had been confusion about the exact time the Scotsman would pass through. Its exact timetable had been fiercely guarded for fear its presence would attract the ‘wrong types,’ whose enthusiasm for the great ‘iron horse’ would spill over onto the tracks, endangering life and limb, and forcing the Scotsman to suffer the woeful indignity of a grinding halt. Oh the calamity!

Yet there can be not carefully protected secret or private moment which social media won’t seek to make public and spread like wildfire with an added splash of extra petroleum. Thus courtesy of Facebook, everyone and their dog knew by Wednesday afternoon that the Flying Scotsman would pass through Abergavenny Train station at 5.27pm and hit Penpergwm a minute or two later.

Tick followed tock, and tock followed tick, and as the minute hand neared the appointed time of the great arrival, there was a muted murmur amongst the gathered assembled that the Scotsman had been delayed and would be, whisper it, at least half-an-hour late.

Unthinkable! Surely if any train should be on time it would be the Flying Scotsman, was Britain’s membership of the EU to blame for such a poor showing and decline in standards? Or had yet more train enthusiasts trespassed upon the track in a collective and instinctive urge to be as close as possible to the great icon of steam and civilization?

None of it mattered, what did was that the Scotsman was still coming, it was just a matter of when.

Without a bilingual Tannoy system to ease our troubled minds and calm our fevered souls with an exact time and reason for delay, the suspense was suffocating, as we stood like a flock of anxious sheep without reason or rhyme, past or future, on a deserted train station which hadn’t been operational for years.

And then, “There she blows!” Screamed someone, somewhere, but just not at Penpergwm, where the only sound in the strained silence was the lonesome buzz of a contemplative dung fly and the melancholy roar of a Peugeot 205 GTI on the old Raglan road.

Yet all good things come to those who wait, and an almost imperceptible shudder of genteel excitement passed through the crowd as an elusive and slight noise indicated that something big and old was coming down the tracks.

Without fanfare, without so much as a toot, without a rhythm section going, chug-a-chug-chug, and without an apocalypse of smoke pouring forth into the sky and obscuring all reality but that of the great steam engine, the Flying Scotsman passed us by. Pushed by an diesel engine called the ‘County of Essex.’ Oh the indignity!

Like an old timer forced reluctantly out of a pleasant retirement, the Scotsman wasn’t rolling down the tracks under its own steam alone. It was being paraded around the country by a lowly diesel.

If you blinked you would have missed it. And as the Great British icon was unceremoniously shoved up the track like an aging Hollywood starlet on a tour of the provinces, one disappointed little lad summed up the feelings of many in the crowd when he was heard to say, “Is that it!” Indeed it was kid, indeed it was.