SIR WILLIAM McALPINE
IN RAILWAY heritage terms, giant is too small a word to describe Sir William McAlpine. The man was quite simply a colossus.
Described variously as‘Britain’s greatest railway enthusiast’, ‘Preservation’s best friend’and ‘Champion of the heritage sector’, he bestrode the world of steam in a way no-one else is ever likely to again.
Perhaps best known as the millionaire who rescued Flying Scotsman from America in 1973, his contribution to the British heritage scene encompassed far, far more than that. Indeed, it seemed at times as though there wasn’t a railway society in the country that didn’t have his name on its letterhead as chairman, president, trustee or patron, so strong was his desire to support the guardians of transport history.
Everything Bill did was larger than life. Not content with merely owning the planet’s most famous locomotive, he shipped‘Scotsman’ all the way to Australia, where it set a world record for non-stop running.
In the grounds of his estate in the Thames Valley, he built the biggest and best private railway in the land – a standard-gauge line featuring Britain’s steepest adhesion-worked incline – while the transport museum he established was
