FOOTBALLERS, rock stars and royalty have failed to attract the sort of crowds that Tornado did as it sped through the region.

DAVID ROBERTS travelled with the train enthusiasts who have had the last laugh over all of us.

IT'S easy to make fun of trainspotters. They are the perennial butt of stand-up comedians jokes the world over.

Spending their time standing furtively on draughty platforms, writing copious notes in their jotters, it can be almost too easy to laugh at them.

As I waited in York for Tornado, the first steam locomotive to be built in this country for almost 50 years, to pull into the station there was more than one trainspotter stereotype in the crowd.

However, when the distinctive sound of a steam train pulling into a station was first heard it wasn't just from the pockets of anoraks that cameras were pulled.

All across the station, people of all sexes and ages stood to gawp at the sight of Tornado.

Even the group of surly teenagers sprawled across one of the benches in the station pulled phones from their hoodies to video the arrival of the £3m engine.

Only the most cynical of people can't fail to be impressed at the sight of a locomotive billowing steam.

The noise and clouds of smoke give it such a feeling of unrestrained power that a characterless diesel locomotive can only hope to match.

Then there's that evocative smell which at once brings to mind both comforting fireplaces but also the pure strength of the engineering behind the locomotive.

The train was filled with members of the media, experts carrying out diagnostic checks on the engine and also invited guests, made up chiefly of members of the A1 Steam Locomotive Trust, the people behind the project.

These were people who for the last 18 years have spent every available hour involved in a project which many outsiders thought would never happen.

Chairman of the trust, Mark Allatt said now the project was completed he felt a certain amount of vindication in the eyes of all the people who said it couldnt be done.

He said: "It was absolutely awesome, you should have seen the faces of everybody as we went through every station.

"It was like going past the District line in the morning on the underground.

"There were so many people on the stations between York and Darlington and then on beyond as we got into Newcastle, not just in the evening but also through the night as well."

It's a bit of a mad idea to build a brand new steam engine in the new millennium.

But we're British and we do that sort of thing.

What was not British was the way people filled the carriages on the train.

On any normal train with a dozen or more carriages and only a few people to fill them the natural inclination on this island would be to put as much space between you and the next person as possible.

Not so on Tornado.

People crammed into the first two or three carriages sitting across tables from another.

The conversations were about bearings, and pistons and valves.

They were flushed with success, knowing that their dreams had come true.

They were like footballers on an open top bus tour - only slightly older and with more facial hair.

The passengers proudly proclaimed that this was probably the best steam train ever built, as it was made using modern materials but to a traditional design.

All built by volunteers at an engine shed in Darlington.

As the train pulled into Newcastle station the true scale of the A1 Steam Locomotive Trust's achievement was put into focus.

Hundreds of people lined the platforms and bridges in the station.

Camera flashes went off like strobe lighting much to the chagrin of the station announcer who repeated and futilely announced that photography was not permitted in the station.

This was a rock star's welcome to a small band of ageing men and the occasional woman.

But the real star of the show was the hugely impressive feat of British engineering which sat steaming and spitting on the tracks.

It was a real testament to the dogged determination and sheer bloody-mindedness of the people who built it.

In future, perhaps we should all think twice before laughing at that trainspotter standing on the platform.

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