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Its frequent joy rides have been much-cherished memories of not just princes and princesses of the Gaekwad family of Vadodara but also scores of commoners in the city park. While the Gaekwads have treasured their iconic Flying Scotsman, the tots elswhere too have their own stories woven around the toy train at Sayaji Baugh (also known as Kamati Baugh), a public park in Vadodara.
Having provided fun rides to children for about 57 years, the Flying Scotsman is on its way back home. In 2003, it was the steam engine that returned to the royal palace first. A decade later, the bogies will be joining it soon.
It was in 1941 that the Flying Scotsman made its maiden run in Vadodara on the third birthday of the late Maharaja Ranjitsinh Gaekwad. The baby prince had been gifted this made-to-scale model by his father, Pratapsinh Gaekwad. A 3-km-long mini railway track was laid on the premises of the Lakshmi Vilas Palace. The toy train would ferry the young royals from the palace to the Princess School, which has now been converted into the Maharaja Fatesinh Museum.
In 1956 the Royal family decided to give the train to the city public park, managed by the Vadodara Municipal Corporation (VMC). "The train was lying idle. Our children were grown up and nobody was using it in the palace," says Shubhangini Raje. The VMC transferred the tracks laid in the palace complex to the Sayajibaug Public Park.
When the boiler system of the steam engine went bust in 1993, the engine got a diesel replacement. The engine had been built by Herbert Bullock for Surrey Border and Camberley Railway in 1936 and was a scale-down model of the LNER Gresley A3 class Pacific (the London & North Eastern railway) and initially named the Harvester. The original Harvester prototype was one of the engines that pulled the famous Flying Scotsman, in the 1940s, the most popular train running between London and Edinburgh.
Ranjitsinh, who had a passion for trains and technical aspects of scale models, got a British expert to restore the engine, which had been brought back to the palace. Now, the Gaekwads have sought the return of the remaining parts of the train and the track. "Once we put it all together, it will enhance the value of the entire train," says Raje.
The family visited England in 2007 and found that the National Railways Museum in York had a separate section altogether on the Flying Scotsman. "We'd never thought our train was so important," she adds.
Adds Radhika Raje, the daughter-in-law: "The idea for us is not that the train should work. But it should come back. The sentimental value and intrinsic value of both the thing will enhance if it comes back together."
