Businessman who saved the Flying Scotsman

Born: April 16, 1920; Died: March 18, 2012.

Alan Pegler, who has died aged 91, was a businessman whose salvation of the world-famous locomotive Flying Scotsman ultimately led to bankruptcy and personal ruin. From a large house complete with Rolls-Royce and butler, he was reduced to living in one room over a shop in Paddington.

Mr Pegler's legacy remains the 120-ton steam engine Flying Scotsman, long since saved for the nation at the National Railway Museum in York. In 1963, he bought it from British Rail at scrap value of £3000, determined that this piece of national heritage live on. A wealthy businessman in his own right as well as the son of prosperous East Midlands industrialist Francis Pegler, he went on to sink tens of thousands of pounds into playing at full-size trains on the UK network.

What sank him was taking his engine and special train on a tour of the United States in 1969. Everything that could go wrong did so, and when the tour ended with Flying Scotsman stranded in San Francisco, a penniless Mr Pegler worked his passage home as a lecturer on a liner.

Bankruptcy would have spelt the end of a dream to anyone else, but it was the measure of the ever-optimistic Mr Pegler that he rebuilt his life as a cruise lecturer, medieval impersonator in the Tower of London, and tour guide on the rebuilt Orient Express.

Alan Francis Pegler, born in London and educated at Radley and Cambridge, is always remembered for his Flying Scotsman exploits, yet it was the Scots peer Lord Northesk who in 1950 fired his passion for railways through joint interest in saving the narrow Festiniog Railway in North Wales. The upshot was that within a few years, Mr Pegler was in the Festiniog chair, and the line rivalled Caernarvon Castle as biggest tourist attraction in North Wales.

Throughout the 1960s, Mr Pegler ebulliently toured the UK, taking the Flying Scotsman from Cornwall and Essex to Inverness, Aberdeen and Edinburgh, and rarely without a pretty girl on his arm. Generous to a fault, he lavished welcome on the press and public wherever he went.

I met him for coffee in the North British Hotel around 1968, and he concluded our chat with my having the unforgettable experience of a footplate ride on Flying Scotsman on the next leg to Newcastle.

Far too late in life, Mr Pegler was made OBE in 2006 at the age of 86. Married four times, he is survived by two children.

GORDON CASELY