Gratifying scenes of rapture greeted the return to the tracks last week of Flying Scotsman, the first 100mph runner on the iron roads of Britain. An earlier contender, the Great Western Railway’s City of Truro is now widely judged not quite to have made the mark.

The 90-year-old locomotive was a near-daily sight of my childhood, pounding through Peterborough on her way to or from her home base at King’s Cross.

So, too, was stablemate Mallard, a slightly later testament to the genius of the designer Sir Nigel Gresley, which achieved an unassailable record at the world’s fastest steam loco (126mph). Too treasured now to risk on the tracks, she remains a static exhibit at the National Rail Museum in York.

Mallard looks, in her blue livery and with streamlined casing over motion and wheels, exactly as she was at the time of her great feat.

Not so Flying Scotsman. The London and North Eastern Railway’s No 4472 is in her later guise as British Railway’s No 60103, Brunswick green not apple green and with the addition of double chimney and German-style smoke deflectors.

Some rail buffs have carped at this, but I wholeheartedly approve. Besides showing us Flying Scotsman as I remember her in the early 1960s, the restoration has given us an example of this locomotive class – A3 as it became – at its best.

Mostly named after successful racehorses, the class were higher pressure versions of class A1, of which Flying Scotsman was originally part. Most put in sterling service for over 30 years.

I have no memory of a trip behind Flying Scotsman but distinctly recall a lively journey from Peterborough to London with 60055 Woolwinder, named after the winner of the 1907 St Leger (actually Wool Winder).

With the new-build version of a later class of A1s in the popular Tornado, the restoration of Flying Scotsman now gives us a full set of the LNER’s principal express locomotives of later years.