Blyth woman's photo of The Flying Scotsman to be a stamp - after she mistakenly thought Royal Mail's email was a scam

Local resident Alison Leddy snapped the picture from a friend’s garage roof in Newsham when the train toured the region in 2016.

Royal Mail officials came across her image on photo sharing website Flikr and eventually managed to get in contact, despite Alison mistaking their original email for a scam.

She said: “I never thought twice about it until I got an email last year to ask if it was me that took the photograph of The Flying Scotsman.

“I thought I would answer it, so I did, and then I got another email saying that it was going to possibly be shortlisted for a stamp.

“I thought this might be a bit of a scam, so I ignored it.

“Then I got another email. I decided to reply and I found out that it was going to be shortlisted for approval to be on a stamp for this year’s centenary.”

Photographs for the 12 special stamps were chosen by the Royal Mail and a curator at the National Railway Museum.

The 58-year-old, who works in a nursery, said it is a “dream come true” for her image to be selected.

She said: “I nearly forgot what I was supposed to be doing because it was in steam and it was a really wonderful sight.

“It is a lovely picture but I never thought that it would come to anything, it was just something that I wanted to take for myself.

“Taking it [in Blyth] instead of at a famous place like some of the other stamps, brings it all closer to home.”

The Flying Scotsman was built in 1923 and hauled the first regular non-stop service from London to Edinburgh in 1928.

The keen amateur photographer has had to keep it secret that her image was chosen to memorialise the famous locomotive for almost a year.

Alison has already ordered some of the stamps, which will be the final special stamps to feature Queen Elizabeth’s silhouette, but said she may well pop to the Post Office to pick some up personally.

She added: “It feels absolutely incredible. It still has not sunk in. You do not expect it to happen to you.”