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A trainspotter eagerly awaiting the historic sight of the Flying Scotsman's return to the railways suffered a stroke of bad luck when a train passing in the opposite direction almost completely obscured his view.

Ryan Allen was waiting for the train in the village of Little Bytham in Lincolnshire, but just as the famous engine came into view a Virgin train passed in the opposite direction, blocking his view.

All that could be seen of the 1923 train was a plume of white smoke over the top of the Virgin service, which eventually passed out of sight, just in time for Mr Allen to film the last of the Scotsman's carriages fading into the distance.

However, the 34-year-old, who works for Anglian Water as a leakage technician, clearly took it in good humour as he shared the video to Twitter along with the caption "I had a feeling this would happen."

After Virgin Trains caught wind of the video, which has been shared thousands of times, they teamed up with Virgin Atlantic to offer Mr Allen flights to Atlanta.

Reaching out on Twitter, a spokesman said: "We feel bad for that photobomb! I hear Atlanta, Georgia has a super busy rail network! Fancy a trip courtesy of Virgin Atlantic?"

And Mr Allen, who lives in Spilsby in Lincolnshire, was soon over his disappointment, and gladly took the company up on the offer, and will be taking his partner of 18 years Emma with him.

He told the Standard: "I'm over the moon. I still can't believe it. I've always wanted to go to the States.

"When people were tweeting about the tickets I thought it was a wind-up."

He said he never expected the video to do so well, saying: "I found it funny really. I nearly didn't tweeted it.

"I sent it to my mates on Facebook and they thought it was funny, soo I posted it on Twitter.

"My phone has been vibrating that much with retweet notifications I had to turn it off as I was at work."

Richard Salkeld from Virgin Trains told the Standard: "We thought it was a nice thing to do because he was obviously very disappointed.

"We're informed that train spotting is in the top 20 of things to do in Atlanta.

"There are 5000 miles of track, so it seemed like the obvious destination to offer to Ryan."