TWO FAMOUS TRAINS

Greymouth Evening Star, 15 August 1932, Page 7

TWO FAMOUS TRAINS

IRISH MAIL & FLYING SCOTSMAN.

When at 2.25 the Irish Mail glided into Holyhead on the morning of June IS she made her eighty-third anniversary run. Thus she became the oldest famous train in the world, older than the Flying Scotsman, which -comes second on the list of veteran trains, or the Orient Express or the Twentieth Century Limited. On June IS, 1849, at 8.45 p.m., the Irish Mail drew out of Euston (Louden) for the first time. She followed a-s near as railroad engineering permitted the route the Holyhead Mail took in the days before George Stephenson laid his lines, -when the mail coach—introduced by the Bath post reformer, John Palmer, in the e ghties of the eighteenth century—with its team of horses, its coachmen with cracking whip, and its guard who blew a resounding Tally Ho! from his silver horn, swept out of London in the morning for the North. For 83 years exactly at the time of the original run, the train has begun its 264-mile journey to the sea, maintaining an average speed of 40 miles an hour. No other train in the world has been as consistent for so long. It has rarely been delayed, never wrecked. Even during the war it ran to schedule.

At 10 a.m. on July 18 the Flying Scotsman departed from King’s Cross station on its twenty-two thousandth journey to Edinburgh. The occasion was not merely the seventieth anniversary of the train, but was the first time since the railway race of forty years ago that the 392 i miles to Edinburgh has been accomplished in 7ft hours. For on July IS the Flying Scotsman commenced its non-stop run under the now schedule, being due at Edinburgh at 5.30 p.m. instead of 5.50 p.m., and averaging 52 miles an hour. The first Flying Scotsman took 10J hours to travel to Edinburgh and conveyed first and second class passengers only, for the provision of through coaches to the North was a supreme privilege, for which the passenger had to pay.

Indeed, third class passengers in those more prosperous days were something of a burden to the Great Noithein, North Eastern,, and North British Railway companies, who jointly operated-the Flying Scotsman. In 1572 it was decided to admit third class passengers to all trains, includirg the famous Scottish train. The great profusion of third class passengers, however, became embarrassing to the companies, for the train became so heavy that the locomotive of that day proved unequal to the task of hauling them. So once more Demos was excluded from the Flying Scotsman and a special third class train was run an hour ahead, leaving London at 9 o’clock.

This Cinderella-like train, however, soon proved to be in the way of its rich relation when the latter was accelerated to do the journey in nine hours, and so the third class was abruptly pushed behind the Flying Scotsman, and left London at 10.10 a.m. Third class passengers wore eventually and permanently allowed to use the Flying Scotsman in 1887. The official best performance registered by the Flying Scotsman was 7 hours 2(> : { minutes, and then for a time it did the journey in 7ii hours, until it was eventually settled that ths time should be Bft hours. Now the Flying Scotsman again does the journey in 7J hours- —but with a striking difference. In 1888 the trains weighed something like 150 tons. To-day the train weighs on an average 400 tons, and the 392 miles is done without a stop and with one locomotive.

The non-stop journey, during which eighty miles an hour is reached is, of course, worked by two sets of enginemen, one crew relieving the other by the use of the corridor through the tender which connects with the train.