BLUE EXPRESSES.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIX, Issue 291, 7 November 1929, Page 10

BLUE EXPRESSES.

FASTEST MOUNTAIN TRAINS. N.S.W. RAILWAY MOVE. The New South Wales Government railway executives have caught the colour complex. Their latest announcement concerns the projected use of blue expresses on the Blue Mountains run. These gaily coloured trains will be, according to official claims, the fastest mountain trains in the world. The first blue train—the Jenolan express, mainly for use by travellers to the Caves—will run from Sydney to Mount Victoria in two hours 20 minutes. It will stop only at five stations, and on many stretches it is scheduled to reach a speed of 60 miles an hour. In a few instances that speed will be evceeded. The train will consist of five light carriages, with seats luxuriously covered in patterned moquette , drawn by a super-heated looomotive, and will run only once a day—there and back. On the same date as the new blue train starts, two new fast expresses each way will commence running between Sydney and Newcastle. These will cut the present journey by at least half an hour so far as other expresses are concerned, and bv more than an hour in the case of the ordinary fast trains. The introduction of these new expresses to the New South Wales service {g an indication that the department is beginning to realise that the only wav to meet bus competition is to wean back the railway travellers by giving them speed, and above all—oomfort.