ROMANCE IN A TRAIN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19781, 31 October 1927, Page 11

ROMANCE IN A TRAIN.

THE GREAT " SILK SPECIAL." VANCOUVER TO NEW YORK. FASTEST TRAIN IN AMERICA. [from our own correspondent.] VANCOUVER, Oct. 4. The accident that recently befel the Vancouver to New York silk special tram in which two carloads of silk were derailed in the Fraser River canyon, falling 200 ft. to the river-bed, marked the first occasion in two years in which the silk special will have arrived in New York late. In the shipment there were 21 cars, 28 tons to the car, in all, 7300 bales, of a total value of £1,500,000, the freight charges on which were £20,000, running on schedule of 80 hours from Vancouver to New. York, a distance of 3400 miles, or an average of 42 miles per hour across the continent. The silk special is a romantic train. It attracts notice all the way across the country from Indians, farmers, travellers —all the communities through which it passes turn out in force, twice a month, to see it flash through. The limited, expresses and "locals" are all side-tracked to give it a clear run. A new engine is attached every 150 miles. Brakes are inspected and the lccks of each car are examined by experts at every pause. Three hours are allowed at Vancouver for loading the silk from the Empress boats, the greyhounds of the Pacific. A penalty of £2OO is imposed for every hour or part of an hour that the train is late in New York. The penalty has pot been paid since the route was changed from via San Francisco, two years ago.

When Prince Henry was on his way home from his naval station in the Far East, last Christmas, he stood for half an hour m the drenching rain on the wharf at midnight, watching *lie silk special being loaded, while Vancouver's dignitaries waited to welcome him to Canada. Daughters of Eve—the ojibway squaw, papoose at back, the farmer s wife on the prairie, the city debutante —all watch for the eastbound flyer, the beacon of beauty, bearing its cargo of soft, shimmering, clinging, beautiful silk, that is a gift of untold joy to myriads of their sex. For, as Kipling might have said:—"Since our women must walk gay, and money buys their gear, the silk specials speed that way, in season year by year."