IT WENT TOO FAST

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22100, 2 November 1933, Page 12

IT WENT TOO FAST

, QUEEN, VICTORIA’S TRAIN. How Queen Victoria made her first train journey, and how she insisted on attaching to the Royal saloon a signal to tell the driver when he was going too fast, is recounted in the August number of the Great Western Railway Magazine. . ' . ' The Prince Consort conceived the daring idea that the Queen might travel from Windsor Castle to London by train, instead of by coach. In October, 1840, the Great Western Railway built a’ royal saloon much like a modern guard’s van for a goods train. It was not until June, . 1842, however, that the Queen consented to travel by. it, and then the great Brunei was on the footplate. The train reached Paddington 25 minutes later, and the Queen emerged to deafening applause,: and “in a most condescending manner returned the congratulations of the assemblage present.” By the Queen’s order another Royal saloon, built in 1850, bore a strange disc and semaphore on the roof, and a chair at the back of the coaltender of the engine. If the Queen thought the. train was going top Mow, and particularly if she thought it was going too fast, Or ought to stop, an attendant inside the carriage could work the disc and semaphore. A porter, sitting with his back to the engine, on the chair on the coal-tender, instantly noted the Royal instructions as expressed on the roof of the saloon, and passed them on to the engine-driver, who acted upon them. Even with this safeguard, however, all was not well, for C there presently reached the company a confidential letter in which, insistence on rigid adherence .to the approved time .table was expressed, ibis was 'because one of the directors of the company had told her Majesty that they had been driving the train at the rate of CO miles an hour.”