FAMOUS ENGINE DOOMED.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 10638, 14 April 1906, Page 2 (Supplement)

FAMOUS ENGINE DOOMED.

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STORY OF A GREAT RACE WITH

TIME. LONDON, March 2. After having been preserved as a relic at Swindon works since the abolition of the broad-gauge track in 1892, the engine Lord of the Isles has been condemned Ii the scrap heap. She was the last regaining locomotive of Brunei's famous white elephant" railroad. [Designed sixty- four years ago by the pte Sir Daniel Gooch, the Lord of the sles, with her big driving wheels, tall chimney, and abundant brasswork, stood as the model of all the subsequent broadgauge express engines. She remained a monument to British engineering genius, for after her last' journey had been run she was sent' on show to the Chicago World's Fair and the great Paris Exhibition, gaining medals at both.

In these days of great locomotives ancl long non-stop journeys people are apt to look down upon the early engines. The broad-gauge engines, however, certainly had the quality of speed. It is still handed on as a tradition among Great Western veterans how, in the early forties, a broad-gauge locomotive raced against time from Bristol to Paddington — the 'limits of the then existing line— a distance of 117 miles. This urgent journey was to enable a Bill to be deposited in Parliament before the house adjourned ;and, so tho legend runs, the. distance was covered in just over an hour. <