RAILWAY SPEEDS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19990, 5 November 1927, Page 13 (Supplement)

RAILWAY SPEEDS

EIGHTY MILES AN HOUR. It seems that France now definitely holds the palm for railway speed. The Lomion-to-Exetcr express is the only one which can compare with the running time on half a dozen lines radiating from Paris. There arc trains between Paris and Calais which beat even this record, averaging well over sixty miles an hour. Now, with the electrification of the Midi Railway, France’s own speed records are to be beaten. A new electric locomotive has been built of 2250 h.p., which, even when drawing the heavy South Express will reach nearly eighty miles an hour.

All the papers have tolo the story of how the late Duke of Leeds, standing an a very youthful candidate for Brixton, wan asked by a man in the audience, “Docs your mother know you’re out?” and he replied, “Yes; and by to morrow she’ll know I’m in.” But. they do not give the sequel: which is that the retort was arranged beforehand, and that the heckler was the family butler. So were elections won, even in the ’eighties.