IT WENT TOO FAST

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 104, 30 October 1933, Page 5

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 suloon a signal to tell tho driver when ho was going too fast,, is recounted in tho August number of the "Great Western Railway Magazine."

The Prince Consort conceived tho daring idea that the Queen might travel from Windsor Castle to London by train, instead of by coach. In October, 1840, the Great Western Eailway built a royal saloon much like n modern guard's van for a goods train. It was % 'not until June, 1842, however, that tho Queen consented to travel by it, and then the great Brunei was on tho footplate. Tho train reached Paddington 25 minutes later, and the Queen emerged to deafening applause, and "in a most condescending manner returned the gratulationa of the assemblage present." By the Queen's order another Koyal saloon, built in 1850, bore a strange disc and semaphore on tho roof, and a chair at the back of the coaltender of the engine. If tho Queen thought the train was going too slow, 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 Koyal.instructions as expressed on the roof of the saloon, and passed then} .on to the engine-driver, who acted upon them. Even with this safeguard, however, all was not well, for there presently reached the company a confidential letter in which insistence on.rigid adherence to the approved time-table was expressed. This was because one of the directors of the company had told her Majesty "that they had been driving tho train at the rate of 60 miles an hour.''