FAMOUS TRAINS

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 306, 20 August 1932, Page 2

FAMOUS TRAINS

STORY OF THE IR1SH MAIL AND THE FLYING SCOTSMAN. GREAT NON-STOP RUNS. When at 2.25 the Irish Mail glided into Holyhead on the morning of June 18 she made h'ar eighty-third anniversary run. Thus she, hecame the oldest f amous train in the world, older than the Flying Scotsman, which eomes seeond on the list of veteran trains, or the Orient Express or the Twentieth Century Limited. On June 18, 1849, at 8.45 p.m., the Irish Mail drew out of Euston (London) for the first time. For eighty-three years exactly at the time of the original run, the train has begun its 264-mile journey to the sea, maintaining an average speed of forty miles an hour. No other train in the world has been as consistent for so long. It has rarely been delayed, never wrecked. Even during the war it ran to schedule. London to Edmburgh. At 10 a.m. on July 18 the Flying Scotsman departed from King's Cross station on its twenty-two thousandth journey to Edinburgh'. The occasion was not merely the seventieth anniversary, of the train, but was the first time since the railway race of forty years ago that the 3924 miles to Edinburgh has been accomplished in seven and a half hours. For on July 18 the Flying Scotsman eommenced its non-stop run under the new schedule, being due at Edinburgh at 5.30 p.m., instead of 5.50 p.m., and averaging 52 miles an hour. The first Flying Scotsman took ten ahd a half hours to travel to Edinburgh and conveyed first and second class passengers only, for the provision of through coaches to the north was supreme privilege, for which tbe passengers had to pay. In 1872 it was decided to admit third class passengers to all trains, including the famous Seotch train. The great profusion of third class passengers, however, became 'embarrassing to the companies, for the train became so heavy that the locomotives of that day proved unequal to the task of hauling them. So once more Demos was excluded from the Flying Scotsman and a special third-class train was run an hour ahead, leaving London at 9 o'clock. Great Performances The official best performance registered by the Flying Scotsman was Seven hours twenty-six and threequarter minutes, and then for a time it did the journey in seven and threequarter hours, until it was eventually settled that the time should be eight and a half hours. Now the Flying Scotsman again does the journey in seven and a half hours — but with a striking difference. In 1888 the trains weighed something lilce 150 tons. Today 'the train weighs on an average 400 tons, and the 392 miles is done without a stop and w'th one locomotive. The non-stop journey, during which eighty miles an hour is reached, is, of , course, worked by two sets of enginemen, one erew relieving the other by ihe use of the corridor through th'e tender which connects with the train.