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World's Fastest Steam Railway

World's Fastest Steam RailwayOn sale now

The bookazine tells the story of the East Coast Main Line, the great British trunk route which links London king’s Cross to Leeds and Edinburgh, and which produced the fastest steam locomotives in the world. It includes the exploits of Flying Scotsman, the world’s most famous steam locomotive, and Mallard, which set an all-time steam locomotive record of 126mph on Stoke Bank in Lincolnshire.

The story starts before the dawn of railways, when stagecoaches took four days to link the two capitals, running along the Great North Road what is now the old A1, and where travellers had to run the risk of being robbed by highwaymen like Dick Turpin. It looks at the coming together of the East Coast rail route section by section, the first being built from Edinburgh into England, and requiring the demolition of one of Britain’s great historic fortresses in the process.
The Races to the North of the late Victorian era in which East and West Coast operators deliberately competed against each other to see who could reach Aberdeen from London first, before a tragedy ended their rivalry for four decades, are covered.

The extension of services to Aberdeen, with the building of the nature-defying Tay Bridge, which ended in disaster, and the magnificent Forth Bridge are featured. The volume also looks at the work of Sir Nigel Gresley in building some of the finest steam locomotives ever to run, especially the A4 streamlined Pacifics, one of the greatest art deco British icons of all time. The modern-day eras after the end of steam are covered, with both diesel and electric traction setting new records on the route of the Flying Scotsman. There is also a look at the current rebuilding of that great cathedral of steam, London’s King’s Cross station, and the newest steam locomotive to run on the East Coast Main Line, the hugelypopular A1 Peppercorn Pacific No. 60163 Tornado.

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Format: Glossy A4 perfect bound Magazine
Number of pages: 132

On sale in WH Smiths or secure online today.

SAMPLE

COURTESY NATIONAL RAILWAY MUSEUM.
LNER A3 Pacific No. 4472 Flying Scotsman prepares to depart from King’s Cross to York on July 4 1999 following a three-year overhaul.ROBIN JONES


CONTENTS

1. London to Edinburgh in 45½ hours
2. First over the border
3. Next stop Newcastle!
4. Two bridges to Aberdeen
5. Sturrock: starting the quest for speed
6. Single-minded Stirling
7. The Atlantic era
8. The summit of world speed
9. Flying Scotsman the train
10. The day of the Deltics...and Intercity 125s too!
11. The fastest locomotive of them all
12. Closure beyond Newcastle?
13. The steam speed legends today
14. East coast steam: the legend storms on!
15. Wizard times at King’s Cross
16. Termini for the future
17. Six of the best


INTRODUCTION:
World steam records: a Great British success

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In the Thirties, Britain – like many other western nations – reeled under the effects of the Great Depression, with mass unemployment... especially in Scotland and the north of England.
Yet out of the gloom and despondency, the people of these islands proved that we could still take on the whole world... and win. It was on the 1-in-200 Stoke Bank, a seemingly unremarkable and very rural section of main line railway in Lincolnshire, that world steam locomotive speed records would come tumbling.

First there was Flying Scotsman, which in 1934 became the first steam locomotive in the world to officially reach 100mph. Then sister locomotive Papyrus set a new record of 108mph. It was followed soon afterwards by streamlined A4 Pacific No. 2509 Silver Link, which managed a speed of 112.5mph.
Finally, there was No. 4468 Mallard, which set an all-time world steam locomotive speed record of 126mph.

The man behind these legendary feats which emphasised the Great in Britain was London & North Eastern Railway chief mechanical engineer Sir Nigel Gresley. He designed these and many other groundbreaking locomotives which were superior to everything that had gone before.
The economic morass at the begining of the decade could so easily have led to a situation where everyone might have given up hope.

Yet it was still a great age of competition, one in which the LNER, as the operator of the East Coast Main Line between London King’s Cross and Edinburgh, wanted to show that it could link England to Scotland faster that the London, Midland & Scottish Railway’s West Coast Main Line alternative from St Pancras to Glasgow, and the splendid Pacific locomotives designed by Gresley’s great rival, Sir William Stanier.

The net result was the golden age of rail travel, in which luxury named trains such as the ‘Coronation’ and the ‘Elizabethan’ blazed a trail towards what should have been a bright new future, had the Second World War not intervened. Gresley has been feted as the greatest British locomotive engineer of all time. Yet it was ordinary British footplate crews, drivers and firemen, who took his machines towards their limits – and beyond – in classic feats of derring-do and endurance.

Those behind the controls of a recordbreaking locomotives would be feted as heroes by the national press when they returned to King’s Cross. They were the superstars, the pop idols, of their generation. However, the next day they would be back in their overalls on their next turns of duty, likely to be on run-of-the-mill scheduled services where superlatives were not necessarily required.

As Britain beamed with pride at such achievements, other nations looked on with awe and envy. This volume is the story not only of those famous locomotives which became household words, but of the route from London to Edinburgh – from Roman times onwards – and how human endeavour, innovation and excellence shortened the journey times between these two capital cities. There was the Great North Road and its rival stagecoach operators, which went out of business when three railway companies eventually joined up to create one great 393 mile through route, and almost immediately looked at the issue of speed.

The steam age did not give up without a fight: in 1959 A4 Pacific Sir Nigel Gresley, named after the genius designer, recorded a new post-war steam record of 112mph – where else but on Stoke Bank. The diesel era not only produced some of the finest examples of modern traction in the form of the English Electric Deltics, but also saw more records broken with the introduction of the hugely-successful InterCity Class 125 High Speed Trains. Finally, the electrification of the whole route led to a Class 91 locomotive officially being declared the fastest in Britain. The East Coast Main Line is taken for granted by the untold tens of thousands of commuters and travellers who use it on a daily basis.

Yet it is a great monument, not only to those who built it – in the days when picks and shovels not JCBs and earthmovers were used to dig cuttings and create massive embankments by hand – but to many generations of railwaymen who showed on a daily basis that they wanted their line to be the best. Gresley’s art deco streamlined A4 Pacifics remain a definitive icon of everything that was brilliant about Britain – a nation of innovation and determination which could so easily lead the world again.

Robin Jones.

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