Speed and the Engineer 95 



say twenty years. Then it went ahead, but, 

 strange as it may seem, the average speed 

 of the best express work accomplished in 

 Britain to-day is less than 50 miles an hour. 

 That does not look like the triumph of 

 speed does it? But think again of the 

 loads carried at the rate and here we have 

 the useful speed. Six hundred tons by a 

 single locomotive at close upon fifty miles 

 an hour for three hundred miles on end, 

 well that is really a singularly wonderful 

 triumph and there is nothing so good if 

 load be considered on sea, on road or in 

 the air. Such a speed as the " Flying 

 Scotsman " gives, for instance, is far below 

 what the locomotive could perform, even 

 so to average 47 miles an hour means fre- 

 quent stretches at over sixty and often that 

 gallant green-coated steed, with a load 

 which would have shocked our forebears, 

 attains eighty miles an hour. 



The finest recorded speed of a train 

 this as apart from an unattached locomotive 

 was accomplished on the Great Western 

 in May, 1904, when a 4-4-0 " City of 



