Letter About 100mph Speed Record of City of Truro

ELDON CHAMBERS 30, FLEET STREET LONDON, E.C. June 20th 1905 James R. Inglis, Esquire Dear Sir Inglis, Pursuant to my recent letter and in accordance with the suggestion in your letter of the 7th inst., I now write to urge the correspondence at the point at which it ceased relative to the Question of publishing the maximum speed in your Record Run of May 1904. First, let me state my own side of the case: The Great Western is wooing public favour and very properly seeking to Increase traffic to the Far West by means of extra-fast non-stopping trains. Now, I happened last year to hear a good deal of conversation With reference in particular to these Paddington-Plymouth Non-stop runs. To my surprise, many people of different ages, sexes and callings, declared that nothing would induce them to travel by trains which ran at such “fearful speeds”. Whenever opportunity offered, I “cut in” and pointed out that in reality these trains did not run, or need to run, nearly so fast as many other Great Western trains which had been running unnoticed for a number of years; so that the time was gained, not through extreme speeds but through lighter loads and (unreadable) of stops. This was received with a good deal of incredulity, but when I proved my case, first the actual figures and secondly by the proof (although of course without giving the actual maximum) that with the Devon Specials I had on more than one occasion recorded speeds enormously higher than the fastest that are run by the trains in question, and that at those times the travelling was the smoothest, easiest, and therefore safest of any I was able to compel conviction. Now this is the basis of my proposal that the maximum attained by those non-passenger carrying Specials which was from 30 to 50% higher than that run by these best regular long-distance Expresses, should now be made public “pour encourager les autres”, or at any rate, to make the travelling public see that when going by your best regular trains, they will not run at a rate at all approaching that which has been attained with perfect ease and safety by non-passenger or experimental Specials. You have doubtless noticed letters in the press referring to “terrific” or “dangerous” speed being run by regular expresses such as 70 to 80 miles an hour, bu the Record Mail Special averaged 70.2 from the Exeter slow pass to the Bristol stop, and 71.0 from the Bristol start to the Paddington stop, notwithstanding the delays of the Bath Service-slack and the very bad special slow over the Gricklands Bridge under repair, while, between Swindon and Paddington, we maintained a steady average of 80 miles an hour for 73 miles on end. These faces have of course been published already; indeed could be readily gathered from the published leg of the train. The actual maximum rate has not, so far, gone into print, (unreadable), I am not aware that anybody but myself recorded it with absolute accuracy, although I suspect that one of the Post Office people must have done some timing for he came very near the truth in that Plymouth paper’s article which I sent you and which gives an illustration of City of Truro averaging 98 to 100 miles an hour. But of course a mere statement in a daily newspaper carries but little weight. Confidential In now giving you my actual figures, it is I feel sure unnecessary for me to stipulate that they shall be regarded as strictly confidential, and that in no case shall my information be used to anybody’s prejudice. Upon that I am quite certain I can depend without any specific pledge on your part. What happened then was this: When we topped the Whitehall Summit, we were still doing 63 miles an hour; when we emerged from the Whitehall Tunnel we had reached 60; thence forward our velocity rapidly and steadily increased, the quarter-mile times diminishing from 11 seconds at the tunnel entrance to 10.6 seconds, 10.2 seconds, 10.0 sec., 9.8 sec., 9.4 sec., 9.2 sec., and finally to 8.8 sec., this last being equivalent to a rate of 102.3 miles an hour, the two quickest quarters thus occupied exactly 18 seconds for the half-mile, equal to 100 miles an hour. All this time the travelling was an curiously (unreadable words) it was difficult to believe were were moving at all, and the perfect control obtained over the train was strikingly manifest, through what appeared at the time the vexatious incident of those platelayers dawdling on the 4 foot way which compelled a sudden reduction in the speed by about one half which was effected in the [unreadable] conceivable, without [unreadable].