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Great Trains of the World by Wyatt Blassingame Hard Cover 1953 20th Century Limi
Great Trains of the World by Wyatt Blassingame
Hard Cover
Copyright 1953 Name plate inside front cover
20th Century Limited, Flying Scotsman, Orient Express, Golden Arrow, Super Chief & Other famous trains
The 20th Century Limited
Flying Scotsman
Orient Express
Golden Arrow
Super Cief
and other famous trains
The longest non-stop railroad run in the world is where you would least expect to find it.
The British Isles, which contain England, Scotland, and Wales, are only a little more than half as big as California. You could hide them away in one corner of the State of Texas. Yet when the Flying Scotsman thunders out of Kings Cross station in London at ten o'clock in the morning, it is away on the longest non-stop railroad journey in the world: 392% miles to Edinburgh!
The Scotsman's route does not take it across open plains or empty desert, but through a region thick with great cities and mines and factories-one of the most heavily populated sections in the world.
But this is not the only record the Flying Scotsman holds.
Since June, 1862-almost too years this train has rolled out of London on its way to Edinburgh at the same time every morning. It's true that during the war, when British trains were being raked by bombs, buzz bombs and machine-gun bullets, the Flying Scotsman's schedule took its share of the damage; sometimes the train had to be combined with others which left a little earlier or later. But except for this it has maintained its same departure time for over ninety years-longer than any other train in the world.
During all those years the Flying Scotsman has also held its place as one of the world's fastest trains. Its record for speed and punctuality helps us to understand why it has become so fatuous.
The roadbed over which the Flying Scotsman runs was not easy to build. It dives through long, graded tunnels where the tracks are sometimes wet and greasy from dripping water; in such places the engineer must spray sand under his wheels to give them traction. It roars over high bridges, along the edges of cliffs and through cities where the maze of tracks is as complicated and precise as a spider's web.
All this puts such a strain on the engineer and fireman, and the run is so long, that one crew cannot take the train all the way through. Crews must be changed while the train is still running, just as officers are changed on the bridge of a ship at sea.
In order to accomplish this the Flying Scotsman has a specially built tender through which a narrow corridor runs.
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