Debating Cornwall’s 117mph run.

One of the problems with verifying speed records of the 1840s, such as Cornwall’s alleged 117mph run (SR518), is lack of contemporary detailed logs.

A few years ago, I found a report in The Standard newspaper of Tuesday August 29 1848, which gives a mile-by-mile account of a journey from Didcot to Paddington. This puts beyond any doubt that the GWR was capable of covering the 53 miles in less than 50 minutes during the 1840s. The report is headlined: “Extraordinary run with the Great Western express train – seventy miles per hour for forty-three miles.”

It begins: “The most extraordinary journey that has yet been made by the express trains upon the Great Western Railway was performed on Saturday with the ‘Courier’ locomotive from Didcot to Paddington with the 12 o’clock express train from Exeter, consisting of six carriages weighing 60 tons.”

The report analysed the run as: “It is here seen that the 53 miles were performed – that is, from a state of rest until the engine entered the station at Paddington – in 49 minutes 13 seconds, or at an average speed including the time lost in getting up speed when departing from Didcot, as well as time lost in reducing speed when arriving at Paddington, of sixty-seven miles per hour. The forty-seventh milepost was passed at 3.46.40½ and the fourth milepost at 4.23.24½, so that forty-three miles were performed in thirty-six minutes and fortyfour seconds, or at an average speed of upwards of seventy miles per hour.”

Just as interesting as the analysis of the journey is an indication of co-operation between the GWR and LNWR. The Standard’s report includes this information: “The engine was driven by John Heppell, who had charge of the celebrated Ixion, seven-feet driving wheel locomotive, during the gauge experiments.

“He was, by the permission of Mr Gooch, the locomotive superintendent of the Great Western Railway, accompanied by Jonas Brown, one of the ‘crack’ drivers in the service of the London and North Western, who rode on the footplate of the engine, and took the rate of working.”

Was Jonas Brown by any chance the man who took Cornwall to a record speed?

THE PROBLEM IS CONTEMPORARY LOGS LACK THE VERIFYING DETAIL

GETTY IMAGES The Great Western Railway’s broad gauge locomotives were capable of high speeds, even in the 1840s. Nearly 50 years later, an unidentified ‘Rover’ class 4-2-2 puts in a turn of speed near Acton, circa 1890.