City of Truro, Steam Train
At around on that spring morning, the Swindon-built City of Truro became not only the first locomotive to reach and pass the magical speed of 100mph, but the first vehicle of any kind to reach such a milestone. No wonder the story was to turn into something of a transport legend and take on a life of its own, turning into a mystery tale that people would still be arguing over, a century later. The irony is that, if she could talk, you sense that the City of Truro might blush about the whole affair and tell everybody not to make such a fuss. This grand old lady of our railway heritage would certainly have been acutely embarrassed by the scandal surrounding her mis-spent youth. It's traditional to refer to locomotives as female, but rarely does it seem more fitting than with the City of Truro. She comes from - indeed she marks the end of - an era when true elegance reigned and she certainly didn¹t belong in the company of the next generation of steam-powered beasts with their tendency towards sheer brute force. But she and her sisters - the Great Western Railway's remarkable little 'City class' of engines - were certainly flighty for their day. By 1904 they were building a reputation for speed, and as observers began to reach for their stopwatches, the question was whether or not the world would have to wait for the new generation before they would see the 100mph barrier broken. And so it was on May 9th that the City of Truro picked up a train of 'ocean mails' recently arrived at Plymouth on a trans-Atlantic steamer from San Francisco, and made ready for the 128-mile trip to Bristol, from where she was later bound for a stop at Swindon, en route to London. There were around 1,300 large bags of mail on board, packed into five heavily laden eight-wheeled postal vans, including an even larger sorting van. The whole load was estimated at 148 tons, not including the engine and tender (another 90 tons). The journey's timekeeper, Charles Rous-Marten,
Size: 3606px × 5150px
Photo credit: © David Gowans / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: 1435, 1903, 1912, 1961, 1984, 3440, 3700, 3717, 4-4-0, aviemore, breaker, build, builder, career, city, class, configuration, cornwall, current, date, gauge, great, gwr, inverness-shire, mm, museum, national, number, official, owner, railway, record, renum, restored, retired, scotland, steam, strathspey, swindon, train, transport, truro, western, works
