Race to the North

[9] The East Coast had a very strong hold on the traffic and this was consolidated further in November 1887, when the railways announced that the Special Scotch Express[note 2] would also take 3rd class passengers.

Delaying their announcement to the last minute, they stated in June 1888 that the Day Scotch Express would now arrive in Edinburgh an hour earlier, at 19:00.

[15] By 13 August East Coast booked an arrival time of 17:45, omitting the stop at Berwick and averaging 59.3 mph (95.4 km/h) between Newcastle and Edinburgh.

[17] Throughout the period, the Midland Railway, who had recently completed the Settle and Carlisle Line, and the North British Railway (NBR) on the Waverley Line were faced with a longer route – from London St Pancras via Manchester and Carlisle to Edinburgh Waverley – with many curves and gradients and so they were unable to be competitive on speed.

[19] A new prospect was appearing however, and the Pall Mall Gazette wrote: "The main cause confronts us when we see those three stupendous towers of steel which loom above the horizon of Edinburgh.

[28] The NER was an exception by being able to raise their average speed from about 49 to 58 mph (79 to 93 km/h), and it was later by double-heading their trains that East Coast gained a decisive advantage.

[32] At the beginning of 1893, the West Coast accelerated the Day Scotch Express to arrive at 22:25 and devised a scheme for delaying its rivals at Kinnaber Junction, where Caledonian operated the signal box.

However, whereas West Coast ran a reliable service, North British were often late because of slow changes of engine at Waverley station,[note 9] and a tortuous and undulating run from there northwards on a line that was partially single track.

[note 11] In practice West Coast, stopping at seven intermediate stations on its route and pulling trains of 15 to 17 carriages, was frequently arriving later than 08:00.

[39] From the beginning of August, the newspapers were reporting on what they called the "Race to the North" and Kinnaber Junction, until that time an unknown outpost, was analysed in detail.

Even in the early hours of the morning men, women and children gathered at Carlisle Citadel station to join the excitement.

At Cupar in Fife the permanent-way gang was called out each night to correct the rails after the express had passed round the curve at speed – the displacement was about three inches.

North British passed Montrose signal box at 04:22 but Caledonian had reached Dubton at 04:21 and so, receiving a clear line, made its Aberdeen arrival at 04:58 with an average speed from start to finish of over 60 mph (97 km/h).

On 21/22 August, NER put in a particularly strong performance averaging 66.2 mph (106.5 km/h) between Newcastle and Edinburgh, a distance of 124.4 miles (200.2 km).

NBR general manager John Conacher telegraphed his GNR counterpart Sir Henry Oakley "After this morning's achievement I think we ought to revert to advertised time ...

[48] A Caledonian Railway publicity postcard of the time shows the figure of their engine driver John Souter standing alone by his locomotive at Aberdeen station.

[49] In his 1958 book about the series of races, Oswald Nock wrote of the 22/23 August journey, "And at that astonishing average speed of 63.3 mph made sixty-three years ago the London–Aberdeen record still stands today".

[60] The Caledonian Railway was still running the Drummond 4-4-0s but now complemented by the Lambie version with increased boiler pressure and estimated by Nock to have averaged 75 mph (121 km/h) over an 11 miles (18 km) stretch.

[66][note 19] North British considered restarting the competition with Conacher writing to Oakley "Although I share to the full your opinion regarding the childishness of the whole business ...

In a leading article The Engineer magazine concluded "One gratifying result of the race will be perhaps to silence the boasting of the American press.

To reassure the public, agreement was reached to slow the runs from London to Edinburgh and Glasgow to take a minimum time of eight hours.

This agreement, which gave much the same journey time as in 1889, lasted into the early 1930s, removing any impetus towards improving express train performance or scheduling.

For its summer 1901 service, the Midland Railway and NBR consortium announced the 09:30 London St Pancras express – on the Settle & Carlisle and Waverley lines – would arrive in Edinburgh at 18:05, ten minutes before the GNR/NER Flying Scotsman.

In May 1928,[72] the LNER started the famous non-stop Flying Scotsman express train from London King's Cross to Edinburgh.

[74] Following the successful launching of the German Flying Hamburger high-speed diesel railcar set in 1933 and the Bugatti cars in France, the LNER began to examine the possibilities of introducing similar trains for key services.

To test the feasibility of this a high-speed trial was run in 1934 between London and Leeds using locomotive 4472 Flying Scotsman, then in still in A1 condition, but with already modified valve gear.

[79] The outbreak of World War II from 1939, and subsequent postwar nationalisation to form British Railways in 1948, curtailed further rivalry between the east and west coast routes.

In 1979, British Rail set a new record of 3 hours 52 minutes on the 401-mile (645 km) length of the WCML between Euston and Glasgow with its experimental Advanced Passenger Train (APT).

However, these times cannot be regularly achieved on the WCML under normal operating conditions as it requires other services on the line to be specially re-timed to give the train a non-stop express from Glasgow to London.

In contrast, the modern Flying Scotsman operated by London North Eastern Railway on the East Coast route, can achieve this within 3 hours 59 minutes on a normal service pattern, and with a stop at Newcastle – however, still making for an average speed of 98.7 mph (158.8 km/h).