"Those who remember this express at York in the icy winter of
1879-80, when the few travelers who did not remain thawing themselves at
the waiting-room fires used to stamp up and down a sawdusted platform,
under a darkened roof, while day after day the train came gliding in from
Grantham with couplings like wool, icicles pendent from the carriage
eaves, and an air of punctual unconcern; or those who have known some of
our other equally sterling trains--these will hardly mind if friendship
does let them drift into exaggeration when speaking of expresses." The
author well remembers how, when living some years ago at
Newcastle-on-Tyne, it was often his custom to stroll on the platform of
the Central Station to watch the arrival of the Flying Scotchman, and as
the hands of the station clock marked seven minutes past four he would
turn around, and in nine cases out of ten the express was gliding into the
station, punctual to the minute after its run of 272 miles. Such results
speak for themselves, and for the power of the engines employed, and one
of the best runs on record was that of the special train, drawn by one of
these locomotives, which in 1880 took the Lord Mayor of London, to
Scarborough.
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