Atlantic Coast Express - The Zenith

The Zenith

With the end of hostilities the Southern Railway lost no time in reintroducing its most prestigious express. The company’s locomotive design department, under its innovative Chief Mechanical Engineer, Oliver Bulleid, had been working during the war years; Bulleid's two new designs of express locomotive, the "Merchant Navy" class Pacifics for services between Waterloo and Exeter Central and the lighter "West Country" and "Battle of Britain" class for the branches beyond, enabled improvements in timekeeping and reliability and facilitated the introduction of heavier trains. Initially there was little increase in overall speeds owing to the poor state of the track, which had suffered neglect during the war.

The 1950s marked the highpoint of the "ACE", with the first mile-a-minute timing on the Southern Region (as the Southern Railway had become) with a 12.23 pm arrival in Salisbury, 83 miles from Waterloo. Gradual improvements in schedules continued until the final acceleration in autumn of 1961, when the journey time from Waterloo to Exeter Central came down to 2hr 56min.