GWR 3700 Class 3440 City of Truro - Speed Record

Speed Record

City of Truro was timed at 8.8 seconds between two quarter-mile posts whilst hauling the "Ocean Mails" special from Plymouth to London Paddington on 9 May 1904. This timing was recorded from the train by Charles Rous-Marten, who wrote for The Railway Magazine and other journals. If exact (Rous-Marten's stopwatch read in multiples of 1/5 second), this time would correspond to a speed of 102.3 mph (164.6 km/h), while 9 seconds would correspond to exactly 100 mph.

Initially, mindful of the need to preserve their reputation for safety, the railway company allowed only the overall timings for the run to be put into print; neither The Times report of the following day nor Rous-Marten's article in The Railway Magazine of June 1904 mentioned the maximum speed. However the morning after the run two local Plymouth newspapers did report that the train had reached a speed between 99 and 100 miles an hour whilst descending Wellington Bank, Somerset. This claim was based on the stopwatch timings of a postal worker, William Kennedy, who was also on the train.

Rous-Marten first published the maximum speed in 1905, though he did not name the locomotive or railway company:

On one occasion when special experimental tests were being made with an engine having 6 ft. 8 in. coupled wheels hauling a load of approximately 150 tons behind the tender down a gradient of 1 in 90, I personally recorded a rate of no less than 102.3 miles an hour for a single quarter-mile, which was covered in 8.8 seconds, exactly 100 miles an hour for half a mile which occupied 18 seconds, 96.7 miles an hour for a whole mile run in 37.2 seconds; five successive quarter-miles were run respectively in 10 seconds, 9.8 seconds, 9.4 seconds, 9.2 seconds and 8.8 seconds. This I have reason to believe to be the highest railway speed ever authentically recorded. I need hardly add that the observations were made with the utmost possible care, and with the advantage of previous knowledge that the experiment was to be made, consequently without the disadvantage of unpreparedness that usually attaches itself to speed observations made in a merely casual way in an ordinary passenger train. The performance was certainly an epoch-making one. In a previous trial with another engine of the same class, a maximum of 95.6 miles an hour was reached.

— C Rous-Marten: p2118, Bulletin of the International Railway Congress – October 1905

Before his death in 1908 Rous-Marten did name the locomotive as City of Truro. Official confirmation from the Great Western Railway came in 1922 when they published a letter written in June 1905 by Rous-Marten to James Inglis, the General Manager, giving further details of the record.

...What happened was this: when we topped the Whiteball Summit, we were still doing 63 miles an hour; when we emerged from the Whiteball Tunnel we had reached 80; thenceforward our velocity rapidly and steadily increased, the quarter-mile times diminishing from 11 sec. at the tunnel entrance to 10.6 sec., 10.2 sec., 10 sec., 9.8 sec., 9.4 sec., 9.2 sec., and finally to 8.8 sec., this last being equivalent to a rate of 102.3 miles an hour. The two quickest quarters thus occupied exactly 18 sec. for the half-mile, equal to 100 miles an hour. At this time the travelling was so curiously smooth that, but for the sound, it was difficult to believe we were moving at all...

This sequence of eight quarter-mile timings is thought to start at milepost 173, the first after the tunnel, with the maximum speed at milepost 171.

From 1922 onwards City of Truro featured prominently in the Great Western Railway's publicity material.

Doubts over the record centred on the power of the locomotive and some contradictions in Rous-Marten's passing times. However his milepost timings are consistent with a speed of 100 mph or just over. The latest research examines the evidence and uses computer simulation of the locomotive performance to show that a speed of 100 mph was possible and that the timings do indeed support such a speed.

This record was set before any car or aeroplane had attained such a speed. However in May 1904 City of Truro was not the fastest vehicle in the world, as 130 mph (210 km/h) had been reached the previous year on an experimental electric railway near Berlin. An earlier, unconfirmed run of over 100 mph is recorded from 1893 in the USA, by New York Central and Hudson River Railroad 4-4-0 locomotive No. 999. This claim has little supporting evidence, for example unlike City of Truro there are no timings showing the acceleration up to 100 mph. Even some contemporary American technical journals doubted that such a high speed had been attained: "Many are disposed to receive with doubt the statement that on May 9 the locomotive No. 999 of the New York Central railroad ran at the speed of 100 miles an hour, or that on a subsequent date she ran a single mile in 32 seconds." J P Pearson travelled on the Empire State express on 10th May 1893 and recorded a speed no higher than 81 mph.