Race To The North - London To Aberdeen, 1895

London To Aberdeen, 1895

The railways arrived in Aberdeen in 1850 and an east coast through service was instituted in 1855, taking 17½ hours from London, reduced by 1889 to nearly 13 hours. With the opening of the Forth Bridge in 1890 the distances from London to Aberdeen were 523.2 miles (842.0 km) and 539.7 miles (868.6 km) on east and west coast routes. The timetables for the main expresses were as follows.

At the beginning of 1893 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. The booked time at Dubton, the Caledonian line signalbox before Kinnaber, was six minutes before the time booked for Kinnaber although the journey only took two minutes. The Dubton signalman would offer the train to Kinnaber at its booked Dubton time at the latest – which might be earlier than its actual time. The Kinnaber signalman would accept the train thus keeping the signals against North British. The North British train was only given clearance if it actually passed the North British Montrose signal box before the Dubton booking time. By this means until NBR realised what was happening and complained, Caledonian could take priority even with its rival already waiting at Kinnaber.

In the event, competition focussed on the overnight expresses. East Coast soon changed its timetable to arrive at Aberdeen at 08:15 and West Coast followed suit with 08:05. However, whereas West Coast ran a reliable service, North British were often late because of slow changes of engine at Waverley station. and a tortuous and undulating run from there northwards on a line that was partially single track. By June 1893, East Coast had a booked arrival time of 07:35 and West Coast 07:50. However, if the North British train was slightly late it would be beaten to Kinnaber Junction and not be able to pass the Caledonian train. Caledonian owned the line from Kinnaber to Aberdeen but NBR held running rights (Caledonian required running rights over a very short section of NBR line at Monklands, Lanarkshire).

By 1 July 1895 these times had been brought forward to 07:20 (East) and 07:40 (West). This involved NER reaching Edinburgh in 8 hours 13 minutes, in breach of the 1888 agreement not to take less than 8½ hours. 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. Without prior warning, on 15 July, West Coast widely advertised a new arrival time of 07:00, reducing the intermediate stops to five, and next morning the train actually arrived at 06:47 and on the next run 06:21 was achieved. Inevitably East Coast announced a new arrival time of 06:45 which, although earlier than the West Coast booked time, was nevertheless beaten by the actual West Coast arrivals. There were urgent communications within the East Coast consortium about whether to try and negotiate their way out of the developing race until on 25 July the Marquis of Tweedale, NBR chairman, wired John Conacher, NBR general manager "My opinion is our best policy is to beat them at any cost...". The NBR train arrived at 06:23, two minutes ahead of the new booked time, only to find the rival train had arrived 06:06.

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. Crowds gathered at the various stations. Even in the early hours of the morning men, women and children gathered at Carlisle Citadel station to join the excitement. For the newspapers sensation required not just speed but also potential disaster and the dangers were debated. 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.