Saint Class 135 ish mph

World Land Speed Records


List of world land speed record holders

October 15, 1997
Web posted at: 8:05 p.m. EDT (0005 GMT)

GERLACH, Nevada (Reuters) - The following is a list of world land speed record holders.

Date Car Driver MPH KPH

1898 Dec 18 Jeantaud Gaston Chasseloup-Laubat 39.24 62.78

1899 Jan 17 Jenatzy Camille Jenatzy 41.42 66.27

1899 Jan 17 Jeantaud Gaston Chasseloup-Laubat 43.69 69.90

1899 Jan 27 Jenatzy Camille Jenatzy 49.92 79.87

1899 Mar 4 Jeantaud Gaston Chasseloup-Laubat 57.60 92.16

1899 Apr 29 Jenatzy Camille Jenatzy 65.79 105.26

1902 Apr 13 Serpollet Leon Serpollet 75.06 120.10

1902 Aug 5 Mors William Vanderbilt 76.08 121.73

1902 Nov 5 Mors Henri Fournier 76.60 122.56

1902 Nov 17 Mors Augieres 77.13 123.41

1903 Jul 17 Gobron-Brillie Arthur Duray 83.47 133.55

1903 Nov 5 Gobron-Brillie Arthur Duray 84.73 135.57

+1904 Jan 12 Ford Henry Ford 91.37 146.19

+1904 Jan 27 Mercedes William Vanderbilt 92.30 147.68

1904 Mar 31 Gobron-Brillie Louis Rigolly 94.78 151.65

1904 May 25 Mercedes Pierre de Caters 97.25 155.60

1904 Jul 21 Gobron-Brillie Louis Rigolly 103.55 165.68

1904 Nov 13 Darracq Paul Baras 104.52 167.23

+1905 Jan 25 Napier Arthur MacDonald 104.65 167.44

1905 Dec 30 Darracq Victor Hemery 109.65 175.44

1906 Jan 23 Stanley Fred Marriott 121.57 194.51

1909 Nov 8 Benz Victor Hemery 125.95 201.52

+1910 Mar 16 Benz Barney Oldfield 131.27 210.03

Presumably trains were airborne!

 

Yet that rule is in itself a logical nonsense. Why should an accurately measured speed have to be achieved twice in order to be considered a 'true' record? That's not the case in athletics so there's no particular reason why it should apply in any field other than those motor-sports who have agreed it amongst themselves for whatever arcane reason.

 

It's not so much a post Trump revisionism situation as a version of the "my team is better than your team" sort of arguments hurled between rival football supporters without much evidence. Or, to use another sporting comparison, like the tedious pub arguments as to whether Fangio or Moss was the better racing driver. The two gentlemen concerned (an apt description) always held the other to be the better which is an attitude which could be copied here.
History is littered with claims, genuinely held, of tremendous speeds on railways which proved to be unverifiable. Similarly, if an elderly employee makes such a claim on retirement, his chief may think it more seemly just to agree quietly about something said by an old man.

I seem to recall (there we go!) that in his memoirs, Cook painted the picture of Collett being a somewhat complicated man, which complications led to his retirement being "arranged" during World War II.

PH

 

Try doing that with any degree of accuracy on the footplate of a light engine. Sat in a relatively smooth riding carriage is one thing but on a bucking and swaying footplate, it's another matter entirely.

 

In athletics the track is absolutely level, and records are discounted at more than a given windspeed. In aviation and motorsport the two way run is a simple and elegant way of discounting external environmental factors to establish the true performance of the vehicle.

 

I can't come to any conclusion on this from what I've been reading above. On the one hand, why would Collett make the statement that he did, if he didn't think it was correct? Set against this is why did it take so long to become public knowledge? We all know how effective the railway grape vine is and was. Every stretch of line has a speed limit today and I'm fairly certain it did then. I can't see the GWR Civil Engineer maintaining a section of line to such standards when that is not a requiremen; after all it costs money. So, was the line speed limit exceeded and was this the reason for silence? Countering this, would Collett risk his job by flagrantly breaking rules?
I'm also very much in agreement with Torgomaig. Why do it in the first place? These are not the actions of sensible people. Light engine braking is notoriously poor but, in addition to this light engines are generally unstable at high speed as they don't have a heavy load on the drawbar to damp out the transverse oscillations inevitably set up by the piston thrust. I'm also a bit intrigued about the cut off being extended to 35%. With a Stephenson Link loco and variable lead, at speed you are effectively strangling the steam flow if the cut-off is increased as the lead is reduced and lead is what you want at high speed.

 

Are you saying Coniston Water isn't absolutely level, then?

 

My Dad took a picture of it many years ago and it goes uphill in the resulting print.

 

Just catching up with this thread , having been out all day, there were two points I was going to pick up on. The first was about the accuracy of recording stopwatch readings on a loco at 100 mph, but Spamcan81 has beaten me to it.

The second was Courier's quote of K J Cook reaching an estimated 105 mph on a light engine and finding Brinkworth up distant was on. All Cook says after this was "we had to make a full brake application". What would be far more revealing would be how far into the occupied section ahead they went before coming to a stand. Brinkworth's distant signal to section signal would probably be only about 3/4 of a mile and I doubt that light engines at that speed could stop in that sort of distance. I just do not believe that there was such a cavalier attitude to operating and safety in those days especially given the GWR's excellent safety record in that period.

Peter James

 

Actually no, its not. Not always, anyway. The Lake District lakes are long enough that a good breeze will pile up the water at one end so that one end of the lake is higher than the other. It has a very marked effect on the thermocline, which may be a lot deeper at one end than the other, but the effect is also there at the surface.

The Castle (and Star) have Walschaerts gear.

Don't forget they had specifically arranged with the signalmen for a clear line for the high speed run. In those circumstances my uninformed guess is that arrangements could be made so the distant was not cleared until two sections ahead were clear. I also wonder at what distance the distant could be sighted in daylight and good weather. The text does say that the preceding train had not cleared Wooton Basset, not Brinkworth.

Honestly chaps, some of these comments do verge on the, well, I probably shouldn't say. I cannot imagine that the GWR was the only line that did high speed testing, its simply that we happen to have heard about these.

 

So, to summarise so far..................

We have established that the GWR did run high speed tests with light engines
It is certainly possible that the tests could have exceeded 100mph
But we cant establish by how much

 

I thought we were discussing the supposed speed of a Saint? I admit I'm easily confused, though.

 

Regarding the stopping distances it should be remembered that back in 1906 the Saints had brakes on all wheels, including the bogies. It was Collett who would later deem them an unnecessary complication as the rest of any express train would be fully braked.

 

While I grant that I do not know what the sighting distance for Brinkworth's up distant was, I still do not believe that a light engine doing 105 mph could have pulled up in such a short distance that it would not have entered the occupied section to Wooton Basset beyond Brinkworth's up section signal.

There seem to be a lot of people on here who are very knowledgeable about the abilities of GWR engines to run at high speed without a train attached but no one wants to talk about how long it takes to stop from such high speeds. So what distance is needed to stop a GW 4-6-0 running at 100 mph with no train behind it? It is a fairly fundamental safety issue.

Peter James

 

Yet it would be incorrect to say that a one-way record breaking speed was not a true performance, only that it wasn't repeated at that time or didn't conform to the rules of the competition. Record breaking, by its very nature, is not about consistent performance.

 

Cook's statement was that the preceding express had not cleared Wooton Bassett, not that it had not cleared the section *to* Wooton Basset. I read it as if they were ensuring one empty intervening section, which sounds to my uninformed mind a pretty obvious thing to do.

 

I don't believe we have established anything the like.

We've been given timings which we are to take verbatim but no primary evidence whatsoever and certainly not anything contemporary to these supposed runs.

I find it bewilderingly inconsistent that the GWR, well known for their excellent engineering and careful, methodical way of developing their locomotives, suddenly becomes almost religious in their insistence believing what amounts to nothing more than two people's account of a supposed trend for out shopping locomotives and a potential high speed run with very little evidence.

The thing that makes me more incredulous is that we're expected to scrutinise Scotsmans 100mph run to a higher level of scrutiny than the Stars!

So much for consistency in viewpoints and desire for a scientific approach.

 

It is getting confused. There are two high speed light engine reports being rubbished.

One is the 190something Saint incident, with Collett et al on board, where they reported running in the region of 120 with no detail at all and a statement that the timing was such that they couldn't claim a record.

The other is an incident from Cook's book, many years later, which has a little bit more detail. The Cook one, with a Castle, includes the detail of regulator at 30% and getting the Brinkworth distant against him because the preceding train had not yet cleared Wooton Basset . Amongst other things Cook reports that although he timed the loco at 108, he wouldn't want to claim they were actually running at more than 105 because of the difficulty of using even an mph calibrated stopwatch on the footplate.

In neither case was or is any kind of record being claimed because the timing wasn't adequate to do so.

Obviously a record claim demands a much better better quality of time recording than either of these incidents provided, and so as to confuse the thread even further we have a question being asked as to whether the Flying Scotsman record met that standard. For what little my opinion is worth I think it did.

You know its kinda like me saying that twenty years ago a close friend ran a 550 Yamaha up to 120 on a deserted M3 shortly after dawn, because that's that it said on the speedo. Disconcerting experience actually, he said the M3 has corners at that speed and he vowed never to do it again. Did it happen: yes it did, whatever the limitations of bike speedos I have not the slightest doubt he was a long way the high side of 100mph. Was it timed, could he claim a record: no, of course not.

 

One hopes not: but that's not how it reads from here.