Britain has always led the world in passenger train speeds. Trains like the “Flying Scotsman,” the “Royal Scot,” the “Cornish Riviera Limited.” and the “Atlantic Coast Express” have rightly attained universal fame for their speed, comfort and allround reliability. This season even more striking accelerations have been introduced in the Home railway time-tables, so that on almost every main line speeds of sixty miles an hour and upwards have become a daily commonplace.

Top of all the crack fast passenger services of the world's railways comes the wonderful daily performance of the Great Western “Cheltenham Flyer.” Not content with breaking all world's records, the Great Western authorities have now knocked off another two minutes in the journey time of this express between Swindon and Paddington Station, London. To-day the 77½ miles separating the great locomotive-building centre and the metropolis are covered in just 65 minutes—an average start to stop speed of 71.3 miles an hour!

Examination of the time-tables of the other three big group railways reveals an attractive list of fast long-distance passenger trains running at average throughout speeds of 55 miles an hour and upwards. On the London and North Eastern line six daily long-distance expresses are running at an average start-to-stop speed of 60 m.p.h. or over, one travelling for 105½ miles at an average speed of 63.3 m.p.h. The London, Midland and Scottish Company, which has its headquarters at the Euston Terminus, London, has accelerated no fewer than one thousand of its principal passenger trains, while on the Southern system a vast choice of fast services between London and the south and south-west coast towns is a feature of the current passenger train programme.