World speed record for steam locomotive set - July 3, 1938

On this day in 1938, the world speed record for steam locomotives was set when Mallard went 126 miles per hour. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class. It's production of I Heart Radio. Hello.
Welcome to this Day in History class, where we dust
off a little piece of history every day. Today is
July Threeten. The day was July three, ninety eight. The

(00:27):
London Northeastern Railway Class A four number forty four sixty
eight Mallard set the record for highest speed ever ratified
for a steam locomotive when it reached one hundred and
twenty six miles per hour or two hundred and one
kilometers per hour. Mallard was of the thirty five A

(00:47):
four class of express locomotives designed by Sir Nigel Gressley
when he was the Chief Mechanical Engineer of the London
and Northeastern Railway or l n e R. It was
built in March of nineteen thirty eight and it had
a streamlined wedge shaped design. It usually operated on the

(01:07):
East coast line. The A four class of locomotives were
more efficient than previous locomotives, shortening the trip time from
London King's Cross to Newcastle. The l MS Coronation held
the disputable British theme record as it was claimed to
have reached one and fourteen miles per hour, and in

(01:28):
nineteen thirty six, Germany's d r G Class five locomotive
set the world speed record for steam locomotives when it
reached one hundred and twenty four point five miles per
hour on the Berlin Hamburg line. Gressley and a team
of engineers began modifying the locomotive to beat the speed record.
Mallard was chosen to set the world speed record because

(01:50):
it was one of three A four locomotives that had
special exhaust arrangements, which included a double blast pipe chimney.
Mallard also had a Fleaman speed recorder, a device that
indicated the current speed of a vehicle and recorded it
on paper tape. On Sunday, July three, night driver Joe
Duddington attempted to set the world speed record for railways

(02:13):
with Mallard. The attempt was carried out during trials of
a new quick acting break. The test run would be
between Grantham and Lincolnshire and Peterborough in Cambridgeshire. Mallard was
hauling seven coaches waning two hundred and sixty seven US
tons or two hundred and forty three metric tons, with
officials and equipment aboard. There were three twin articulated carriages

(02:38):
and a dynamometer car which contained instruments that recorded the
locomotive speed. Fireman Thomas Bray was also on board. The
remaining crew and technical team weren't told that the trip
was an attempt to beat the world speed record until
after the trains northbound run from wood Green, North London. Notably,

(03:00):
nobody from the l n e R magazine was aboard,
so the magazine had to use an account from the
Railway Gazette. Mallard went through Grantham station at twenty four
miles per hour, then accelerated up to sixty miles per
hour over the next two and a half miles, eventually
reaching seventy five miles per hour. As a Mallard went

(03:21):
down Stoke Bank, the dynamometer card recorded the speed at
one hundred and twenty miles per hour, beating the British
theme record. The train would soon have to slow down
at the S and Dine curves, but there was a
little time to accelerate before that point, so the crew
did and the train made it to one and twenty

(03:41):
six miles per hour, beating the world record. It maintained
a speed between one drew three and one and twenty
six miles per hour for nearly two miles. It was
possible they could have gone faster had they not had
to slow at s and Dine. Shortly after Mallard set
the record, the force from the brakes caused Mallard's big

(04:02):
end bearing for the middle cylinder to overheat and it
had to go slow into Peterborough. It then had to
go into the workshop for repairs. Mallard retired from service
in nineteen sixty three. Between nineteen eighty two and nineteen eight,
it was restored to working order and completed runs until
nineteen nine. Mallard still officially holds the world record, though

(04:25):
others have made unsubstantiated claims of reaching faster locomotive speeds.
I'm Eve step Coo and hopefully you know a little
more about history today than you did yesterday. If there's
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t D I h C podcast, We'll be back with

(04:49):
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