A Use for a Large Face.

Most of us know what to do with the face which Nature in a kindly or malevolent mood has endowed us. If this knowledge is lacking, no doubt some thoughtful and well-disposed person will some time or other give some sound advice as to its best employment—even if it may involve immersion in a useful culinary utensil. A most unfamiliar use for a man's most noble ornament was, however, recently revealed by a West of England paper, which caused consternation in local railway circles by gravely stating that “in our fastest streamlined expresses, touching 100 miles an hour, a passenger who puts his face out of the window increases the strain on the engine by 15 horse power.” Assuming therefore that the Coronation express is travelling at 90 m.p.h., how many faces, or in more scientific terms, how many square feet of face protruding from the windows would be necessary to bring the train to a standstill? Had the L.N.E.R. realised the braking potentialities of the human face—particularly the large wellfed variety possessed by the majority of the business men patronising the streamlined expresses—the safety measure adopted of signalling these trains two sections in advance might well have been dispensed with. Now this fact is generally known, it is fortunate perhaps that that part of the window which opens on the latest coaches affords too small an aperture to enable some overambitious individual to project some more massive portion of his anatomy and thus cause the locomotive to explode in a praiseworthy endeavour to overcome the suddenly increased air resistance.

(”Railway Gazette,” 11th March, 1938).