“Flying Scotsman's” Feat

Every day at ten o'clock the “Flying Scotsman”—the train which makes the longest non-stop run in the world—leaves King's Cross for Edinburgh.

Fourteen coaches and a giant locomotive totalling altogether nearly 600 tons, race info the north from morning until evening for nearly 400 miles without the wheels once coming to rest.

It is the most romantic and outstanding railway achievement on the globe. The train runs for eight and a quarter hours, sometimes reaching speeds of eighty-five miles an hour, sometimes dropping to a crawling pace of fifteen miles an hour as it threads its way over tortuous lines through stations, such as York and Newcastle.

But it never stops!

There was something proudly benevolent in the attitude of the official of the London and North Eastern Railway when he formally presented me with a blue card permitting me to ride on the footplate of the great engine which performs daily this remarkable mechanical feat.

“You're a lucky man,” he said wistfully. “I wish I were going with you.”

It, was nine-fifty o'clock railway time when the long green locomotive No. 4472, with the driver's cab buried behind a massive boiler and a tender as big as a railway coach, backed into platform No. 10 and hooked on the end of the train.

Ben Glasgow one of the company's crack driver's with a faint glint of humour in his steely eyes, stepped down from the cab with his oil can.

“This is Mr. Glasgow,” said the company official, introducing me.

Ben, as I afterwards got to know him, looked at me, pulled out his watch, and walked over to the first driving wheel and tenderly dropped a spot of oil on the bearing.

“And this is Mr. Eltringham.”

I turned to meet the “relief” driver—short, with white hair and fine Grecian features. He shook me effusively by the hand and greeted me in broad Yorkshire.