QUOTE: More Briti***han anything that ran in Britain, this archetypal Mail Engine gave over 75 years of service and is still actively in use. This is the British Engineering Standards Association “Heavy Passenger” 4-6-0, introduced in 1905, of which a number (but not one of the originals) are still in passenger service in India at the time of writing (1987). The railways of India were developed mainly by private enterprise under a concession system whereby the then British Government of India guaranteed a modest return on investment in return for a measure of control, as well as eventual ownership. The government felt that one of their perquisites was to set standards and, having made rather a mess of the gauge question, made up for it with an excellent job of wetting out a range of standards designs for locomotives. The first BESA 4-6-0s were solid hunks of sound engineering, bigger when introduced than almost anything that ran in the same country. Their closest relations at home seem to have been some 4-6-0s built in 19-3 for the Glasgow & South Western Railway by the North British Locomotive Co. of Glasgow. NGL were to supply the first standard 4-6-0s to India. The BESA 4-6-0s stayed in top-line work even after their successors the India Railway Standard (IRS), XA and XB 4-6-2s had arrived in the mid-1920s, because of unsatisfactory qualities amongst the new arrivals. The great success of the BESA designs seems to lie in the fact that they were taken from British practice as it existed, with the difference that both average and maximum speeds in India were 25 per cent lower than at home while loads were about the same.
QUOTE: Originally posted by ForestRump 8:15 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. is 10 hours 15 minutes, not 12 hours 15 minutes (assuming it's ever on time).
QUOTE: Originally posted by daveklepper Customs delays account for a lot of time. Was done more efficiently in the past.
QUOTE: Originally posted by siberianmo For cnw4001 Once again, nice supplement! [tup] Regarding Amtrak to Montreal - man oh man, I would dearly love that run to take ONLY 12 hours 15 minutes! I've spent many hours in Montreal's Central Station looking up at the train board and seeing the Adirondack "delayed" by as many as 8 hours - honestly can't recall ever seeing it on time. Wonder what the arrival average is over a period of lets say 6 months [?] Also wonder how that stacks up with average for back in 1957, 1947 or earlier [?] Tom
QUOTE: Originally posted by ForestRump cnw4001: In 1967 or so the Afternoon Congressional was sped up to 3:20 but that was because of track upgrading in preparation for the introduction of the Metroliners. As far as I know, no other trains were sped up. The problem, of course, with introducing high-speed rail service to the US is that you need members of Congress and a president who feel that the investment would be worth it. Every high-speed rail service that I know of was paid for by a national government, not by private enterprise.
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