The Empire State Express.
The train in this country coming nearest to these long runs without stop is the Empire State Express on the New York Central, from New York to Albany, 143 miles, at the rate of 53 64-100 miles an hour; and the time of the same train to Buffalo, 440 miles in 500 minutes, is just a trifle faster than that of the Midland express from London to Glasgow, 447 miles in 510 minutes. Each makes four regular stops. The Northwestern runs a train from London to Glasgow, 401½ miles, in eight hours, making two stops.
The Great Northern runs a train from London to Doncaster, 156 miles, without stop, in 169 minutes, at the rate of 55½ miles an hour, and the Great Central train runs over England's new road, from London to Sheffield, 165 miles, in 170 minutes, better than 58 miles an hour, slipping a car at Leicester without stop.
Such runs as that between London and Birmingham on the Great Western, a distance of 129¼ miles, made without stop in 140 minutes, or at the rate of more than 55 miles an hour, are less remarkable; for this seems to be about the regular gait of many trains in England.
These fast and long runs are common to all the trunk lines in England, while in the United States the fast runs are all confined to two roads, the New York Central and the Pennsylvania. Compared with many English fast runs, the time between New York and Washington and Boston is slow. The distance to the two cities from New York is about the same, and in both cases the fastest trains make it in five hours (or a little over, now, to Boston), or at 46 miles an hour.
For runs of nearly 1,000 miles no country can show trains to compare with the New York and Chicago trains on the New York Central, the best trains making the 980 miles in 1,080 minutes, or at 54 miles an hour. While this is not quite so fast as the time made by the fast trains from Paris to Lyons and Marseilles, the distance is twice as great as across France.