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.
Fast Time to Atlantic City.
Coming to short runs and special summer trains, undoubtedly the fastest are from Camden to Atlantic City. Here some very fast time has been made over an ideal country for fast time by both the Reading and the Pennsylvania. The best Reading time is 56½ miles in 50 minutes, or 66 miles an hour, while the best Pennsylvania time is 59 miles at the rate of 64 miles an hour.
These constitute all the very fast regular trains in the United States. The fastest run in New England outside the Boston-New York run is from Boston to Portland at the rate of 44 miles an hour, and the showing is still poorer in the West and South. Chicago, in many respects the greatest railroad center in the world, has no fast trains outside the New York Central and Pennsylvania trains referred to.
Throughout the West, though the best trains are very luxurious, the runs are all short, averaging about 30 miles between stations and the speed nowhere averages 40 miles an hour.
Next to speed may be considered the frequency of trains, their appointments, etc. In this respect a still more pronounced difference appears in different countries with almost equal population.
More trains leave the great South Terminal in Boston in one day than are moved in one direction on all the roads of Spain and Portugal in two weeks. From one terminal in London more trains leave daily than move in ten days to supply the whole population of Russia.