Letter about 100mph speed record of City of Truro

Letter from Charles Rous-Marten to Sir James Charles Inglis, general manager of the Great Western Railway, in which he argues that the record speed of 102.3mph that he recorded on the Ocean Mails train hauled by City of Truro on 9 May 1904 should be published.

Charles Rous-Marten was a New Zealand journalist with a strong interest in railways. Between 1902 and his death in 1908 he wrote many articles for the Railway Magazine's Practice and Performance section. He would ride on trains recording their speed using a stopwatch by timing the train as it passed the mileposts next to the railway.

Whilst Charles was enthusiastic to see railways achieving higher speeds, this opinion was not universally shared by passengers who were concerned with safety and the dangers of high speeds. Locomotives at the time did not have speedometers in their cabs to allow drivers to accurately measure their speed, and drivers had to use their own judgement to judge their speed.

On 9 May 1904 he recorded the journey of the Ocean Mails from Plymouth to London. This train carried no passengers, but was still a prestigious train as it carried transatlantic mail unloaded from ocean liners that had just arrived from the USA. There was considerable competition between the White Star Line and Cunard on the transatlantic shipping routes over speeds and fares including the 1904 fare war. There was significant press and public interest in the competition and by extension the rail connections between London and the ports.

Charles recorded the speed of the Ocean Mails throughout the length of its journey. He published a report on the journey in The Times the following day. In that article he reported the train an average speed of 70.2 mph between Exeter and Bristol and 71.2mph between Bristol and London which were exceptional for the time. Also during the journey he recorded a speed of 102.3mph descending Whiteball Summit, Somerset. This was the first time that a steam locomotive had been recorded exceeding the 100mph limit, although an electric train had achieved 130mph in Germany the previous year.

However, Charles omitted the speed record from his report in the Time and also from the subsequent article he wrote in the Railway Magazine. He was conscious of the sensitivities of the railway companies regarding public opinion of excessive speeds and he might have been concerned about losing privileged access given to him by the railway companies if he upset them.

He wrote this letter a year later on 20 June 1905, trying to persuade the Great Western Railway’s general manager to allow him to publish the speed record. He argues that because the train was not carrying passengers it would not worry the public and would re-enforce that passenger services were travelling at lower speeds than they were capable of.

It does not appear that the GWR gave him permission. In October 1905 he published the details of the record but he did not name the locomotive or the company that had achieved the record. However, the GWR did retain his letter and in 1922 they used the letter as evidence to substantiate the claim when they finally admitted that it was their train that Charles had reported breaking the 100mph speed.

There has been considerable debate ever since as to whether City of Truro actually achieved the speeds that Charles recorded. Flying Scotsman’s claim to the record in 1934 was authenticated using a dynamometer car which used scientific equipment to accurately measure the speed. Charles Rous-Marten’s technique using a stopwatch was much less reliable and depended upon human reaction times and judgement. The stopwatch itself was only accurate to a fifth of a second and would have a margin of error in excess of 2mph at the speeds Charles recorded. There is therefore much scepticism of his claim.