SLIGHTLY overtaken by events, and at something more than 100mph, we come across the 80th anniversary of the Silver Jubilee, one of the epochal events in British railway history.

It was the country’s first streamlined train, hauled by the first streamlined locomotives, and it shattered world records as it sped.

The first scheduled run was from Newcastle to Kings Cross on September 30, 1935, the train waved off by the Lord Mayor of Newcastle – who bore a marked resemblance to the Fat Controller. – and with Darlington the only stop.

Three days earlier, however, a “Press special” had been run from Kings Cross. Hauled by Silver Link, just three weeks after the revolutionary locomotive’s final testing, the train twice reached speeds of 112.5mph and averaged 100mph constantly over 43 miles.

The 236-mile route itself was timetabled for exactly four hours, including speed restrictions, the world’s fastest start to stop journey over 200 miles.

“The pace of the train was thrilling beyond description,” wrote Cecil J Allen in the November 1935 issue of Railway Magazine, though (of course) he described it anyway.

“A tornado of travel. Locomotive history probably has no parallel to such a feat as this,” his breath and his credulity recovered.

“A sensation unequalled by any train since the early days of railway history,” said the LNER three years later.

The birth and short life of the Silver Jubilee are wonderfully chronicled in a smashing little book just published – free to members – by The Gresley Society and edited by our steam-driven old friend Chris Nettleton, from Eaglescliffe.

“It was a total game changer, a completely new concept, the equivalent of Concorde,” says Chris. “Nigel Gresley and his team had been to Germany to look at the Flying Hamburger, but they went for something revolutionary, a streamlined train with full dining facilities. Something like the Silver Jubilee was unheard of, and it was quite magnificent.”

LOCOS and seven-coach train had been designed by Gresley, the LNER’s chief mechanical engineer – “the fastest long distance train in the world,” the Railway Gazette had enthused, even before the inaugural run.

The four-hour target acknowledged several speed restrictions, including 15mph past York. To achieve it, said the Gazette, would be “no mean performance” but Gresley had done his preparations well.

The streamlining was said to be “very similar” to that of Bugatti racing cars and of the same company’s high-speed railcars in Germany. The colour, if not quite silver, was a distinctive steel grey; the promotional literature was innovative and adventurous.

The LNER even quoted from something called The Lay of the Last Minstrel:

It is the great symphony,
The silver link, the silver tie,
Which heart to heart and mind to mind
In body and in soul can bind.

NAMED to acknowledge King George V’s 25 years on the throne, the train was hauled by one of four A4 locomotives – Silver Link – built for that purpose and to become known to smut-faced schoolboys as streaks.

Silver Link had to work the first two-and-a-half weeks unassisted, and in both directions, before being joined by Quicksilver, Silver Fox and Silver King – the first three Kings Cross engines and the last shedded at Gateshead.

The morning train left Newcastle at 10am, the return at 5.30pm from Kings Cross. The first class was sumptuous and brought a five shilling supplement; the third class was by means third world, either. That was an extra three shillings.

“The internal arrangements present a sense of comfort and restfulness,” said the Railway Gazette.

Two first class coaches were at one end, two third class at the other. In the middle were first and third class restaurant carriages and a kitchen car. On the Silver Jubilee they were nothing if not well fed.

TABLE d’hote dinner was five shillings, three course lunch 3/6d. The lunch menu included mock turtle soup, turbot supreme, roast beef sirloin and Geneva pudding. “A supplementary portion of any dish will be served on request,” the menu added.

The a la carte menu was almost as astonishing as the Silver Jubilee itself, stretching to around 100 options – all prepared on the train – ranging from real turtle soup (two shillings) to three bob for half a dozen oysters.

Chocolate biscuits were twopence, Oxo (and biscuits) fourpence, afternoon tea a shilling. Then as now, the railways didn’t serve chips, but a portion of roast potatoes might be had for threepence.

The drinks menu ranged from Newcastle Amber Ale (6d) and Heineken Lager (9d) to a bottle of Pol Roger 1928 for £1 5s – but that really was first class.

Chris Nettleton acknowledges that everything was aimed at businessmen. “Five shillings was a lot of money in North-East England in the 1930s but even the third class was very, very smart. The whole thing was simply sumptuous, the railway's answer to the Queen Mary.”

The Silver Jubilee ran until August 1939, when the threat of war brought its suspension. It never returned. The coaches were shunted off to work some semi-suburban service in Scotland, the A4s – by then 34 of them – were fast-tracked elsewhere.

In 1948, British Railways introduced the Tees Tyne Pullman – seen as a successor to the Silver Jubilee and again with Darlington as the only stop between Newcastle and the capital. It took five-and-a-quarter hours: it’s what’s called the pace of progress.

Chris Nettleton is both editor of the Gresley Observer and membership secretary of the Gresley Society. Details from him at 96 Greenfield Drive, Eaglescliffe, Stockton-on-Tees TS16 0HN or email lemberg1@virginmedia.com

HAPPILY coincidental, Peter Chapman sends a piece from a 1962 edition of Modern Railways about a footplate run on one of those new-fangled Deltics. For some reason, possibly to do with the NUR, the locos still had a fireman.

Like its predecessor 27 years earlier, the 7.50am from Newcastle stopped only at Darlington. It never topped 90mph and arrived in London at 12.05pm – still 15 minutes slower than the untarnished Silver Jubilee.