Top 10: world’s fastest steam trains
- 10: ‘3700’ No.3440 City of Truro – 100mph
- 9: ‘A1’ No.60163 Tornado – 101mph
- 8: Milwaukee Road Class F6 No.6402 – 104mph
- 8: Milwaukee Road class F6 No.6402 – 104mph
- 7: ‘A3’ No. 2750 Papyrus – 108mph
- 6: Milwaukee Road Class A No.2 – 113mph
- 5: 18 201 – 113mph
- 4: ‘Coronation’ No.6220 Coronation – 114mph
- 3: New York Central Hudson Commodore Vanderbilt – 123mph
- 2: DRG Class 05 002 – 125mph
- 1: ‘A4’ No.4468 Mallard – 126mph
Steam locomotives are the closest thing humans have created to a living ‘thing’.
They require finesse and careful attention to get the best out of them, need to be warmed up gently and then disposed in the right way after a run. Rather than pushing a lever or pressing a button on a diesel or electric locomotive or multiple units, man and machine have to work in harmony to extract the best performance from the locomotive.
Here we take a leaf through the history books and recount the fastest steam locomotives ever. To include different classes in the list, we’ve picked the fastest example but have noted other significant speed records where required.
PICTURE: The Sir Nigel Gresley, which holds the British post-war steam speed record of 112mph, and sister locomotive to the famous Mallard.
10: ‘3700’ No.3440 City of Truro – 100mph
Producing an exhaustive list is near-impossible: as you’ll see further along, some claims are not backed with serious evidence and in almost all cases there are counter-claims. Perhaps the most famous instance of ‘did it or didn’t it?’ occurred in 1904 when the British train City of Truro was hauling a train from Plymouth to London Paddington and travelled down Wellington Bank in Somerset.
Onboard the train was journalist Charles Rous-Marten and he timed the train taking 8.8 seconds to travel between two quarter mileposts. Rounding up to nine seconds – as his stopwatch only read in multiples of 1/5 second – corresponds to 100mph.
Did ‘Truro’ hit 100mph? Nobody can know for sure. Rous-Marten’s quoted timings for eight quarter mileposts certainly support this theory, but of course the accuracy will be far below today’s levels of technology, such as GPS units and accurate speedos.
Whether or not ‘Truro’ hit 100mph on 9 May 1904 is largely a moot point in many ways: whatever the outcome, its top speed as it descended the bank in Somerset was higher than that of contemporary cars and aeroplanes. The debate will rage on and on about this run; thankfully, however, there is more concrete evidence to support further claims.
9: ‘A1’ No.60163 Tornado – 101mph
Completed in 2008, Tornado was the first standard-gauge steam locomotive to be built in the UK for more than 50 years. It is one of the most recognisable locomotives thanks in part to it appearing in the Paddington 2 movie, while it featured in a Top Gear race between London and Edinburgh.
On 12 April 2017, it hit the magic ton in connection with a bid to run the locomotive at 90mph instead of 75mph while hauling railtours. As part of the bid, in common with other rail vehicles, Tornado had to operate at 10% above its planned maximum speed to demonstrate a sufficient margin of safety and special dispensation was given to hit three figures.
That run marked the first time that a steam locomotive had hit 100mph in the UK for 50 years (there are a number of timing logs from experienced train timers confirming ‘Merchant Navy’ locomotives hit 100mph or more towards the end of steam on the Southern). Alas, Tornado has only hauled one railtour at 90mph in the intervening period and it is likely 90mph running will only happen on special occasions in the future.
At the time of writing, the locomotive is about to return to the national network following a £1 million overhaul and is set to commence its traditional season of ‘Aberdonian’ trains from Edinburgh to Aberdeen every summer.
8: Milwaukee Road Class F6 No.6402 – 104mph
The ‘F6’ class was designed to run services between Chicago and Minneapolis. During a run between the Windy City and Milwaukee on 20 July 1934 – to assess the viability of a service to Minneapolis – the locomotive achieved a top speed of 104mph.
The coal-fired locomotive averaged 75.5 mph on a 85-mile run from Chicago to Milwaukee and 89.92 mph for the subsequent 68-mile stretch to Minneapolis. Unlike most of the other runs listed in this story, the speed record occurred while the locomotive was hauling a normal passenger train.
8: Milwaukee Road class F6 No.6402 – 104mph
The locomotive was hauling five carriages weighing 382,000kg (800,000 lb) and times were recorded using stopwatches when the train passed stations (as opposed to the more accurate timing method of using mileposts), while the ‘F6’ was also fitted with a speedo for the occasion.
The fastest inter-station average speed was 95.6 mph between Oakwood and Lake. The latter half of that section involves uphill running; thus, the speed is more than likely to have been in three figures, further supporting the theory that this was in fact the first time a steam locomotive had topped 100mph.
7: ‘A3’ No. 2750 Papyrus – 108mph
Designed by Sir Nigel Gresley, the ‘A3’ class of locomotives were designed to haul express trains along the East Coast Main Line, including the prestigious Flying Scotsman named train, of which the National Collection locomotive was named after.
Between the late 1800s and the dawn of the Second World War, railway companies competed to operate the fastest service from London to Scotland, with the competition only intensifying after the grouping of the railways in 1923, which saw LNER (on the east side of the UK) take on LMS (on the west). Thus in March 1935 Papyrus was selected for a special test run, featuring a train that included a dynamometer car to record its performance.
During this run, No.2750 reached a peak speed of 108 miles per hour and maintained a speed above 100 mph for 12.5 consecutive miles on the southbound East Coast Main Line between Grantham and Peterborough – the same stretch where Mallard later broke the same record.
While Papyrus’ record was subsequently broken, it still holds the speed record for non-streamlined steam locomotives. Meanwhile, classmate No.4472 Flying Scotsman – arguably the most famous steam locomotive in the world – was the first steam locomotive to officially hit 100mph when it hit the ton on 30 November 1934.
6: Milwaukee Road Class A No.2 – 113mph
Just four Class A locomotives were built and they were designed for daily 100mph operations. Built between May 1935 and May 1936, they survived until the end of steam haulage in America, ultimately being retired in 1951. With a wheel configuration of 4-4-2, these were among the last ‘Atlantic’ type steam locomotives to be built in the USA, and also the most powerful.
The locomotives were oil-fired (as opposed to being the more traditional coal-fired approach) and ran between Chicago and various destinations in the mid-west and western USA.
Normally, the locomotives would haul nine carriages, however, a run with a dynamometer car behind No.2 was made on May 15 1935 between Milwaukee and New Lisbon, Wisconsin. It recorded a speed of 112.5mph over a 14-mile stretch of track.
That run ensured No.2 was the first steam locomotive to have been recorded to exceed 110mph. Contemporary reports claim that the class was able to run at speeds in the region of 120mph, but credible evidence of this has not been recovered to support these theories.
5: 18 201 – 113mph
In many ways, 18 201 is the most interesting locomotive on this list. It was originally built as number 61 002 in 1939 as a 4-6-6 streamlined tank locomotive primarily to operate a high-speed service from Berlin to Dresden, though it didn’t see much service due to the outbreak of the second world war.
After the war, it was converted into a more traditional ‘Pacific’ form and was used to test new carriages for export. It was during one of these test runs that it hit 113mph on 11 October 1972.
That’s not all though. On 5 July 1995, during a test run between Halle and Wittenberge it reached around 180 km/h as a light engine following repairs to its six-foot seven-inch driving wheels. Noted railway journalist and performance expert Jürgen-Ulrich Ebel was on the footplate and took a photo of the speedometer nudging 180 km/h.
Meanwhile, 18 201 was the first steam locomotive to hit 100mph during this current century. On 5 May 2002 the locomotive hauled a railtour between Gloggnitz and Wiener Neustadt with noted train timer Bryan Benn onboard. Thanks to the advent of technology since the 1930s, Benn was able to use a GPS device to supplement the more traditional manual stopwatch timing approach.
4: ‘Coronation’ No.6220 Coronation – 114mph
The ‘Coronation’ class was designed to be as powerful as possible as the locomotives were used on express services between London and Glasgow, the route of which includes Shap Summit in Cumbria (a 5.5-mile climb with gradients of up to 1-in-75) and Beattock (a 15-mile slog with gradients of up 1-in-69). Prior to the introduction of the Coronation Scot, Coronation hauled a train of invited guests from London Euston to Crewe on 29th June 1937. On a downhill section it attained a top speed of 114mph.
However, the brakes were applied somewhat later than required resulting in crockery being smashed in the dining car as the train negotiated points. Most importantly, though, both locomotive and train remained upright.
The class does hold the British power record though. On 26 February 1939 No. 6234 Duchess of Abercorn hauled a train of 20 coaches including a dynamometer car on a test run, from Crewe to Glasgow and back. The load weighed 620 tonnes (630,000kg) and drawbar horsepower - representing the power conveyed directly to the 20-coach train - was frequently over 2000 hp and a maximum of 2511 hp was recorded by the vehicle.
Three ‘Coronation’ class locomotives are preserved: No.6229 Duchess of Hamilton (a static exhibit at the National Railway Museum in York), No.6233 Duchess of Sutherland (a frequent main line performer, currently being overhauled) and 4625 City of Birmingham (located at the Birmingham Science Museum).
3: New York Central Hudson Commodore Vanderbilt – 123mph
Named after the Hudson River, the class were designed to haul high-speed passenger trains – such as the 20th Century Limited between New York and Chicago and the Empire State Express between New York and Buffalo - and were the first streamlined steam locomotives in the world.
It is said that Commodore Vanderbilt attained 123mph in 1934, however, details of the run are scant and performance logs do not exist and this speed is not officially recognised. The record is based on a start and pass time of an hour between Buffalo and Erie; however, the peak speed would have had to be higher to account for the time to get going from a standstill.
Needless to say, then, the jury is still out then, however, evidence of the class hitting speeds of up to 113mph is in evidence.
275 ‘Hudsons’ were built, however, by 1957 all but one of the class had been scrapped. The one locomotive to survive into preservation is CPKC 2816 Empress, which this year became the first-ever steam locomotive to travel across North America, when it ran between Calgary in Canada and Mexico City.
2: DRG Class 05 002 – 125mph
Just three ‘05’s were built by the Deutsche Reichsbahn with the locomotives designed to haul services between Berlin and Hamburg. No.002 set what was then the new speed record on 11 May 1936 hauling a train that was weighing 197,113kg (433,649 lb). Unlike Mallard, which set its speed record going downhill, the German locomotive hit its maximum on the flat.
The ‘05’ does hold a world record though. On 30 May 1936, it set an unbroken start stop speed record for steam locomotives: During a run between Hamburg and Berlin it ran the 70 miles from Wittenberge to a signal stop before Berlin-Spandau in 48 min 32s with an average speed of 86.6 mph.
In the 1950s, the three locomotives were diagrammed to work on the 437 route between Hamburg and Frankfurt via Cologne, albeit with an 87mph top speed. Originally, the boiler pressure was 20 bar however, this was reduced after the Second World War to 16 bar – dropping the power output as a result - presumably to reduce maintenance costs.
Sadly, No.002 and its sister, No.003, were scrapped in 1960, however, No.001 survives into preservation and is currently on display at the Nuremberg Transport Museum, which is well worth a visit if you’re in the area.
1: ‘A4’ No.4468 Mallard – 126mph
You’re likely already aware that Mallard is the world’s fastest steam locomotive: it hit 126mph travelling down Stoke Bank on 3 July 1938 during a ‘test run’ for a new type of brake – a ruse devised by iconic engineer Sir Nigel Gresley to hide the real intention of the real purpose, to take back the world record from Germany.
Included in the seven-coach consist weighing 240,000kg (528,00 lb) was a dynamometer car which houses various equipment to record performance such as speed, power and tractive effort.
