(THE) ABERDONIAN
THE origins of ‘The Aberdonian’ lay in the unofficial ‘race to Aberdeen’, which was contested by the East and West Coast companies in 1895 in a bid to achieve the fastest time between London and the ‘Granite City’. The contest was won by the West Coast with an astonishing time of 512 minutes for 540 miles, including three stops, but it was as an East Coast express that ‘The Aberdonian’ was to make its name.
Its operation in the early days was shared between the Great Northern, North Eastern and North British railways, but it wasn’t until the London & North Eastern Railway (LNER) had taken over those three companies in the 1923 Grouping that the train was afforded an official name.
The first titled run of this prestigious sleeping car service took place on July 11, 1927, and it contained dining car facilities and through portions for places such as Inverness and Fort William. By the 1930s, it had grown to become an extremely heavy train, so much so that a 7.25pm summers-only relief service had to be laid on (confusingly with a completely different name – see ‘The Highlandman’). It was in that section that the Inverness, Fort William and Nairn sleeping car portions were contained, the latter detached at Aviemore. That train was followed out of King’s Cross at 7.40pm by ‘The Aberdonian’ itself, which contained through sections for Elgin and Lossiemouth.
The train was almost always hauled by Pacifics between London and Edinburgh but, on the twisting Aberdeen road in the 1930s, would normally be handled by Gresley P2 2-8-2 locomotives specially designed for such duties.
‘The Aberdonian’ was one of only four British trains to retain its title throughout the Second World War, although for security reasons the headboards and carriage boards were not actually carried during the hostilities. In the early 1960s, by which time it had grown to more than 500 tons and been switched to diesel traction, the departure time of its up working was altered to 8.30pm and, from 1971 to 1982, a 10.15pm service from King’s Cross carried the title ‘The Night Aberdonian’.
In 1971,’The Aberdonian’ proper ceased to be an overnight sleeping car train when its title was transferred again, this time to a 12noon down departure and a 10.30am from the ‘Granite City’.
This daylight ‘Aberdonian’ became an HST working in the summer of 1979, although the lack of a headboard on the new form of traction took much of the glamour away and to all intents and purposes, rendered it an ordinary train identifiable only by paper window stickers.
Probably the most surprising alteration took place with the 1982 summer timetable change, when the time-honoured 10am departure from King’s Cross – which had for more than 100 years been the time slot of ‘The Flying Scotsman’ – was handed by BR to ‘The Aberdonian’, thus ending more than a century of history. The southbound ‘Aberdonian’ also began its journey at 10am, but not for long, for in October of that year, it was all-change again as the departure time of the up service was altered to 8.40am. The name continued to be used, off and on, until summer 1994, when the train was replaced by the ‘Northern Lights’.
■ For details of the ‘Aberdeen-Penzance’ service, see ‘The Cornishman’.
THE ADMIRAL DE RUYTER
INTRODUCED by British Rail in May 1987, this was the 09.40 Liverpool Street to Harwich Parkeston Quay boat train and 19.40 return. Because the ferries it connected with sailed for Amsterdam, the service was named after a Dutch naval commander who led a raid on the Medway ports in June 1667 during the Second Anglo-Dutch War.
It is interesting to note that two versions of the title existed, one in English and one in Dutch (the latter the same except for the spelling of the first word – Admiraal).
Until May 1987, the service had been called ‘The Day Continental’. By 1989, the title had been dropped, although the service – one of only two BR trains to gain Euro-City Express status – continued to run.
‘THE AFGHAN’
A NAME coined in 1879 to describe the Great Western Railway’s 4.45pm Paddington-Wolverhampton service between London and Didcot. The appellation was necessary to differentiate it from another GWR train, ‘The Zulu’, which was launched the same day in June of that year. After leaving Didcot, the Wolverhampton train became known as ‘The Northern Zulu’.
Although both names were unofficial, this is believed to be the only case of a train changing names in mid-journey. Both titles commemorated wars being waged at the time of their namings – ‘The Afghan’ referring to the Second Anglo-Afghan War, which lasted from 1878 to 1880. (The Anglo-Zulu War was fought in 1879).
THE AFTERNOON CALEDONIAN
IN 1958, the frequency of the West Coast express ‘The Caledonian’ was doubled and between June 9 and September 12 that year, ‘The Morning Caledonian’ and ‘The Afternoon Caledonian’ were in operation, although the wording on the locomotive headboards remained unchanged. ‘The Afternoon Caledonian’ left Glasgow at 4pm.
THE AFTERNOON TALISMAN
BR doubled the frequency of ‘The Talisman’ East Coast express in 1957 and, for that summer and the duration of the September 1958 to June 1959 timetable, the services were referred to in timetables as ‘The Morning Talisman’ and ‘The Afternoon Talisman’, although the original loco headboards continued to be used. Departure time from both King’s Cross and Edinburgh for ‘The Afternoon Talismans’ was 4pm. The reason for the gap in the dates was that from September 1957 to September 1958, the ‘Morning Talisman’ ran as ‘The Fair Maid’.
(AIRDRIE EXPRESS)
(Brand name): An electric multiple unit service in operation between Glasgow Queen Street and Airdrie, mid-1980s.
‘THE ALTCAR BOB’
THIS strange epithet, possibly a nickname, was used to describe a Railmotor service run by the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway (and later the LMS) from Southport to Altcar & Hillhouse between 1906 and 1938.
‘AMERICAN CAR TRAIN’
(Descriptive term). See ‘ Folkestone Vestibule Limited’.
ANTWERP CONTINENTAL
THIS was one of several ‘Continental’ boat trains run from London by the LNER to connect with ships at Harwich Parkeston Quay. The others were the ‘Day Continental’, the ‘Flushing Continental’ and the ‘Hook Continental’.
In LNER days, the train grew in popularity and on some days could gross more than 400 tons… a tough challenge for B12 and B17 4-6-0s and their crews.
The origins of the services date back to the Great Eastern Railway, which had been running boat trains since the end of the 19th century and which, from February 1921, began to attach a Pullman car to the ‘Antwerp Continental’, which left London at 8.40pm in order to connect with the ferry’s night sailing. The up train left Parkeston Quay at 6.32am. In that first year, the train was known as the ‘Antwerp Express’ in the down direction and the ‘Continental Express’ when running to London.
(For the purposes of this encyclopaedia, we have placed into a different section [p27] the boat trains run to Southampton and other large ports in connection with the sailings of ocean-going liners because those ran only on certain days ‘as required’, whereas the Harwich ferry-boat trains were regular timetabled services.)
Unlike the ‘Hook Continental’, the morning down ‘Antwerp Continental’ used to continue to Dovercourt Bay and Harwich Town and therefore wasn’t purely a boat train, but it did for a while convey non-supplementary fare Pullman cars. During the period of the ‘Great Depression’ in Britain, the two services were merged and ran as the ‘Hook & Antwerp Continental’ between July 1932 and July 1937. The ‘Antwerp Continental’ reappeared in July 1946 but had ceased altogether by 1954.
ANTWERP EXPRESS
See entry on page 11.
THE ARMADA *
RECALLING the Spanish armada defeated off the coast of Plymouth in 1588, this title was coined by British Rail’s Cross-Country sector in May 1988 to identify the 06.09 Leeds-Plymouth and 06.30 Plymouth-York HST diagram.
By 1997/98, the itinerary had changed to 06.05 York-Plymouth and 06.20 Plymouth-Newcastle, but the name sank from the national timetable in 2002 before being salvaged by First Great Western in December 2011 for the 05.53 Plymouth-Paddington and 19.03 return, extended to Penzance on Fridays.
ATLANTIC HERITAGE
A NAME given by BR ScotRail in 1991 to the 12.27 Inverness-Kyle of Lochalsh service and 17.00 return. The title was dropped in September 1992.
AYRSHIRE TRADER
THIS train was unusual in bearing different titles for its out and back services.
Introduced by BR’s ScotRail sector in winter 1989/90, the ‘Ayrshire Trader’ was the 17.00 Newcastle-Girvan service, whereas the return 06.45 Girvan-Newcastle was known as the ‘Tyne Trader’.
Both services were operated by Class 156 ‘Super Sprinters’ and the titles were dropped in winter 1997/98.
BALLATER EXPRESS
ONE of a handful of named trains run by the Great North of Scotland Railway, this one linked Ballater with Aberdeen and ran during the first two decades of the 20th century.
BELFAST BOAT EXPRESS
TRAINS of this name ran on three different routes: 1) between London Paddington and Birkenhead in GWR days to connect with Liverpool-Belfast night sailings, 2) between London Euston and Fleetwood Harbour via the West Coast Main Line, and 3) from Manchester Victoria to Heysham Harbour, also connecting with Belfast steamers.
In the late 1960s, the latter became the last steam-hauled named train on British Rail. The service continued into the diesel era but ceased running on the day the Heysham ferry was withdrawn, April 6, 1975.
THE BENJAMIN BRITTEN
A SHORT-LIVED name introduced by British Rail in 1987 to describe the 07.45 Harwich Parkeston Quay to London Liverpool Street ‘Euro-City Express’ service and 19.50 return. The train, named after the famous British composer, also appeared in the 1988 timetable with slightly amended times, but had been dropped by October 1989.
BLACKPOOL & FYLDE COAST EXPRESS
THIS was a short-lived title for a service put on by the London Midland & Scottish Railway in 1934 to provide the popular resort of Blackpool with a daily link to London.
Leaving the Lancashire resort at around 8.25am, it would arrive in the capital at lunchtime, with the down train setting off at around 5pm to ensure Fylde coast residents reached home some five hours later.
The train was a mini version of the Southern’s ‘Atlantic Coast Express’, containing a restaurant service and making stops at Wigan and Preston for through coaches to and from Blackburn, Burnley, Colne and Barrow.
It lost its title upon the outbreak of war in 1939 and never regained it.
(BLUE PULLMAN)
(Brand name): A generic term for a fleet of Pullman DMUs. See under separate entries – ‘Birmingham Pullman’, ‘Bristol Pullman’, ‘Midland Pullman’, ‘Oxford Pullman’, ‘South Wales Pullman’.
THE BON ACCORD
THIS was one of two expresses introduced by the LMS on July 5, 1937, to cover the 153-mile Glasgow-Aberdeen run in just three hours (the other was ‘The Saint Mungo’).
Departing Glasgow Buchanan Street at 10.05 and usually hauled by one of the then new ‘Jubilee’ 4-6-0s, it was limited to eight coaches (including a restaurant car) in order to maintain the demanding schedule over difficult terrain.
The train’s name – which is the motto of the city of Aberdeen – was discontinued a week after the outbreak of war, on September 8, 1939, but resurrected by BR 10 years later, on May 23, 1949 – albeit for a different service, the 6.25am from Aberdeen and 1.35pm ex-Buchanan Street.
From June 1962, it was used to describe the 7.10am Aberdeen-Glasgow and 2.05pm return (12.05pm on Saturdays). Upon closure of Buchanan Street on November 7, 1966, the train used Glasgow Queen Street.
The last run as a titled train took place on May 4, 1968, eight months to the day after closure to passengers of the ex-Caledonian main line between Stanley Jct and Kinnaber Jct, although by then, the headboards had long ceased to be carried by the locos.
THE BORDERER
THIS name appeared for the first time in the BR timetable of winter 1989/90 and was applied to the 15.54 Glasgow Central-Newcastle service that ran to Carlisle via the ex-Glasgow & South Western route through Kilmarnock and Dumfries. Operated by ScotRail Class 156 ‘Super Sprinter’, it ceased as a titled train at the end of the summer 1996 timetable.
(THE) BOURNEMOUTH BELLE
PERHAPS by virtue of their attractive feminine suffixes, the ‘Belles’ of the Southern were among the most-loved of all Britain’s named trains.
One of the best-known was the ‘Bournemouth Belle’, born on July 5, 1931.
At first it ran as a seven-days-week operation only in summer, leaving London Waterloo at 10am and running non-stop to Southampton West and Bournemouth Central, where a five-car portion was detached for Weymouth. During the winter, the train ran on Sundays only, but, in January 1936, it began to operate on an all-year-round daily basis with a halt at Southampton Central (which had been renamed from Southampton West the previous year). The Weymouth portion had been discontinued after the first season.
The train was all-Pullman from the start and consisted of between seven and 10 first and third class cars, some of which were 12-wheelers. Haulage was usually entrusted to a ‘Lord Nelson’ or ‘King Arthur’ class 4-6-0.
As with many luxury trains, it was withdrawn at the outbreak of war but reinstated on October 7, 1946, by which time ‘Merchant Navy’ Pacifics were available for motive power. This enabled the formation to be increased to 10 or even 12 vehicles.
In 1965, Bournemouth West station was closed and the train terminated at the town’s Central station for the final months of its existence, which came to an end in July 1967, there being no electric Pullman units available for the South-Western division of the SR.
BOURNEMOUTH LIMITED
A WATERLOO-Bournemouth express that wasn’t formally named until July 1929 but had its roots in a non-stop service operated between those two locations by the London & South Western Railway from 1899.
The departure times of the named train were 7.42am from Bournemouth and 4.30pm from Waterloo. It contained restaurant facilities and through coaches for Weymouth and Swanage, which were detached at Bournemouth.
‘The Limited’ was withdrawn at the onset of the Second World War and, unlike the ‘Bournemouth Belle’, was never reinstated, although an all-new express was introduced along the same route in 1945 and later became ‘The Royal Wessex’.
BRADFORD EXECUTIVE
IN the years preceding the squadron introduction of HSTs in the late-1970s, the Eastern Region of BR marketed a service by the name of ‘High Speed’ on the East Coast Main Line using ‘Deltic’ Type 5s and Brush Type 4s coupled to short (eight-vehicle) rakes of Mk 2 coaches.
Although limited to 100mph, such dining car-equipped trains could maintain high speeds for longer, especially if run non-stop, and were thus ideal for business executives and other long-distance commuters.
In 1971, air-conditioned updated versions of Mk 2s were introduced and, two years later, the trains began to receive official names.
The ‘Bradford Executive’ was one of the first three (the others being the ‘Leeds Executive’ and the ‘Newcastle Executive’) and by 1978 it was completing the journey between London and the West Riding in less than 2½ hours, but those times were eclipsed when the 125mph ‘High-Speed Trains’ began to arrive on the ECML from 1978, slashing almost 20 minutes off some of the schedules.
At various times of its existence, the service has been formed of loco-hauled stock (both diesel and electric) and HST and has used both Bradford stations, Forster Square and Exchange/Interchange.
The train had disappeared from the timetable by May 1990.
THE BRADFORD PULLMAN
CONTRARY to popular opinion, Britain’s first Pullman service – run by the Midland Railway from London to Bradford in June 1874 – was never named. However, the title is included in this encyclopaedia by virtue of the fact that British Rail InterCity used it in July 1991 to describe the 06.46 Bradford Forster Square-King’s Cross service and 15.50 return. It ran for only a year (although the ‘Yorkshire Pullman’ also used Forster Square at times over the following decade).
(BRIGHTON EXPRESS)
(Brand name): A Class 319 electric multiple unit service ran on the Brighton line under this name in the 1980s/90s.
‘BRIGHTON LIMITED’
See ‘Pullman Limited Express’.
BRIGHTON PULLMAN LIMITED
VARIOUSLY known also as the ‘Brighton Limited’ or the ‘Pullman Limited’ and with a full title of ‘The Brighton Sunday Pullman Limited’, this train was one of the first in the south of England to carry a name and came into existence on October 2, 1898 (the year before the ‘Granville Express’ stopped running).
The train could trace its origins back to the ‘Pullman Limited Express’ of 1881 and was specifically geared to the winter ‘Brighton season’, so did not run in July, August or September.
First class only, it left London Victoria at 11am and was on the south coast an hour later – a time that was to be slashed dramatically to just 48 minutes in a test run on July 26, 1903, hauled by a Billinton 4-4-0.
Despite the potential shown by that outstanding performance, no general speed-up of the service was made, but the overall success of the ‘Brighton Limited’ proved to the railway’s managers that there was scope for a daily service and a special train of seven 12-wheel coaches was ordered. Thus was born ‘The Southern Belle’, introduced in November 1908, from which date the Sundays-only train ceased to operate.
THE BRISTOLIAN *
THE centenary of the Great Western Railway in 1935 saw the company introduce a high-speed non-stop express on the London-Bristol main line.
The GWR already had titled trains, notably the ‘Cornish Riviera’ and ‘Cheltenham Spa’ expresses, but ‘The Bristolian’ was limited to seven purpose-built coaches and with a ‘Castle’ or ‘King’ at the head could be whisked to Bristol Temple Meads at an average speed approaching 70mph. It began on September 9, 1935, leaving Paddington at 10am and setting off from Bristol at 4.30, but, in common with many glamorous non-stop trains, was withdrawn just four years later for the duration of the war, not being reinstated as a named train until summer 1951.
One of the reasons for delaying the revival was that the timings had been slowed considerably by the hostilities and the Western Region did not feel it right to restore the name until the schedule was worthy, but the timings were gradually accelerated and by June 1954 were back to pre-war levels.
By the end of that decade, the first diesel-hydraulics had entered traffic and 100-minute schedules at an average speed of 80mph became possible, but instead of taking advantage of that, BR decided in 1961 to increase the loading of ‘The Bristolian’ to 10 or 11 coaches and add a stop at Bath Spa, thus ending the train’s famous non-stop reputation.
The ‘Warship’ diesels perpetuated the classic nature of the named trains by carrying headboards in those early days of modernisation, but the writing was on the wall for titled trains generally and ‘The Bristolian’ lost its name in everything but timetable references on June 12, 1965. It was restored in 1971 but dropped again two years later.
In 1998, the name was revived and is today used on the 06.49 Weston-super-Mare to Paddington and the 18.00 Paddington-Bristol Temple Meads, both First Great Western HST workings.
(THE) BRITANNIA
FROM summer 1989, this was the name applied to the 18.35 Harwich Parkeston Quay to Manchester Piccadilly and the 07.05 Derby to Harwich services, the Derby start probably being to avoid empty stock moves.
The service was operated by British Rail’s Provincial sector under its ‘Express’ branding, but the title was dropped at the start of the 1991 summer timetable.
BRITTANY EXPRESS
UNLIKE many south-western boat trains (see p27), this one did not run as an as-required ‘Q train’, but on a regular basis, running from Waterloo to Southampton Docks on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and northbound on Wed/Fri/Sun. It connected with St Malo steamer services and was in operation from 1954 to 1964 (sailings to St Malo having ceased in the autumn of 1963).
THE BROADSMAN
SO widespread were titled trains on the UK railway network at one time that even the relatively small Norfolk resorts of Cromer and Sheringham warranted one.
Today, of course, Sheringham is an important name on the heritage railway map, but in the early years of the British Railways era it was merely a seaside town on the single-track ex-Midland & Great Northern Railway system. The fledgling Eastern Region of BR had already tested the water there in 1948 by arranging for ‘The Norfolkman’ to pick up a summer-only Sheringham portion at Cromer Junction before continuing to Norwich and London.
Two years later, Sheringham became part of the itinerary of a new express, ‘The Broadsman’, which took its name from the large expanses of water that cover much of north-east Norfolk and which was launched onto the scene on June 5, 1950.
Departure time for the Sheringham coaches was 6.03am but, the following year, encouraged by the tremendous timetable accelerations made possible by the new ‘Britannia’ Pacifics, BR allowed Sheringham residents an extra quarter of an hour in bed by altering the time to 6.20, with arrival in London Liverpool Street at 10.07am. The northbound service left the capital at 3.30pm and the Sheringham coaches arrived at their destination at five past seven.
But there were even more accelerations to come a year later when ‘The Broadsman’ made headlines by becoming the first regular mile-a-minute train in East Anglia and was once even timed at 94mph near Diss in 1954. For
