Mallard

Mallard

Author: Don Hale

Publisher: The History Press

Published: 2019-09-02

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13: 0750992913

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Just over eighty years ago on the East Coast main line, the streamlined A4 Pacific locomotive Mallard reached a top speed of 126mph – a world record for steam locomotives that still stands. Since then, millions have seen this famous locomotive, resplendent in her blue livery, on display at the National Railway Museum in York. Here, Don Hale tells the full story of how the record was broken: from the nineteenth-century London–Scotland speed race and, surprisingly, traces Mallard's futuristic design back to the Bugatti car and the influence of Germany's nascent Third Reich, which propelled the train into an instrument of national prestige. He also celebrates Mallard's designer, Sir Nigel Gresley, one of Britain's most gifted engineers. Mallard is a wonderful tribute to one of British technology's finest hours.


The Golden Age of Streamlining

The Golden Age of Streamlining

Author: Colin Alexander

Publisher: Amberley Publishing Limited

Published: 2021-09-15

Total Pages: 174

ISBN-13: 1445693356

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Colin Alexander looks at the interwar period, a high-water mark in industrial design as the benefits of streamlining were realised.


Giants of Steam

Giants of Steam

Author: Jonathan Glancey

Publisher:

Published: 2014-09-01

Total Pages: 644

ISBN-13: 9781459684348

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The thrilling story of the last, and greatest, generation of steam railway locomotives in regular main line service: a story of invention, skill and passion, Giants of Steam reveals how the true advocates of steam's glory days pushed its design and performance to remarkable limits, taking these powerful and beautifully designed machines to new heights against a backdrop of the political upheavals and military conflicts of the mid twentieth century. Glancey tells the stories of the greatest of the 'steam men', the charismatic engineers who designed these machines and put them to use. Giants of Steam also reveals how steam design has continued to progress against the odds in recent decades, while enthusiasm for the steam locomotive itself is far from burning out.


Gresley's Silver Link

Gresley's Silver Link

Author: Tim Hillier-Graves

Publisher: Pen and Sword Transport

Published: 2023-03-23

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 1399073427

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Gresley’s A4 Pacifics are arguably the most famous locomotives ever built, a status cemented by Mallard’s record breaking run on the 3rd July ‘38. And yet only a year later the glamorous ‘streaks’ seemed likely to be cast into obscurity by the coming of another world war. So, for only four exhilarating years they were allowed to flourish as their creator had intended and in that time captured the imagination of railwaymen and public alike. With the help of previously unpublished material the author analyses the complex evolution of the A4s - a project that began in 1911 when Gresley was appointed as Locomotive Superintendent of the Great Northern Railway. It is a story with many strands to consider – war, peace and war again, engineering and art, politics and business, recession and social change, the growth of the media and consumerism, the struggle for professional reputations and a growing, deeply damaging international rivalry. All these elements are captured in the story of the A4s in the heady days before conflict ended their brief golden age and Gresley’s life came to an end.