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Description
One of the rarest and most important pics of Mallard the A4 Pacific, captured in full color to boot. Here's 4468 doing his homicidal rampage down Stoke Summit on July 3rd, 1938, likely doing 124 miles an hour here. Not long after this he reached the fastest recorded speed on railroad tracks for a steam locomotive, 126.22 miles an hour for about 2 seconds before the Driver and Fireman, Joseph Duddington and Tom Bray and Inspector Jenkins, were told to stop everything. Literally, for they were coming up to a sharp curve. Mallard limped into Peterborough after suffering heavy bearing and middle crank axle damage. The locomotive was repaired and served the East Coast Main Line for 25 years.

There were rumors that the old Pennsylvania Railroad's one-and-only S1 Duplex, 6100, hit 156 miles an hour in Fort Wayne, Indiana, a few of the old New York Central Railroad's J series Hudsons hitting 130 miles an hour, and one of the T1 Duplexes doing 143 miles an hour, but these were never authenticated by anyone. Do I think they eclipsed Mallard's speed record when they did? By all indications and accounts, yes. After all, so many steam locomotives manufactured in North America between 1920 and 1950 were FAR bigger and more powerful even than most British steamers, and with longer distances where you could run a steam locomotive wide open between 75 and 175 miles an hour, the likelihood of Mallard's 126 mile an hour speed record being obliterated, authentic or not, is nearly guaranteed.

Description
One of the rarest and most important pics of Mallard the A4 Pacific, captured in full color to boot. Here's 4468 doing his homicidal rampage down Stoke Summit on July 3rd, 1938, likely doing 124 miles an hour here. Not long after this he reached the fastest recorded speed on railroad tracks for a steam locomotive, 126.22 miles an hour for about 2 seconds before the Driver and Fireman, Joseph Duddington and Tom Bray and Inspector Jenkins, were told to stop everything. Literally, for they were coming up to a sharp curve. Mallard limped into Peterborough after suffering heavy bearing and middle crank axle damage. The locomotive was repaired and served the East Coast Main Line for 25 years.

There were rumors that the old Pennsylvania Railroad's one-and-only S1 Duplex, 6100, hit 156 miles an hour in Fort Wayne, Indiana, a few of the old New York Central Railroad's J series Hudsons hitting 130 miles an hour, and one of the T1 Duplexes doing 143 miles an hour, but these were never authenticated by anyone. Do I think they eclipsed Mallard's speed record when they did? By all indications and accounts, yes. After all, so many steam locomotives manufactured in North America between 1920 and 1950 were FAR bigger and more powerful even than most British steamers, and with longer distances where you could run a steam locomotive wide open between 75 and 175 miles an hour, the likelihood of Mallard's 126 mile an hour speed record being obliterated, authentic or not, is nearly guaranteed.