Category:The Silver Jubilee (train): Difference between revisions

LNER poster for the 1935 The Silver Jubilee streamlined express train service, showing 2509 Silver Link

The Silver Jubilee (1935-1939) was billed by LNER as Britain's first streamlined train.

Hauled by the new 1935 streamlined A4-Class locomotives (typified by the later 4468 Mallard), The Silver Jubilee also boasted luxurious new silver coaches, including paired sets of coaches that shared a common bogie for a quieter and smoother ride.

The Silver Jubilee also scored points in terms of streamlining for also having a streamlined rear. Rather than ending abruptly with a conventional coach-end (with the attendant violent air turbulence and buffetting), the train had a rear observation carriage with large slanting rear windows, to produce a tapered "beaver-tail" rear. This was a level of sophistication missing from the rival LMS's Coronation Scot train (1937-39), which ended with a conventional bare coach-end, and even from the final "red" version of the Coronation Scot (1939), whose last coach terminated in a coach that did have rounded rear edges, but whose main nod to rear-streamlining was the visual effect produced by the paintwork on the final car's rear face.

Naming and livery

The name and livery of The Silver Jubilee commemorated the 1935 Silver Jubilee of King George V, and the first four A4-Class locomotives, as well as being silver-coloured, also had names starting with "Silver-".

Unfortunately for LNER's publicity plans, the King died in 1936, and subsequent A4 locos and their trains abandoned silver and used different colour schemes. For instance, the subsequent LNER "Silver-Jubilee-derived" streamlined train "The Coronation" (1937) used a deep blue as a reference to the coronation of George V (competing with the similarly-named 1937 blue-and-silver LMS Coronation Scot streamliner).

The outbreak of WW2 in 1939 and the new wartime priorities for the rail network ended all the British high-speed streamlined luxury train services (including The Coronation and Coronation Scot), and by the end of the war, heavy use and reduced track maintenance resulted in more stringent speed limits, and the combination of degraded track and postwar austerity meant that these services never returned.

The four "Silver Streaks"

• 2509 Silver Link (1935-62)
• 2510 Quicksilver (1935-63)
• 2511 Silver King (1935-65)
• 2512 Silver Fox (1935-63)

LNER streamliner trains

• Silver Jubilee (1935-39) - Kings Cross to Newcastle (silver)
• The Coronation (1937-39) - Kings Cross to Edinburgh (blue)
• The West Riding Limited - London to Yorkshire (similar to The Coronation, but without observation car "tail")

There was also the East Anglian, introduced in 1937, that ran between Liverpool Street Station (London) and Norwich. The East Anglian wasn't a premium-priced service, and didn't have special coaches, and although it looked as if it was hauled by A4s, its locos were actually a couple of the not-very-successful B17 locomotives, decked out (some would unkindly say "faked-out") in a green streamlined cladding that was closely based on the A4s' streamlined shell.