The West Coast were arriving at Edinburgh at half-past six. “The Flying Scotchman,” by the East Coast route, thereupon drew up in the Scotch capital at six o’clock. Then the West Coast ran to Edinburgh in eight hours, stretching away from Euston to Crewe, 158½ miles in 178 minutes, without a stop—probably the longest run without a break ever made. The Caledonian Company, the North-Western’s partner, then ran from Carlisle to Edinburgh, 100¾ miles, in 104 minutes. The North-Western thereupon actually ran from Preston to Carlisle, over the Cumberland Hills, ninety miles in ninety minutes—a magnificent performance hard indeed to beat, if, in fact, it ever has been really beaten; while, later on, the same Company ran from Euston to Crewe in 167 minutes instead of their remarkable 178 minutes a few days previously. This, with the other accelerations, gave the West Coast their record run of 400 miles in 427 minutes of running time, which took place on the 13th of August. But the East Coast had also accelerated, the North-Eastern covering 205 miles in 235 minutes, and the Great Northern rendering an equally good, if not better, performance, the whole 393 miles being covered in 423 minutes. Some of the miles on the East Coast route sped by at the rate of seventy-six an hour. To accomplish these runs the weight of trains was cut down, and the times of stoppages reduced or abolished altogether. But the expense was too great. It did not really “pay” in convenience or in money, and to these judgments companies must bow. But considering that the Great Northern reaches Grantham, 105¼ miles, in 115 minutes as a daily occurrence, an approximate running of near a mile a minute, and that the North-Western can run at an average of fifty-five miles an hour, the locomotive has amply justified George Stephenson’s prophecy when he made “Blucher,” that there was no limit to the speed of the locomotive, provided the work could be made to stand. Mr. C. R. Deacon also prophesied a few years since in an American magazine that a hundred miles an hour would be the express speed of the future, provided that passengers would give up luxurious cars and dining and sleeping carriages. At present it seems questionable if they will do so. [Illustration: THE “FLYING DUTCHMAN.”] But speed is by no means the monopoly of the North. Other companies beside the owners of the East and West Coast routes to Scotland can run expresses equally or almost as fast. There is the “Flying Dutchman,” for instance, of the Great Western. It daily covers the 77¼ miles from London to Swindon in 87 minutes. And the tale is told by Mr. W. M. Acworth, on the authority of an inspector who was in charge of the train, that a famous Great Western engine, the “Lord of the Isles,” which was in the Exhibition of 1851, actually whirled a train from Swindon to London, 77¼ miles in 72 minutes.