The German accent on Speed
Speed was the subject of a series of 50 cigarette cards issued by W.D. & H.O. Wills in 1938. The subject matter included cars, aviation (civil and military), railways and maritime. The series provides a fascinating insight into the Streamlined Era of the 1930s, when the technological envelope was being pushed out ever further just before the eruption of global warfare.
One card depicted the revolutionary high-speed diesel railcar services that Deutsche Reichsbahn had inaugurated in 1933. The pioneering service was Der Fliegender Hamburger (Flying Hamburger), using a 2-car streamlined set powered by Maybach diesel engines. Offiicially, these were the Baureihe Class SVT677 units. They connected the 286 km (178 miles) between Hamburg and Berlin at an average speed of 124 km/h (77 mph). The success of the service prompted the development of further DR high-speed diesel intercity services, using a fleet of trains developed by Henschel as Class SVT 137.
The outbreak of war in 1939 brought these high-speed services to an end. Post-1945, the surviving units operated conventional services on both DB and DR in West and East Germany, lasting into the 1970s in the old GDR. The fast end-to-end journey times were not matched until the 1990s and the introduction of ICE trains.
One footnote to the Flying Hamburger story is that when the LNER was planning to develop high-speed services on the East Coast Main Line, Chief Mechanical Engineer Sir Nigel Gresley was dispatched to Germany to evaluate the merits of a similar diesel-hauled service. He concluded that steam could achieve the same results at significantly less cost. Thus he upgraded his existing A3 4-6-2 design, applied a streamlined casing with coaching stock to match. Thus was born the legendary A4 class and the Silver Jubilee and Coronation high-speed trains.
The German accent on Speed
Speed was the subject of a series of 50 cigarette cards issued by W.D. & H.O. Wills in 1938. The subject matter included cars, aviation (civil and military), railways and maritime. The series provides a fascinating insight into the Streamlined Era of the 1930s, when the technological envelope was being pushed out ever further just before the eruption of global warfare.
One card depicted the revolutionary high-speed diesel railcar services that Deutsche Reichsbahn had inaugurated in 1933. The pioneering service was Der Fliegender Hamburger (Flying Hamburger), using a 2-car streamlined set powered by Maybach diesel engines. Offiicially, these were the Baureihe Class SVT677 units. They connected the 286 km (178 miles) between Hamburg and Berlin at an average speed of 124 km/h (77 mph). The success of the service prompted the development of further DR high-speed diesel intercity services, using a fleet of trains developed by Henschel as Class SVT 137.
The outbreak of war in 1939 brought these high-speed services to an end. Post-1945, the surviving units operated conventional services on both DB and DR in West and East Germany, lasting into the 1970s in the old GDR. The fast end-to-end journey times were not matched until the 1990s and the introduction of ICE trains.
One footnote to the Flying Hamburger story is that when the LNER was planning to develop high-speed services on the East Coast Main Line, Chief Mechanical Engineer Sir Nigel Gresley was dispatched to Germany to evaluate the merits of a similar diesel-hauled service. He concluded that steam could achieve the same results at significantly less cost. Thus he upgraded his existing A3 4-6-2 design, applied a streamlined casing with coaching stock to match. Thus was born the legendary A4 class and the Silver Jubilee and Coronation high-speed trains.