[Illustration:  FIG. 5.—­GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY.]

The tubes, 217 in number, are of brass, 1-9/16 in. diameter; and the heating surface is in the tubes, 1,043 square feet; fire-box, 122 square feet; total, 1,165 square feet.  The fire-grate area is 17.6 square feet.  The wheel base from the center of the bogie pin to the trailing axle is 19 ft. 5 in., and the weight in working order is, on the bogie wheels, 15 tons; driving wheels, 15 tons; trailing wheels, 8 tons; total, 38 tons.  The tender weighs 27 tons.  These engines are remarkable for their efficiency; the traffic of the Great Northern Railway is exceedingly heavy, and the trains run at a high rate, the average speed of the Flying Scotchman being fifty miles an hour, and no train in the kingdom keeps better time.  “Those who remember this express at York in the icy winter of 1879-80, when the few travelers who did not remain thawing themselves at the waiting-room fires used to stamp up and down a sawdusted platform, under a darkened roof, while day after day the train came gliding in from Grantham with couplings like wool, icicles pendent from the carriage eaves, and an air of punctual unconcern; or those who have known some of our other equally sterling trains—­these will hardly mind if friendship does let them drift into exaggeration when speaking of expresses.”  The author well remembers how, when living some years ago at Newcastle-on-Tyne, it was often his custom to stroll on the platform of the Central Station to watch the arrival of the Flying Scotchman, and as the hands of the station clock marked seven minutes past four he would turn around, and in nine cases out of ten the express was gliding into the station, punctual to the minute after its run of 272 miles.  Such results speak for themselves, and for the power of the engines employed, and one of the best runs on record was that of the special train, drawn by one of these locomotives, which in 1880 took the Lord Mayor of London, to Scarborough.  The train consisted of six Great Northern coaches, and ran the 188 miles to York in 217 minutes, including a stop of ten minutes at Grantham, or at the average rate of 541/2 miles an hour.  The speed from Grantham to York, 821/2 miles, with three slowing downs at Retford, Doncaster, and Selby, averaged 57 miles an hour, and the 59 miles from Claypole, near Newark, to Selby, were run in 601/2 minutes, and for 221/2 consecutive miles the speed was 64 miles an hour.  In ordinary working these engines convey trains of sixteen to twenty-six coaches from King’s-Cross with ease, and often twenty-eight are taken and time kept.  Considering that the Great Northern main line rises almost continuously to Potter’s Bar, 13 miles, with gradients varying from 1 in 105 to 1 in 200, this is a very high duty, while, with regard to speed, they have run with sixteen coaches for 15 miles at the rate of 75 miles an hour.  Their consumption of coal with trains averaging sixteen ten ton carriages