A Royal Incident

Mary Forsyth spotted this in Our Home Railways by W.J. Gordon. It apparently quotes Francis Trevithick , Locomotive Superintendent  at Crewe , describing an incident with the Royal Train.

‘About the year 1846, on a rainy, blowing, autumnal Saturday night, the writer was summonsed, from nursing an influenza cold, to the railway station.

Her Majesty, Prince Albert, and the rest of the Royal Family, had unexpectedly arrived and desired to be in London by ten the following morning. Continued rain had caused the line to be unsafe in places, except at comparatively slow speeds. Saturday night is proverbially a bad time for finding people wanted in a hurry.

However, at six the next morning, in dim light and blinding rain, the Royal train was in readiness, and Her Majesty punctual to the minute when, after a little animated delay for the lady-in-waiting, a start was made, and the required speed of forty miles an hour steadily run, until a providential disobedience of orders by the pilot-engine man caused the steam to be instantly shut off, the brakes applied, and the speed reduced to one half; fog signals exploded in close proximity to the danger; red flags were hurriedly unfurled, and in a moment the engine rolled as a shop in a storm through an alarmed group of a hundred navvies, who, thinking it a quiet day, had raised the rails and sleepers a foot above their bed of soft clay that a thick layer of ballast  might be shovelled under them. For a quarter of a mile did the precious freight pass safely over this bridge of rails supported on brickbats, the only injury being a bent driving axle and broken bearing brasses, with which the engine kept time to the next relieving station and then broke down.’