page_title: Cornish Riviera Express
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Cornish Riviera Express / History
caption_attribution_description: A 'Joe Cool' railway worker strolls along the permanent way in Reading General station as 'Western' class diesel hydraulic No. D1071 "Western Renown" passes with the down 'Cornish Riviera' express on 20th April 1976. Camera: Olympus Pen F Half Frame SLR.
context_page_description: The Cornish Riviera Express is a British express passenger train that has run between London Paddington and Penzance in Cornwall since 1904. Introduced by the Great Western Railway, the name Cornish Riviera Express has been applied to the late morning express train from London to Penzance continuously through nationalisation under British Rail and privatisation under First Great Western, only ceasing briefly during the two World Wars. The name is also applied to the late morning express train running in the opposite direction from Penzance to London. Through performance and publicity the Cornish Riviera Express has become one of the most famous named trains in the United Kingdom and is particularly renowned for the publicity employed by the Great Western Railway in the 1930s which elevated it to iconic status. Today it is operated by the Great Western Railway train operating company.
context_section_description: ... there [is] surely no train ... to which the word romance could be more aptly applied than to the Limited
  — O. S. Nock, The Limited
  Through trains from London Paddington to Penzance began running on 1 March 1867 and included fast services such as the 10:15 Cornishman and 11:45 Flying Dutchman, but these still took nine hours or more for the journey. In the early years of the 20th century there was keen competition between the Great Western Railway (GWR) and the London and South Western Railway (LSWR) for the rail traffic between London and Plymouth. The LSWR route via Salisbury was 15 miles shorter than the GWR via Bristol, but to counter this the GWR started running non-stop to Exeter, and this provided the basis of a plan for a fast train to Plymouth and Penzance.
  A new express service with limited stops was promoted by the GWR, commencing on 1 July 1904. It left London at 10:10 and was timed to reach Penzance at 17:10 running to Plymouth in 4 hours 25 minutes, a cut of 28 minutes on the previous fastest service. It conveyed six carriages to Penzance, including a dining car, and one more carriage for Falmouth that was detached at Truro then added to a branch train to complete its journey. Other stops were made at Plymouth North Road, Gwinear Road (for the Helston branch), and St Erth (for the St Ives branch). The return train from Penzance started at 10:00 and called additionally at Devonport.
  A public competition was announced in the August 1904 edition of the Railway Magazine to choose the name, the prize being three guineas (£3.15). Among the 1,286 entries were two suggestions, The Cornish Riviera Limited and The Riviera Express, which were combined as The Cornish Riviera Express, although railwaymen tended to call it The Limited.
  For the first two years, the new train ran only during the summer, but from the third year became a year-round feature of the timetable. With the opening of a ​20 ¹⁄₄ mile shorter route along the Langport and Castle Cary Railway in 1906, it was possible to start the train twenty minutes later from Paddington and still arrive in Penzance at the same time. New 68 ft (21 m) Concertina carriages were scheduled for the train at the same time. Additional slip coaches were added to be dropped from the train on the move at various stations to serve holiday destinations such as Weymouth, Minehead, Ilfracombe, and Newquay, and the train began to run non-stop to Newton Abbot where a pilot engine was added for the climb over the Dainton and Rattery banks, the southern outliers of Dartmoor. By the middle of World War I the train had grown to 14 coaches, even running in two portions on summer Saturdays, but the train was suspended in January 1917 as a wartime economy measure.
  Running of The Limited resumed in summer 1919 although a 60 mph blanket speed limit was still in force, and it was not until autumn 1921 that pre-war timings were reinstated. In 1923 new steel-panelled coaches and, more importantly the introduction of the Castle Class locomotives, billed as the "most powerful locomotive in Britain". This allowed the train to travel to Plymouth without the need to stop to attach a pilot locomotive, use of slip coaches keeping the load below the 310 ton limit for the Castle Class.  However the pre-eminence of the Castle class did not last long as the Southern Railway Lord Nelson class of 1926 topped them for tractive effort, and so the King class was developed, particularly with the heavy West-country holiday trains in mind. Their introduction from 1927 allowed arrival in Plymouth to reach the 4 hour mark, although the increased weight of these locos prevented their use in Cornwall. The King class were also permitted an increased maximum load of 360 tons between Newton Abbot and Plymouth; above this a stop was required to attach a pilot locomotive.
  In 1935, new coaches in the shape of the 9 ft 7 in (2.9 m) wide Centenary carriages, but there were few other significant changes until World War II. At the outbreak of war all trains to the West Country were to travel via Bristol, and departure of the 
caption: 1071 Western Renown at Reading with a westbound Cornish Riviera in April 1976
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