On
a pre-war summer Sunday in July 1938 a train hauled by a state-of-the-art, A4
class, locomotive called ‘Mallard’ shot along a stretch of track between
Grantham and Peterborough at 126 mph. Among
the coaches she was pulling was a ‘dynamometer’ car (a coach with a speedometer)
so the passengers knew just how fast they were going in their wooden-sided
coaches. Apparently, they were quite
excited. This was an age when 90 mph was
something special. It was a glamorous
age, and the record for the fastest steam-hauled train had ping-ponged between
two railway companies during the mid to late 1930s. The outbreak of WWII in 1939 put an end to
such record attempts and it was to be another forty years before diesel- hauled
‘high speed’ trains were to regularly run at the speed set by Mallard on that
golden afternoon.
On
his retirement in 1944, Mallard’s driver was interviewed by the BBC. The radio programme was called ‘The World Goes
By’. Hands up if you remember it! Driver Duddington gave an enthusiastic and
full account of the record-breaking run. He was clearly reliving it as he spoke, and he
was full of pride as he spoke of his wonderful engine, its designer and his
employers. However, there was a certain
tone of regret in the way he spoke. He
commented that if “I had of tried a bit more, we could have got 130”. The results of trying that might have been
disastrous. We will never know, but I do
like his spirit.
The
church would be a different place if we all approached living out our faith,
determined not to be like Driver Duddington. You see, with God there is always more to come
and we never, in this life, finish getting to know him or growing close to him.
But do you want to end your life
thinking that you could have been closer to him if you had tried more? Too often we settle in our Christian lives for
quite good or lukewarm. The consequences
of which could be more disastrous than derailing a steam train could ever be (Revelation
3v14-21). If we chased God and his
will with the same passion that those railwaymen chased speed records, if we
had the same love for our church as Duddington had for the London and North
Eastern Railway, what would the world look like?
Here
is a short clip of one of Mallard’s surviving sister engines. Take a look and listen to
the whistle. A4s don’t whistle like most
steam engines. They have deep whistles that shout their presence. You can’t fail to notice a steam loco like one
of these. Ask God to give you even more
passion for his kingdom than Duddington had for his lovely loco. Then go and
paint your face blue and chase God’s will.
Wooaaahhhhhhh!
John
Martin-Jones
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