THE PRESENT TIME

60 Miles an Hour

Reference Number:- Sprake Number:- Godden Number:-
st 480 STG194a 50
 

Very early steam train name Lord Howe with two carriages
the image of this silk picture was kindly donated by John Hartwig, USA

Words:
Woven on silk:-
 

Printed at bottom of card-mount:-
WOVEN IN SILK BY THOMAS STEVENS, INVENTOR AND MANUFACTURER, COVENTRY AND LONDON, (REGISTERED)

The Present Time.
60 MILES AN HOUR.

Size:
Card-mount:
14.0cm deep by 20.3cm wide

silk:
5.1cm high by 15.2cm wide

Comments:
by Austin Sprake:
The two-carriage version. The front of the engine, the funnel and side of coal-car are in black. The two carriages are coloured red, blue, green, black and yellow.

by Geoffrey Godden:
This title embraces several landscape views of trains. The first version was originally issued in 1879, at the York Exhibition, under the title STEPHENSON'S "TRIUMPH" [see st560 on this site]; but by mid-August 1879 the same view of the LORD HOWE engine with two coaches was issued under the new title THE PRESENT TIME. This title appears on printed back-labels from 4 onwards, but later, different railway engines are depicted above the same printed title. The early examples will be found on type B card-mounts [as above] - sometimes type B1, with the diamond-shaped registration mark impressed in the top right-hand corner. Most card-mounts have the sub-title "60 miles an hour" printed below the main title, but sometimes this extra wording is omitted.
Several variations in colour are also recorded. There is one example with a brown funnel and coal-car instead of the normal black. Another version has no red silk in the coaches, which are mainly in green and blue, while a later variation has black, blue, green, red and yellow silk making up the coaches.

Other comments:
Godden, above, mentions a colour variation, with brown funnel and coal-car. Below is an image of this colour variation:

Very early steam train name Lord Howe with two carriages, but brown silk funnel instead of black
same silk picture, but with brown silk funnel instead of black

Below is an image of the same picture, but with white engine, coal-car and carriage ends:

Very early steam train name Lord Howe with two carriages, with white engine
same silk picture, but with white silk instead of the usual green

 



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This page was created on 16 October 2001
A new image was added on 23 January 2002, and replaced 23 November 2014. Brown funnel image added 4 January 2018. Image of white engine added 1 May 2019

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