the Queen remained anxious about speed, and a limit of 40 mph was supposed to apply throughout – a rule reminiscent of her neurotic horror of overheated rooms, for which fifteen degrees Celsius was the upper limit. When Victoria suspected that the train was going too fast, she made her feelings known. (Things changed as soon as the reign was over: Victoria’s funeral train from Gosport ran very smartly, so much so that her grandson the Kaiser is reported to have sent an equerry to congratulate the driver of the purple-draped locomotive on arrival at London.) In other words, like many ordinary
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