Golden Arrow

Golden Arrow or Golden Arrows may refer to:

Entertainment

Sport

Transportation

Other

Golden Arrow (car)

Golden Arrow was a land speed record racer. Built for Major Henry Segrave to take the LSR from Ray Keech, Golden Arrow was one of the first streamlined land speed racers, with a pointed nose and tight cowling. Power was provided by a 23.9 litre (1462 ci) W12 Napier Lion VIIA aeroengine, specially prepared by Napiers and originally intended for the Schneider Trophy, producing 925 hp (690 kW) at 3300 rpm. The Thrupp and Maberly aluminium bodywork was designed by ex-Sunbeam engineer J.S. Irving, and featured ice chests in the sides through which coolant ran and a telescopic sight on the cowl to help avoid running diagonally.

In March 1929, Segrave went to Daytona, and after a sole practice run, on 11 March, in front of 120,000 spectators, set a new flying mile at 231.45 mph (372.46 km/h), easily beating Keech's old speed of 207.55 mph (334.00 km/h). Two days later, Lee Bible's White Triplex crashed and killed a photographer, leading Segrave to quit land speed racing briefly, only to be killed attempting a water speed record the next year. Golden Arrow never ran again. She is now on display at the National Motor Museum, Beaulieu, Hampshire, England.

Golden Arrow (train)

The Golden Arrow (French: Flèche d’Or) was a luxury boat train of the Southern Railway and later British Railways. It linked London with Dover, where passengers took the ferry to Calais to join the Flèche d’Or of the Chemin de Fer du Nord and later SNCF which took them on to Paris.

History

The Flèche d’Or was introduced in 1926 as an all-first-class Pullman service between Paris and Calais. On 15 May 1929, the Southern Railway introduced the equivalent between London and Dover. The train usually consisted of 10 British Pullman cars, hauled by one of the Southern Railway’s Lord Nelson class locomotives, and took 98 minutes to travel between London and Dover. Because of the impact of air travel and 'market forces' on the underlying economy, ordinary first- and third-class carriages were added in 1931. Similarly the first-class-only ferry, Canterbury, was modified to allow other classes of passenger.

The train service ceased at the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939. It resumed after the war on 15 April 1946, initially running with the pre-war Pullmans and the Trianon Bar car, a converted twelve-wheeled Pullman. As of 1949, the all-Pullman train was scheduled to depart from London (Victoria station) at 10:30, with the connecting train from Calais reaching Paris (Gare du Nord) at 17:30, and from Paris at 12:15, with the connecting train from Dover arriving in London at 19:30. This worked out to a scheduled journey time of 6 hours eastbound and 6 hours, 15 minutes, westbound after accounting for the one-hour difference between Greenwich Mean Time and Central European Time.