A trial trip was made on the 14th of October in 1881. Messrs Pincaffe and Lachlan, engineers of France’s Faure’ Accumulator Company, switched on the lights in the first tunnel and kept them on all the way back from Brighton to London.
Since it made several unadvertised stops , the Frenchmen rather feared that the lights would go out before the train could arrive.
This did not happen, much to the annoyance of some invited gas engineers , who posited that the cost was four times that of the gas supplies needed for such a train.
They overlooked the fact that escaping gas turned railway accidents into infernos, by setting the smashed woodwork of the carriages ablaze.
It was a triumph for Monsieur Faure’, who designed the equipment, and also for George Pullman, who naturally introduced lighting into American Pullmans soon afterwards.
On the 2nd of October in 1898 the Pullman limited Express was reintroduced on the Brighton line as the Sunday Pullman Limited , after which the trains were named Limited because the number of passengers carried was restricted to the seating.
The train now ran on Sundays only, and in 1899 its name was changed to Brighton Limited.
In 1908 the assets of the British Pullman Palace Car Company, were bought by Sir Davidson Dalziel, Later Lord Dalziel of Wooler, to be operated as his own private company.
He financed purchase of new rolling stock through another of his companies, the Drawing Room Cars Company, A new train, a new owner and a new dashing Edwardian age needed a new name for the “Brighton Limited”, was born the “Southern belle” until the final rake of electric Pullmans went into service on what had become, in 1922, the Southern Railway.
In 1915 Lord Dalziel caused a sensation when he introduced Third Class Pullman cars for a new type of customer who wanted a treat but felt out of place in First Class. With a Third Class ticket, one could travel any of the many inexpensive day excursions from London to Brighton for the masses but once installed in one of the roomy seats, the excursionist could, for a supplementary fare of one shilling and sixpence, enjoy the same impeccable service as that in First Class.
Another first for the Belle was that it became the first Pullman train to move itself about. Beginning in 1933, it could draw power from a third “live” rail. The Southern Electric as the system was snappily called, evolved under the direction of Sir Herbert Walker, who was appointed general manager of the new Southern Railway.
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