On this day in 1935 Britain’s first streamlined train announced itself to the world. Ninety-one years ago, on 27 September, Sir Nigel Gresley’s brand-new class A4 No. 2509 Silver Link left King’s Cross with the silver-and-grey ‘Silver Jubilee’ on a press demonstration to Grantham, three days before public service began.

Named for King George V’s jubilee year, the train was Gresley’s answer to the German ‘Fliegender Hamburger’: steam, not diesel, and elegance as well as speed.

With Driver A. J. Taylor and Fireman J. Luty on the footplate, Silver Link twice reached 112½ mph – at Arlesey and again near Sandy – the first authenticated British run above 110 mph, while drinks slid along the tables and an accompanying aeroplane struggled to keep pace.

The scheduled four-hour King’s Cross–Newcastle service that followed on 30 September set a new standard for the East Coast Main Line and opened the brief, brilliant age of the class A4 streamliners. That demonstration run remains the moment Gresley’s “legacy of innovation, speed and elegance” first became visible at full stretch.