near
Acton with a
London bound
Cornish Riviera Express on
Wellington Bank with a westbound
Cornish Riviera in August 1954 at
Reading with a westbound
Cornish Riviera in April 1976
High Speed Train with a westbound
Cornish Riviera at
Exeter St Thomas in July 2015
Class 802 IET with a westbound
Cornish Riviera at
Par in August 2024 Through trains from
London Paddington to
Penzance began running on 1 March 1867 and included fast services such as the 10:15
Cornishman and 11:45
Flying Dutchman, but these still took nine hours or more for the journey. In the early years of the 20th century there was keen competition between the
Great Western Railway (GWR) and the
London and South Western Railway (LSWR) for the rail traffic between London and Plymouth. The LSWR route via Salisbury was 15 miles shorter than the GWR via Bristol, but to counter this the GWR started running non-stop to Exeter, and this provided the basis of a plan for a fast train to Plymouth and Penzance. A new express service with limited stops was promoted by the GWR, commencing on 1 July 1904. It left London at 10:10 and was timed to reach Penzance at 17:10 running to Plymouth in 4 hours 25 minutes, a cut of 28 minutes on the previous fastest service. A public competition was announced in the August 1904 edition of
The Railway Magazine to choose the name, the prize being three guineas (£3.15). Among the 1,286 entries were two suggestions,
The Cornish Riviera Limited and
The Riviera Express, which were combined as
The Cornish Riviera Express, although railwaymen tended to call it
The Limited. For the first two years, the new train ran only during the summer, but from the third year became a year-round feature of the timetable. With the opening of a mile shorter route along the
Langport and Castle Cary Railway in 1906, it was possible to start the train twenty minutes later from Paddington and still arrive in Penzance at the same time. New Concertina carriages were scheduled for the train at the same time. Additional
slip coaches were added to be dropped from the train on the move at various stations to serve holiday destinations such as
Weymouth,
Minehead,
Ilfracombe, and
Newquay, and the train began to run non-stop to
Newton Abbot where a pilot engine was added for the climb over the
Dainton and Rattery banks, the southern outliers of
Dartmoor. By the middle of
World War I the train had grown to 14 coaches, even running in two portions on summer Saturdays, but the train was suspended in January 1917 as a wartime economy measure. Running of
The Limited resumed in summer 1919 although a 60 mph blanket speed limit was still in force, and it was not until autumn 1921 that pre-war timings were reinstated. In 1923 new steel-panelled coaches and, more importantly the introduction of the
Castle Class locomotives, billed as the "most powerful locomotive in Britain". This allowed the train to travel to
Plymouth without the need to stop to attach a
pilot locomotive, use of
slip coaches keeping the load below the 310 ton limit for the Castle Class. However the pre-eminence of the Castle class did not last long as the
Southern Railway Lord Nelson class of 1926 topped them for tractive effort, and so the
King class was developed, particularly with the heavy West-country holiday trains in mind. Their introduction from 1927 allowed arrival in Plymouth to reach the 4 hour mark, although the increased weight of these locos prevented their use in Cornwall. The King class were also permitted an increased maximum load of 360 tons between Newton Abbot and Plymouth; above this a stop was required to attach a pilot locomotive. In 1935, new coaches in the shape of the wide Centenary carriages, but there were few other significant changes until
World War II. At the outbreak of war all trains to the
West Country were to travel via
Bristol, and departure of the
Cornish Riviera was moved to 14:35, although this change only lasted until October when the departure time returned to 10:30 with
Exeter as the first stop. By summer 1941 it seemed that everyone was taking their (brief) summer holidays in the West Country, and the
Cornish Riviera ran in five sections for Penzance, St Ives,
Paignton,
Kingswear and Newton Abbot respectively. Ironically the Limited ran throughout the war, but was cancelled in the winter of 1946/47 due to a coal shortage, not being restored until the following summer. Nonetheless, in the summer 1952 timetable, the non-stop run had been extended to Truro, 279 miles from Paddington, although the working timetable showed a 4-minute stop at Newton Abbot to attach a pilot locomotive to assist over the South Devon Banks and a similar stop at Devonport to change locomotives as the King class locomotives were not permitted over the
Royal Albert Bridge. The pre-WW2 schedules were not regained until autumn 1955 by which time the railways had been nationalised and the
1955 Modernisation Plan had been published. On 11 June 1956, chocolate and cream carriages were reintroduced on the service. The service was dieselised in the late 1950s.
D1000 Western diesel-hydraulics introduced in 1964 could keep the four-hour schedule to Plymouth even with a 500-ton train and an additional stop at
Taunton. Further cuts in time saw Plymouth being scheduled in 3 hours 35 minutes before the Westerns were withdrawn in 1977 to be replaced by
Class 50 Diesel-electrics hauling
Mark 2d/e/f air-conditioned coaches. These were, in turn, replaced in autumn 1981 by
HSTs. Since
privatisation, the service has been operated by
Great Western Railway, still using HSTs. As at September 2016, the
Cornish Riviera name is carried on the 10:06 from London Paddington and 08:44 departure from Penzance. It now follows the basic calling pattern of other London to Penzance services calling at most stations in Cornwall. ==Motive power==