Great Western Coffee Shop

1st December - welcome to the Great Western Coffee Shop Forum's advent quiz.

Each day, a new set of questions - plan is for there to be four every day - and they'll be vaguely on topic and with some commonality. Questions will typically be posted in the morning, but no guarantee of time; in due course I'll come back and confirm the answers, though frankly most will be easy, or obvious once someone has pointed them out.

Please have a go at just one question each, and you might like to have a go and work out the link too. Should anything be left unanswered at midnight, please feel free to fill in all of the rest.

Where are these, and what is the 1st December common link between them?

1.
(http://www.wellho.net/pix/aq23_d1.jpg)

2.
(http://www.wellho.net/pix/aq23_d2.jpg)

3.
(http://www.wellho.net/pix/aq23_d3.jpg)

4.
(http://www.wellho.net/pix/aq23_d4.jpg)

From the background I would say that 1 is the Bristol and Exeter Railway Company Station at Temple Meads. 

A brave try - it's annotated to me as being somewhere completely different, though I'm ver much aware that old prints can get mislabelled.  I have been around a long time, but this picture predates my memory ... any other offers?

2: Volk's Electric Railway

No. 2 is, correctly, identified as the Volks Electric Railway.   No. 1 is NOT Bristol and no-one has answered (nor guessed) pictures 3 or 4, nor the connection.

3. is GWR 3440 City of Truro, running in preservation. A modern picture (2009) presumably decolourised to disguise its modernity. What it has to do with St. Andrew's Hangover Day I've no idea.

It is indeed City of Truro ... so what's true of the City of Truro and the Volk Electric Railway and those the pictures od [[woops - nearly gave them away]]

No1 Taunton just to get it out of the way !...

No - that comes up later in the month.

No 1 is Euston and is No 4 some sort of battery electric tram?

4.  Prototype Drumm battery train in the Irish Republic.  It looks to have a lot of batteries under the floor.

It makes me think of the battery train that is being developed for GWR's Greenford Branch, based on D stock retired from the London Underground.

Indeed - and even today battery trains are emerging technology.  So what links Euston, the Volks Electric Railway, the City of Truro and the Drumm Battery train?

The connection is that they are all firsts:

(approximately):

1. The first main line London terminus
2. The first electric railway
3. The first to reach 100mph
4. The first battery-powered train

Spot on - and of course it's the FIRST of the month today!

Thanks.

Can I pre-empt tomorrow and say the second to reach 100mph was Flying Scotsman?

You can, but that's not one of the questions.   ;D