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.
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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.[1] In 1951 a new set of Pullmans was built, as part of British Railways' celebration of the Festival of Britain.
In 1961, with the Kent Coast electrification scheme, the train became electric-hauled. This allowed an acceleration to 80 minutes for the down service and 82 minutes for the up service.[2] A decline in demand for rail travel between London and Paris saw the last Golden Arrow run on 30 September 1972, and in its later years only the first class section was advertised as a Pullman service.
The preserved Bluebell Railway in Sussex runs a "Golden Arrow" train with Pullman cars "Car 64 (Christine)", "Fingall", "Car 76 (Lillian)", and an ex-LMS BGZ.
The main-line service was revived for a one-off event on 6 May 1994 when it formed part of the celebrations for the inauguration of the Channel Tunnel. It was hauled by the steam locomotive Britannia.