The Railton Special, later rebuilt as the Railton Mobil Special, is a one-off motor vehicle designed by Reid Railton and built for John Cobb's successful attempts at the land speed record in 1938.
It is currently on display at Thinktank, Birmingham Science Museum, England.[Accession number: 1955S00519.00001]
Design
The vehicle was powered by two
supercharged Napier Lion VIID (WD) W-12 aircraft engines.
[400 MPH on Land, Motor 24 September 1947 reproduced in ] These engines were the gift of Marion 'Joe' Carstairs, who had previously used them in her powerboat
Estelle V.
Coupled together, these two engines made @ 3,600 rpm, and of torque. Multiple engines was not a new technique, having already been used by the triple-engined
White Triplex and the
Railton Special's contemporary rival,
Captain Eyston's twin-engined
Thunderbolt. With the huge powers thus available, the limitation was in finding a transmission and tyres that could cope.
Reid Railton found a simple and ingenious solution to this by simply splitting the drive from each engine to a separate axle, giving four wheel drive.
The vehicle weighed over 3 tonnes and was long, wide and high. The front wheels were apart and the rear . The National Physical Laboratory's wind tunnel was used for testing models of the body.[Paul Clifton, The Fastest Men on Earth: The Men and Cars That Smashed the World Land Speed Record, London: Herbert Jenkins, 1964]
Land speed record
On 15 September 1938, the
Railton Special took the land speed record from
Thunderbolt at , also being the first to break the barrier. Eyston re-took the record within 24 hours (357.50 mph / 575.34 km/h), holding it again until Cobb took it a year later on 23 August 1939 at a speed of .
Further development
After the Second World War further development and sponsorship by
Mobil Oil led to renaming as the
Railton Mobil Special. It was the first ground vehicle to break in a measured test. On 16 September 1947 John Cobb averaged over the measured mile in both directions (385.6 & 403.1) to take the world land speed record, before the American
Goldenrod set a new mark for piston-engined, wheel-driven LSR cars eighteen years later.
Notes
Further reading
See also
