Another article in the Railway magazine about the Punjab mail postal special. This was a special weekly train that ran in connection with the postal steamers from London. Every week, when the mail came from England to Bombay, there were 3 postal specials (to Calcutta, Madras and Lahore/Peshawar) that used to carry the mail from the Bombay to the other cities. In the return the same trains used to carry mail back to Bombay in time for the steamer to carry it to London.
These were premium trains carrying only mail and first class coaches (for 32 passengers and their servants only) and had very fast, high priority runs. One of these postal specials was a...
more... special running to Peshawar via Delhi. A passenger named F.M.G. Burton described his journey in this postal special in 1907. The article has detailed run times for each and every section of the route.
It can be surprising to see that the Steam locomotive hauled train covered the Delhi-Bombay distance in 21 hours via the CR route!
And if you look at the speeds in each section, the train was running at 140kmph in the Khandwa-Bhusaval and Bhusaval-Igatpuri sections!