For a couple of years, Wembley saw an experimental railway running that never stopped. Well, it probably stopped at night time, but during the daylight hours, the trains never stopped, not once.

This was the Never Stop Railway and was built for the Wembley Exhibition in 1925, and much as the London Eye never stops rotating, these railway carriages never stopped at platforms, but passed by slowly enough for people to hop on and off.

This railway consisted of 88 unmanned carriages, on a continuous double track along the northern and eastern sides of the exhibition, with reversing loops at either end.

The carriages ran on two parallel concrete beams and were guided by pulleys running on the inner side of these concrete beams, and were propelled by gripping a revolving screw thread running between the tracks in a pit; by adjusting the pitch of this thread at different points, the carriages could be sped up, or slowed down to a walking pace at stations, to allow passengers to join and leave.



Jump ahead to 1:10 in the film to see the remarkable screw driven power system.

The railway ran for the two years of the exhibition, an apart from from early teething problems, was said to be remarkably reliable. Sadly, after the exhibition closed, it was then dismantled. Just one of the original 88 carriages is thought to survive.