by Austin Sprake:
The two-carriage version. The front of the engine, the funnel and side of coal-car are in black. The two carriages are coloured red, blue, green, black and yellow.
by Geoffrey Godden:
This title embraces several landscape views of trains. The first version was originally issued in 1879, at the York Exhibition, under the title STEPHENSON'S "TRIUMPH" [see st560 on this site]; but by mid-August 1879 the same view of the LORD HOWE engine with two coaches was issued under the new title THE PRESENT TIME. This title appears on printed back-labels from 4 onwards, but later, different railway engines are depicted above the same printed title. The early examples will be found on type B card-mounts [as above] - sometimes type B1, with the diamond-shaped registration mark impressed in the top right-hand corner. Most card-mounts have the sub-title "60 miles an hour" printed below the main title, but sometimes this extra wording is omitted.
Several variations in colour are also recorded. There is one example with a brown funnel and coal-car instead of the normal black. Another version has no red silk in the coaches, which are mainly in green and blue, while a later variation has black, blue, green, red and yellow silk making up the gay coaches.
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