Annual Report: Mail Coach "Lightning" 8j And in this same nostalgic mood a number of distinguished gentlemen organized toward the close of the century into a Coaching Club to perpetuate the memory and practice of those ^venerable traditions of the coach and four. In 1898, with this end in view, they commissioned the New York carriage firm of Brewster & Company to build for them a handsome road coach, christened "Pioneer," and licensed by the City of New York as Hack 3044. The Society has a 1904 poster advertising a spring- season schedule for this coach, "commencing Monday, April 18 between New York and Ardsley via Harlem, Ft. Washington, Kings Bridge, Riverdale, Yonkers, Glenwood, Hastings, and Dobbs Ferry, leaving the Holland House, New York, at 10:30 A. M. daily (Sundays excepted); arriving Ardsley Club at 1 P. M.; leaving Ardsley Club at 3:30 P.M.; arriving at Holland House at 6:00 P. M." (The "Pioneer," which won the First Prize, Plate and Ribbon at the National Horse Shows of 1929 and 1931, is now an honored member of the Society's collection, having been presented by the Club.) One of the most eminent of the amateur coachmen of that day was Mr. T. Suff ern Tailer of New York City, whose early interest in this distinguished sport is witnessed by a colored print in the Society's possession, showing the Road Coach "Comet" starting from the Westchester County Club in 1892, with Mr. Tailer as driver. In the same year, Mr. Tailer's ambition to break all coaching records brought forth a new creation (built by Million Guiet & Cie., Paris) —the Mail Coach "Lightning," which forthwith proceeded to fulfill that ambition for him. And by that very act, a gap was automatically created in the future coach collection of this Society, for even with the earliest extant New York City coach (the Beekman family coach) and the latest operating New York City coach (the "Park Drag") and the Coaching Club's great Road Coach "Pioneer," no collection could boast completeness without this fastest coach on record.