Tuesday Treasures - August 2021

TUESDAY 31 AUGUST

Party Outings by Rail

The Great Western Railway Company and its nationalised successor BRWR were constantly seeking more passengers using more train journeys, and beyond the massive annual number of excursion train offers published in thousands of printed handbills, more focused groups of customers were also pursued.

Our blog today takes examples from our Great Western Trust collection of those publication booklets, issued free, specifically explaining the breadth and variety of ‘Party Outings’ that upon application, could be uniquely arranged.

Our first example illustrated is the cover of the GWR's booklet of 1937. No less than 44 pages are devoted to quite amazing detail of the groups they could accommodate, the variety of trips on offer with specimen itineraries, outline fares and overall costs, and just in case of concern, even closing rather worryingly with the various insurance premiums on offer for fatal and partial or temporary disablement!

This edition of course coincided with the Coronation of King George VI (following the abdication of his elder brother Edward VIII) and the GWR were keen to even connect that occasion as a reason for celebration with ‘Party Outings’!! The variety of destinations and specific locations may surprise us today. The GWR naturally included widely diverse places on its system but even stretched out to include Liverpool (yes, through reaching Birkenhead and then via the LMS (though not mentioned!)). Blackpool and New Brighton were also, clearly of no difficulty. Industrial locations were offered such as Swindon Works (of course), Ford's at Dagenham, Fry's at Somerdale, Morris Motors at Oxford, Cadbury's at Bournville and Lever Brothers at Port Sunlight. Navy Week at Plymouth and Portsmouth and the Tattoo at Aldershot or Tidworth are also embraced.

Phew…what choice indeed.

The Trust Collection has GWR versions of these booklets for every year between 1936 and 1939.

To prove their continued popularity, our Collection has various BR versions between 1949 and 1963 although as yet we do not know whether 1963 was the last actual year they were offered. That said, we have chosen to illustrate the 1958 edition, given its striking, some may judge, zany cover design!! This edition is more localised in its target audience being only specific to outings from London & its suburbs. That said, the highlight event of that year was the British Empire and Commonwealth Games held at Cardiff, being opened by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, and much is made of going there!

Whilst the cover might be bolder than the GWR version, its contents, being the same size and 44 pages in content, shows that the established GWR product was pretty much still on offer. However being BR the railway works visit locations covered no less than 16! No mention this time of travel insurance, but instead, packed meals for 2 shillings and 6 pence or 3 shillings and 6 pence (difference being Ham instead of Cheese sandwiches and a packet of biscuits!) Alternatively you could indulge in Tray Meals and ‘Compakt’ (yes that's its spelling) Meals at 7 shilling and 6 pence. These latter creations were apparently ‘de luxe’ packed meals for small parties, in an anodised aluminium container to be carried like an attache case!! Space for half a bottle of wine or beer or mineral water really set the tone!

Sadly, or maybe not so sadly, our Great Western Trust collection does not have one of these creations. Perhaps readers of this blog might recall them? We would love to hear quite how ‘de luxe’ they were, given the well recorded damning reputation of the infamous ‘BR Sandwich’!

TUESDAY 24 AUGUST

Avoiding the West Country Traffic

With our 2021 August Bank Holiday weekend marking the final rush to the West Country for that holiday before the return to schools and Autumn arrives, we look back to a now long lost railway service for car using tourists with another item from the Great Western Trust Collection.

The very informative leaflet illustrated, produced in 1961, which opens to a double sided 11 x 17 ½ inches from a neatly folded 3 ¾ x 8 ¾ inches format, enclosed an application form to be completed and sent to no lesser person than the BRWR Divisional Passenger Commercial Officer, Paddington Station, London W2. The applicant had to be over 21 years of age of course, and if the sought trains had the required vacancy, the full charge had to be paid no less than 28 days in advance of the outbound journey.

Naturally the applicant had to detail all the persons travelling, the facilities required including meals and insurance, and full specification including dimensions of their car. One interesting condition would not be welcome today, in which the car when offered for loading could not have more than two gallons of petrol in its tank, nor could extra petrol be carried separately on the train in a container!

The service itself covered that from London, Paddington to Newton Abbot or St Austell and the leaflet illustrated included very helpful diagrams of the three station loading/unloading locations, and that for Paddington, was actually adjacent to Westbourne Park Station.

It appears that whilst really designed for return travel, single journeys were catered for. Broad fares ranged from £14 10 shillings First Class, Driver and Car, London to St Austell, to a single journey at Second Class at £7 2 shillings. Journey times varied depending upon an overnight sleeper train or daytime, and ranged from Sundays when Paddington depart 11:50pm arrive St Austell 09:15am to a daytime service Sundays again, 8:25am depart, arrive 3:0pm (latter during 17th June to 26th August only).

Of course, in 1961 the regular press articles in the high summer period always included miles upon miles of traffic jams on the Exeter bypass, long before the M4 and M5 made their impact! And we can hardly avoid admitting that the west bound holiday train services were also rather full and delayed!

To add to the theme, we also illustrate 3 superb BRWR Posters, from 1957, 58 and 59 all advertising the benefits of this service. Keen eyed will see that even in 1959, the cheeky poster designer added the ‘GWR’ registration plate to the car!!!

In lamenting the demise of this railway service, in the form of the ‘Night Riviera’ in September 2005, it is noticeable that it was designed purely based on the London centric car owner, and it would be interesting to have the data on the dominant London and suburb addresses of its users.

TUESDAY 17 AUGUST

Children's Education through Railway Publications – Part 2

In our November 2020 blog we illustrated contemporary examples of publications for children which included official Great Western Railway associated information and that the Great Western Trust Collection had much more to offer on this rather under studied subject. This blog is the second in a periodic series on that theme, based on our Archive examples.

Today we illustrate a hard bound book. with decorative paper dust cover, captivatingly entitled ‘The Fascination of Our Railways’ published around 1927 (surmised from the text only!) by John Bale, Sons & Danielsson Ltd, and written by the mysteriously covert ‘Mercury’ who is admitted in the text to be a railwayman.

The Front and Rear cover images illustrated are a passingly acceptable artist's impression of a GWR 4-6-0 loco on a GWR express train although experts might question the outside steam pipe being some way from its associated outside cylinder!

We hope however that our readers will take a moment to read the rear cover text which so strikingly captures the spirit of that era for so many youths (sorry ladies but we are recording the factual manner of those times).

Whilst we have added two other illustrations from dedicated chapters in the book, namely ‘How the Locomotive Works’ and ‘How Locomotives are Tested’ naturally we bias towards GWR official contributions in both of them! The first is a Castle Class loco cab boiler backhead with index and the second has a spotless Churchward era 2-6-0 on the Swindon Works ‘Home Trainer’ test bed.

We must however admit that all Big 4 Company's products are also addressed within and indeed Underground Railways too, but the pleasing fact is that beyond the GWR based Dust Cover image, the page preceding the Title Page has a sketch of the head-on view of a GWR Loco with the smokebox door surrounding these wonderful words:-

“To Smith minor & his honourable brotherhood of critical railway students ‘The Fascination of Our Railways’ is affectionately and respectfully dedicated”

We might simply reflect that the title and the detailed content of the book, now approaching 100 years old, perfectly captures the abiding interest triggered for ‘boys of all ages’ upon their first encounter with steam railway engines. Once captured, never released!

TUESDAY 10 AUGUST

Holidays by Train – Part 2

We promised in our July Blog to use the host of Holiday themed material in our Great Western Trust Collection to continue our journey on Holiday Trains during our own current summer season.

The two items illustrated are some 20 years apart, the first is a very simple pamphlet produced by the GWR in 1939 to advertise that year's edition of their extremely popular ‘Holiday Haunts’ publication, available for 6 old pence. The sepia image of two adults having a splashing time in the seaside surf can hardly have been bettered. Yet again this one example demonstrates the very professional art of publicity, to quickly and effectively capture the attention of the target audience!

While early 1939 of course was hardly a time without very worrying threats of a looming World War, it is perhaps just as well that folk were able to have a rewarding seaside holiday, though UK railways and the GWR Holiday Line specifically, before much darker clouds arrived that autumn.

Our second illustration, 20 years later, is chosen to reflect that the railways didn't just cater for the holiday arrangements of individual families and here indeed maybe readers will be interested to find an established ‘Miners' Holiday’ arrangement. If any community needed such fresh air and change of environment, it is hard to imagine a more deserving case. Perhaps stimulated by the very long established weekend Sunday excursions down the Welsh Valley lines to South Wales' seaside locations, Barry Island, Penarth, Porthcawl etc, meant that an annual week long seaside holiday was just the ticket?

Anyway, this Handbill, has two sides, one for the South Coast resorts and the reverse side for the BRWR region resorts of Torquay and Paignton. What is noteworthy are the departure times, which could hardly mean for any family with children, a very quiet evening the day before!

We do not know when these special services began or ended, but we can imagine the impact on those resorts of the arrival of a train fully occupied by excited families with their distinctive welsh accents!

Of course, today the Welsh valley mines themselves, their vast communities and much of the railway infrastructure are no more, though at great expense, the mining valleys have been returned to nature in significant degree, the only tell tale of that vast industry being the rows of terraced housing on those hillsides.

TUESDAY 3 AUGUST

Olympic Games 1948

We are unashamedly using the opportunity of the interest in the current Olympic Games in Tokyo, and of course our British competitors giving us all a welcome uplift and shared pride in their attending let alone their significant medal and individual performances, to cast us back to the immediate post war games in 1948.

A relatively recent TV programme on these Games and the political and practical background issues in holding them in a country devastated by post war economic and social issues, gave many surprising insights, not least how to even feed the competitors!

That apart, the handbill illustrated (from the Great Western Trust Collection) proves that the then very recently Nationalised Western Region, was nevertheless going to do its bit to get crowds to events staged on its patch. Henley, already famed world-wide for its annual rowing regatta, to which the GWR of old and BRWR subsequently devoted a massive train service commitment (a subject for another future blog) staged the Olympic Rowing & Canoeing Events in early August 1948.

The Handbill invites a very wide area of potential passengers, from within a 60 miles radius of Henley including Halts no less! It is worth observing however that the said ‘offer’ was for ‘Cheap Day Tickets’ at Third Class only. This very starkly contrasts with the halcyon days of the Henley Regatta events in which the Trust Collection has an Urgent Train message sent from the Station Master to the effect that that service required a dedicated set of FIRST Class coaches assembled without delay!

It is fair to conclude that post WW2, the times were a changing, and just possibly, holding the first post war Olympic Games in Britain was both a much needed boost to the population’s spirits, and significantly a shift in social class attitudes, so that ALL should share in sport events rather than give preference to the moneyed few?

Pannier Tank No 5766, still in GWR livery, leaving Henley-on-Thames for Twyford in 1951

For those seeking fine detail, please note that the then BRWR Chief Regional Officer (General Manager as a title was at that moment a no-no under nationalisation!) was one K W C Grand. He had a vast GWR experience having joined them in 1919, not only representing the company in the USA and Canada, but on his return he headed the Publicity Department before finally becoming the last GWR Assistant General Manager under Sir James Milne.

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