Tuesday Treasures - October 2021

TUESDAY 26 OCTOBER

Accidents Can Happen!

Perhaps this Blog isn't a naturally easy fit into a ‘Tuesday Treasure’ format, but photographic and documentary records of railway accidents are an important indicator of the realities of running a complex transport system coupled to human and mechanical fallibility.

The Great Western Trust has a remarkable documentary archive of GWR accident reports and whilst many are perhaps on a minor scale of individual injury, too many are both grim and affecting both many individuals and equipment and structural damage.

The GWR strove to instil in its ‘servants’ or later renamed ‘staff’ an ‘Is it Safe’ mind-set, much championed by Sir Felix Pole when both its staff magazine Editor and later when he rose to be its General Manager. We will return to that initiative in a future Blog.

Our purpose today is for once to illustrate an ‘Accident’ which in our present era has been re-branded as the all too familiar ‘Incident’, and to hope that our viewers may be able to offer a date and best of all, a location. Our 3 images sadly lack any such information!

What is pretty clear however, is that the nearest GWR accident recovery team will have faced quite a challenge! This auto coach No 91 was a valuable item of GWR rolling stock, and its successful recovery, repair and re-use in service would have been a basic objective. No pressure then?

Remarkably, despite the severe angle of the vehicle, the photo shows that none of its windows were shattered or lost, although the front bogie had other ideas! Recovery up such a steep embankment, whilst lacking that front bogie, makes the recovery an event surely keenly observed by local folk at least?

We look forward to your suggestions!

John Lewis in Great Western Railway Auto Trailers records that 91 was built in September 1912. He adds: “No 91 was in the Birmingham district in September 1937. It was also seen in the Banbury area during the late 1940s, and in due course was given BR maroon livery (1951-style). It had been fitted with sandboxes.” No date is given for the vehicle's withdrawal.

*These photographs show No 91 in GWR livery with post second world war style of lettering.

TUESDAY 19 OCTOBER

Holidays by Train – Part 4

We covered in our previous Blogs on this GWR theme, the Company's adoption of ‘The Holiday Line’ slogan, as a direct consequence of their West Country services to its numerous coastal locations.

Summer and even Spring Holidays were naturally well published and exploited but never ones to miss out on stretching opportunities for enticing continued holiday traffic, we illustrate from our Great Western Trust Collection, the cover and centre pages of a physically very small pamphlet for an Autumnal holiday during the West's ‘Indian Summer’.

For those unfamiliar with such a phrase, it is a reflection of the days of the British Empire which once included India (Queen Victoria becoming Empress of India when Disraeli was her Prime Minister). For those British nationals employed there in the Military or its vast Civil Service, they experienced the warm, glowing nature of the extended summer months in India, beyond the cripplingly hot peak of its high summer. If back in England, our summer also occasionally seemed to extend into our autumn, it became known as a year of an ‘Indian Summer’.

That extended summer period was to be most frequent in the ‘West of England’ and the pamphlet illustrated, dated September 1928, and its twin issued in September 1921, prove its extended relevance! Perhaps those interested in weather records will know how often it occurred? The Trust has similar examples of such pamphlets from the Edwardian era.

6018 King Henry VI climbing Dainton Bank with the 1.30 pm Paddington to Penzance

A constant target customer of most GWR holiday focused publications (rather like our Part 4 blog on GWR services to ease your holiday travel plans) were the ‘moneyed social classes’ who thought nothing out of place in the pamphlet covering the West's extended daylight hours for a game of golf! In future Blogs we will turn to the sporting associated publications the GWR produced, some examples of which were known to have been owned by their own, very senior GWR officers!

TUESDAY 12 OCTOBER

Bridge Testing – GWR Style

Railway enthusiasts, historians and in fact the general public, have largely taken for granted the beneficial impact of the invention and affordability of photography. Certainly the Great Western Trust Collection would be much the poorer without our extensive image library, and on so many occasions, the captured subject matter can be much more informative than when taken at first glance.

The railway companies themselves, very quickly appreciated the direct benefit of having their very own photographic establishments, which for the GWR and well into the BRWR era, was the preserve of their Chief Civil Engineer's Department at Paddington and the Chief Mechanical Engineer at Swindon.

In the early era, one has to admire the official photographer, sent hither and thither over the entire GWR system, to record specific matters, no matter what the weather or prevailing on site conditions. Add to that the immense weight and financial value of the tripod, plate image camera (12 x 10 inches!) and its necessary supporting materials, not least the heavy box for glass plates, used and ready for use. All up weight around 80 pounds. Then, his image was viewed upside down, and only when developed back in the proper facility was there any proof of success or failure!

That official person, would have travelled ‘free OCS’ i.e. ‘On Company Service’ and the Trustees have yet to discover whether any such official pass has been preserved. Yes, private individuals when approved by the authorities, are known to have been given such passes, but who were those Official Photographers we are in great debt to?

The image we illustrate ticks all of the boxes. Whilst unrecorded as an officially taken one, its postcard size, hints at it being an unofficial one, taken by a member of the GWR Civil Engineering Department to record a significant moment of achievement, of teamwork and one important instant in time.

It shows three GWR 2-6-2 tank engines, duly requested from the Chief Mechanical & Electrical Engineer’s Dept by the GWR Civil Engineer, to provide a static load deflection test on a major bridge reconstruction, almost certainly replacing an original brick arch with steel girders. This expensive investment would have only been sanctioned by the relevant finance committees if the expected traffic usage of the structure justified it. Perhaps those relatively new and more powerful tank engines were the very reason? Not to be outdone, those engines are in sparkling condition, after early morning treatment by their crew and shed cleaners no doubt!

The image is full of detail, not least the long vertical wooden gauge rising from the track to the steel over-girder, to prove the designed degree of deflection. All the men involved stand proudly for that moment of course, rather in the way their Victorian Era forebears always gathered when a photograph was to be taken, sadly on many occasions at a railway crash!

We are confidently informed that whilst the date is only estimated as circa 1910ish, the location is Felin Fran near Swansea. For those wishing more detail, the GWR London Lecture & Debating Society held a lecture on November 5^th 1908 entitled ‘The Experiences of a Railway Photographer’ given by Harold Cooper.

TUESDAY 05 OCTOBER

The Joy of the Journey – GWR Style

In 1926 the very forward looking and publicity focused GWR General Manager, Sir Felix Pole, placed his name on the illustrated small pamphlet entitled ‘The Joy of the Journey’ which is one example of many such publicity items we hold in the Great Western Trust Collection.

Naturally, it has ‘social strata’ connotations, when studying the artist's image on the title page. Here we have a well to do, but very contemporary couple, the lady with her cloche hat, about to board the GWR's premier train ‘The Cornish Riviera Express’ no doubt at Paddington, with the Train Guard happily assisting them whilst holding in readiness his green flag, to give the ‘Right Away’ signal to the Engine Driver, its green helpfully matching the lady's dress colour!

This fold out pamphlet, then explains how each aspect of arranging and then travelling by GWR, can be effectively made a ‘joy’ by the GWR removing all those so tiring and vexing details! We illustrate a few sections of its contents and the phrasing used is not only of an age gone by, but underlines the particular social strata it is designed for.

A delightful item even if to our age and expectations it hints at a snobbishness that the general workaday public of that time, may also have found equally grating.

Of note is that having extolled its train arrangements in the bulk of its text, the final page just happens to list all the GWR's own publications, all on sale at most reasonable prices! The Great Western Trust archive holds all those publications, many of which were so genuinely popular, that they were reproduced in many issues up to the GWR's demise in 1947.

Future Blogs will return to these wonderful pamphlets and brochures and the artists who the GWR commissioned to creatively evoke the very special attributes of its self-styled banner ‘The Holiday Line’.

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