Tuesday Treasures - March 2022

TUESDAY 29 MARCH

Delivering the Goods

In an earlier blog, entitled ‘Moving Home’ we explored the GWR's ‘common carrier’ obligations which perhaps surprising to our current era of much reduced rail freight services, extended even to home contents removals, door to door!

Today's blog focuses upon a different traffic provision and the item we base it upon from the Great Western Trust collection, adds the important significant shift which had begun in pre WW2 railway finances, away from competing with each other to that of outright collaboration.

The rather over-handled brochure cover illustrated ‘Conveyance of Liquids in Bulk by Rail’ has despite the wear and tear on the spine, an artist's image of the designed capability for tanks to be transported by rail and road. The ‘sales pitch’ as it were is also illustrated and although the original print font is small and of rather light colour, the key item is its date, January 1947, the very final year of the then private railway companies prior to nationalisation from 1^st January 1948.

Even at that very late moment in their long history, the GWR's being the longest from August 1835 no less, the ever increasing impact of the road transport industry was a huge threat which the railways tried innovatively to counter. This brochure opens to many illustrations of varied and specific uses of bulk liquid tanks, one of which we are happy to have preserved at Didcot it being our Road-Rail Milk Tank trailer also illustrated.

It is perhaps ironic to know that upon nationalisation, the Government's objective was to create a co-ordinated UK transport system, integrating the railways, shipping, roads (buses and lorries) and rather amazingly canals. Even such laudable aims, directed by supposedly powerful legislative bodies could not magic the desired outcome and the remorseless sweep of private road hauliers won the day.

In our very current concerns over fuel supplies and climate change, we can take a view that that ‘victory’ has sadly left us with a rail infrastructure through loss of private sidings, branch lines and slimmed main route capacity that cannot turn that tide were it considered. All that museums like Didcot can offer are demonstrations of a very different transport era through its historic railway vehicles and through the archives held in the Great Western Trust collection.

A train of milk tanks at Kensington Olympia headed by Saint class 4-6-0 No 2973 Robins Bolitho. The first vehicle is a United Dairies road tank mounted on a six-wheel Rotank flat wagon. 

TUESDAY 22 MARCH

Enticing the Americans – Part 3

In our recent Blog based upon the Great Western Trust Collection at Didcot Railway Centre, we covered the administrative side of this advertising campaign and added illustrations of a handstamp, a poster and pamphlet to add solid artefact detail.

By coincidence we have a wonderfully entertaining booklet, produced in the USA for British Railways that has equal relevance to this theme, and a reveals a great deal more about how the Americans viewed us Brits!!

Illustrated is its cover sketch ‘What no ice?’ and ‘A few suggestions for Americans Visiting the British Isles Today’ closing with that British Railways iconic totem motif.

Devoting 36 pages of information and further sketches, it was the third edition of 1950 of a post WW2 booklet first produced in 1948. It points out that no less than 130,000 Americans visited the UK in 1949 and sensitively addresses our post-war food shortages and other constraints, although of course none of these should prevent Americans continuing to visit to enjoy our history, countryside and hospitality!

To add to our attractiveness, the UK pound’s devaluation to just being worth 2.80 dollars (oh for that today?) were, only available in the USA ‘British Railways Mileage Coupons’ granting exceptionally low prices for railway tickets!

The ‘What No Ice?’ cover was a deliberate reminder that the British were very different to Americans, as we rarely had ice with our drinks! Churchill had perceptively spoken of the USA and UK being two nations separated by a common language, and this booklet addresses railway travel terms that demonstrate that very fact.

We illustrate a number of its pages, as they are the best means of giving the spirit and quirky nature of this publication.

The witness of glue on the back page of our example, is evidence that the GWR & BRWR Publicity Dept kept reference copies of its sponsored materials. The Great Western Trust has a vast array of that material and we are always keen to welcome additions to it. Apart from the superb book ‘Go Great Western – A History of GWR Publicity’ by the late Roger Burdett Wilson, published by David & Charles in 1970, in which Wilson searched all available official records, we have yet to discover any better primary sources. Hence, we cannot check our vast collection of publicity documents against a GWR or BRWR master reference list, and so, ‘new’ or rather previously unknown original publications continue to emerge.

Rather like the earliest days of youthful train spotting long before Ian Allan, spotters had to create their own books, until the GWR realised that a keen enthusiast market existed for information on their locomotives and books, postcards and organised Swindon Works visits captured generations of ‘boys of all ages’!

TUESDAY 15 MARCH

Enticing the Americans – Part 2

In late 2021, we first blogged on this subject reflecting upon Brunel's key role in waking the proponents of the still to be authorised GWR, to American traffic opportunities. We then illustrated a 1932 joint with the SR publicity brochure in the Great Western Trust collection, entitled ‘ENGLAND – and why’.

This time we are covering the practical staffing and organisational aspects of an American foothold for the GWR and later all Big Four Companies and even into the Nationalised railways era.

From the very early 1900s the GWR produced numerous booklets created specifically for American tourists. Probably contemporary with the astute GWR only coup, for loco 6000 to appear with North Star at the Baltimore & Ohio Railway Centenary Celebrations in 1927, achieved by Sir Felix Pole when General Manager, they needed a dedicated office and staff in the USA. It is hardly a coincidence that their chosen representative was K W C Grand, whose parents were Canadian and who had strong links with key American and Canadian railway officers.

That office was established at 500 Fifth Avenue, New York. Grand held the ‘GWR General Agent’ post in the USA from 1926 to 1929, when he returned to Paddington under W H Fraser who had joined the GWR in 1892, was its first Head of its new Publicity Department in 1924 and crucially had spent time in the USA and Canada in 1925 to improve relations with the public and businesses there. Grand succeeded Fraser on his retirement in 1931 extending his role to that of head of Commercial Advertising and later became the first regional Chief Officer on BRWR after Nationalisation.

We illustrate the high quality hand stamp emblazoned ‘Great Western Railway of England’ used by C J Rider who had the rich title of ‘Travelling Passenger Agent’ and we know he possessed an amazing collection of Free Passes over all the USA Railways! Rider had succeeded G E Orton who had followed Grand.

In the early 1930s, with general trade under depression and increasing road transport competition, the GWR first proposed to the Railway Clearing House (a long established whole railway companies organisation) that joint publicity was the best way forward. The GWR & LMSR & SR began a long liaison in this respect, and under yet another Head of Publicity, Major Dewar, the ‘Associated British and Irish Railways (ABIR)’ body was formed.

To add a bit of welcome colour to our Blog, we close with this splendid brochure published in October 1928 by the GWR & LMSR ‘Ireland the Land of Scenery and Romance’ with an Alf Kerr painting of a sweet Colleen beckoning enticingly! On the rear cover, beyond listing transatlantic shipping routes to Ireland, we note that the GWR office had moved to 505 Fifth Avenue whilst the LMS were located at No 200!  Moving offices seemed to be quite regular thereafter as in BR days, we note another Fifth Avenue address and then Rockefeller Plaza too. They even stretched to Los Angeles so a USA posting was a prized option for some years?

Our final illustration is the adaptation of the GWR's famous ‘Speed to the West’ poster with text aimed at the American market including the Rockefeller Plaza address and reference to King George VI, which puts the date around 1937.

Oh, and in case we overlook it, our collection also includes wonderful publicity produced for European countries in all their differing languages! Yes, another future blog must cover these.

TUESDAY 8 MARCH

The GWR and Model Railways

The Great Western Railway produced a celebrated series of children's books, pull along train toys, and games including jigsaws and packs of cards. Our Great Western Trust collection has a wonderful selection of these, which are partly illustrated in the picture heading to our ‘Tuesday Treasures’ page on the Didcot Railway Centre website.

What is equally significant is that children's railway model producers, notably Bassett Lowke and Hornby, appreciated the demand for representative models of engines and trains of all the big railway companies and we illustrate today, a simple but very informative Hornby advert from My Magazine for one such GWR train set.

Yes, you are not mistaken, it surprisingly details one specific GWR Goods Train colloquially known as ‘The Flying Pig’ and why it was so named. You might just wonder if this was a fanciful story but no, the GWR had so many regular freight trains hauling dedicated specific goods traffic, that they created a remarkable series of effective code names to uniquely identify them.

Turning now to the Great Western Trust's complete collection of the Great Western Railway Magazine we discover in the February 1930 edition how these traditional names gained official recognition:

“It will be remembered that, following publication of a letter from Mr. E. Ford, the Great Western Railway Company’s Chief Goods Manager, a competition was initiated in the Magazine about a year ago for the appropriate naming of the Company's express vacuum and accelerated ‘E’ freight trains. As a result of this competition, supplemented by the Chief Goods Manager's enquiries, a comprehensive list of such names has been compiled, and is appended. The names given to these trains are not arbitrary inventions thrust upon them by the authorities; they are unofficial ‘christenings’ undertaken by the men associated with the working of the trains, and in many cases are traditional, having been handed on to engine men, guards, and shunters, by their predecessors who have long retired from active service.

“It is certainly a happy thought of the Chief Goods Manager to have recognised the spirit of pride and affection which has spontaneously found names for many a famous freight train, by printing and publishing a list of them.”

This is evidently an early example of what would now be described in management-speak as ‘bottom-up management’!

Our ‘Flying Pig’ actually ran from Exeter to London (Old Oak Common) for distribution across London markets, at 4pm daily. Naturally, needing so many unique names, stretched their creativity and we have such striking ones as ‘The BBC’ (actually Basingstoke, Birmingham, Crewe); ‘The Leek’ (ran from Acton to Llanelly!); ‘The Farmers Boy’ (Bristol to Birkenhead); ‘The Moonraker’ (Westbury to Wolverhampton); ‘The Biscuit’ (Reading to Plymouth Laira, this from Huntley & Palmers factory); and appropriately ‘The Mopper Up’ (Paddington to Bristol at 12:30am)!!

Today with fixed formation freight trains, a mere shadow in numbers compared to GWR days, we wonder if the operators continue this tradition of colloquial naming?

Turning back to the actual Hornby train set advert, it demonstrates the reliance upon juvenile imagination. The engine, in GWR livery is certainly eye catching, but as a 4-4-4 tank engine, it certainly does not represent any GWR prototype!

Of course, such models are now highly prized amongst collectors and the Great Western Trust is delighted to hold a fine collection of Hornby tinplate models of GWR relevance some of which are in our much admired ‘Children's Toys’ display in our Museum.

Finally, we can hardly ignore the fact that the advert includes the latest edition of another Hornby creation, its Book of Trains, with its cover picture of a GWR Castle class loco on an express! Yes, a selection of these books are also held in our collection. Having such items ensures that however old we are, the Trustees remain ‘young at heart’.

TUESDAY 1 MARCH

Careers on the Railways

The subject of how the railways acquired the necessarily vast numbers of employees from their very beginning even up to the present time, is a social historical aspect of railway history that is worthy of enquiry upon which the Great Western Trust Collection has a substantial body of relevant materials.

From the style of staff uniforms adopted in the formative days, it is clear that the military organisation and its clothing suppliers were a prime precedent to invoke. Even the rank or grade structure was another import and many of the first senior station and departmental staff appointments drew men from military sources.

Once the railways became a recognised employer with much to offer, predominantly, relative confidence of secure employment, though even that was still subject to the ebb and flow of staff to support seasonal traffic levels, the GWR could pretty much rely upon locally posted letterpress adverts for staff.

Our Blog today however, is a British Railways, Railway Executive booklet, published in 1952. We chose it because beyond its successfully eye catching cover (illustrated), using a Wolstenholme sketch of a Britannia Pacific loco, that both BR and Ian Allan used repeatedly for some years, its contents remarkably reflect so much of the ethos of railway employment just described in the GWR era.

Of course, the first dominant factor, is that it is completely focussed upon male (youths of 16 years of age) recruits! Sorry, but we record historical facts, however much our current times have subsequently changed employment attitudes and expectations.

Second, its quite a substantial booklet, of 32 pages, with a loose supplement in the back cover of the salaries and wages to be expected in the many departments. Rather strikingly, it states that it isn't a Government Publication, which we wonder whether this was to distinguish it from the contemporary drive by Government to further stimulate UK industry post the 1951 Festival of Britain had been designed to show a higher tech basis for the UK manufacturing economy.

We illustrate pages 4 & 5, because of their very clear reflection of how the Railways as it were, still saw themselves as a fundamental and never to be lost, vital part of the UK industrial economy, giving employment continuity whatever the ebb and flow of particular industries might experience! How about that ‘Variety and Adventure’ section? Try that line of argument today?? Reflecting those particular times, one section is devoted to the Railways accommodation of staff having to fulfil National Service in the armed forces, then a legal obligation.

We finally illustrate the rear cover (page 32) as the imagery of the railway line being of all things ‘The Road to Success’ supplemented by the rather high moral, almost Victorian era reminder of the key importance of the personal attitude to career progression!

The Trust Collection holds many items from employees who retired after 45 years or more with the GWR and then even into BRWR. It is probably accurate to reflect that in today's employment environment, only the Civil Service can be expected to offer such longevity of continued career commitment with one organisation.

• Tuesday Treasures - Latest Blogs

« Back To Tuesday Treasures Index