Tuesday Treasures - January 2023

TUESDAY 31 JANUARY

Giant Strides

A Topical Tuesday Treasure this week allows us to show you one of the more modern posters in the Great Western Trust Collection. It features a stunning image of Swindon’s last design of main line diesel locomotive – the D1000s or ‘Westerns’. The poster was issued in 1961 to coincide with the introduction of these locos which were an enlargement of the earlier ‘Warship’ class and were the most powerful diesel hydraulics built by British Railways (Western Region). They enjoyed a sadly short life, the last members of the class being withdrawn in 1977 due to British Railways’ policy of standardising on diesel electrics.

Born in London in 1920, A N (Arthur Nigel) Wolstenholme, the artist whose work is displayed here, was a prolific poster artist from the 1940s to the 1960s. He specialised in transport subjects and was well known for use of the scraperboard in his work.

Why topical? I hear you ask. Well, yesterday, 30 January, D1023 WESTERN FUSILIER arrived at Didcot Railway Centre on a five year loan from the National Railway Museum.

TUESDAY 24 JANUARY

GWR Clocks

The Great Western Trust is fortunate to have a comprehensive collection of clocks and this week we show some examples.

First is a drop case clock bequeathed to the Trust in 2019. It has an unusually large 15” face and a small window to enable the swinging pendulum to be seen. Dating from the early 20th century, it carries the number 2049 on a small ivorine plaque. Just like GWR locos and rolling stock, each clock had its own unique number and history card which was kept at Reading where clocks were sent for service and maintenance.

Next is a rectangular mantlepiece clock number 3617. It is housed in a wooden case and hinges at the top of the face to facilitate winding.

Finally, another drop case clock, quite conventional in design but has the distinction of having spent many years in the Chief Mechanical Engineer’s Office at Swindon. Made by Kay’s of Worcester, number 2965 is in superb condition and, were it able to speak, would doubtless have many interesting stories to tell from its time in Swindon Works.

Technically, all the above are timepieces as they do not chime but the Trust does have a number of presentation chiming clocks given to staff members upon retirement. These will be the subject of a future blog.

TUESDAY 17 JANUARY

GWR Staff Social & Recreational Events – No 5

Our Blog last week was based upon a Swindon Works senior staff social event way back in 1899. Today we fast forward to the 1930s, and show a popular, if very different form of staff socialising.

From our Great Western Trust collection we have this delightful posed photo backed onto postcard format printed card, depicting the staff of the GWR’s Oxford Station Telegraph Office.

Sadly no one is identified other than ‘Gramps’ is second from left!

Beyond those characterful individuals, we can see that even by then the wooden Oxford station building looks tired. A motorbike leaning against a partition, is perhaps that of a staff member?

That it is of Oxford some 80-90 years ago, and so very local to Didcot, we hope that maybe an individual can be recognised by a blog reader?

The Trust holds many other postcard size and style impromptu photographs of railway staff, virtually all sadly, like this one, lacking any identification of individuals, so those interesting people look back at us from a different age and a very different working life style. Today, the ‘communications’ staff of Oxford Station, or whatever their corporate title is, are hardly likely to be as numerous as those in our picture, nor of such a wide range of ages. Did those two youngsters squatting on the platform, stay with the GWR, go to war, and return …?

So many unanswered questions prompted by one memento postcard photograph.

TUESDAY 10 JANUARY

GWR Staff Social & Recreational Events – No 4

Those who regularly visit our Blogs based upon treasures in our Great Western Trust collection, can refer back to our 28 July 2020, and February and June 2022 Blogs on this subject. It is such a rich source of social history material that we thought that another example for today will appropriately begin our 2023 Tuesday Treasures season.

It is a modest card, miraculously surviving to our time, with a few scars to show for it, but clearly carefully designed and printed, depicting an artist’s sketch of a Dean 4-2-2 Locomotive and that for Three Shillings (old shillings at 20 to the Pound) it is a ticket to the First Annual Dinner of the GWR Locomotive and Carriage Department, Engineer’s Office Swindon on Saturday 21 January 1899 at 6:30pm. Hardly an insignificant sum as it's about £15 of today's money!

Produced by the Honorary Secretary (a long established and still much used post title for such an organisational committee) one W J Dakin it was obtained by C G Bailey presumably having paid his 3 shillings, but of whom we sadly have yet to identify his Swindon Works position.

Remarkably the Trust also holds the ‘Toast List’ for this event, which again reflected long established norms by which the Monarch, and the GWR etc. were toasted and speeches made. Perhaps more interesting is that the Trust also holds the programme for the same group's fifth annual outing in June 1897, which was on the Thames. This demonstrates the fact that such focused groups within the GWR staff, and not just at Swindon, had already created popular annual outings and then extended events to include an Annual Dinner. The records we hold to date show that this particular part of the Swindon Works staff continued such outings and dinners, at least until June 1950! In fact the other works staffs in the administrative, design and operating sections shared in creating such popular, long-running annual events, as of course did staff right across the GWR.

It is a mark of how valued such events were in those long ago times that material from them was retained by individuals and their families to now become a permanent part of our Great Western Trust collection and therefore shine a light on recreational activities outside the GWR working environment.

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