Tuesday Treasures - September 2024

TUESDAY 24 SEPTEMBER

Rhymney Railway Locomotive Numberplate Pattern

It is rare indeed for patterns from the steam age to have survived and many were destroyed during the early 1960s when major railway workshops were changing from steam to diesel loco construction. This week’s item is doubly remarkable in dating from the pre-grouping Rhymney Railway, well before it became a constituent company of the Great Western Railway after the passing of the Railways Act 1921.

It is a wooden pattern now in the Great Western Trust collection, made from teak and measures 43” x 10”. It was used to cast the rather elaborate numberplates carried on the side tanks of many Rhymney Railway locos. Close observation will show scribing on either side of the ‘0’ which enabled the foundry to cast loco numbers of either two or three digits at the Rhymney Railway’s workshops at Cardiff docks.

Shown here are locos where such a pattern would have been used, No 33, a beautiful 0-6-0 saddle tank built by Nasmyth Wilson in 1874 and No 74, an 0-6-2 saddle tank from Sharp Stewart in 1894.

The photos of the pattern are © John Hannavy

TUESDAY 17 SEPTEMBER

Football Crazy - 3

In a couple of previous Tuesday Treasures Blogs we covered various examples of this subject, and today we have another dating from the 1970/1 season, though this time about football as a means for speculation rather than fans attending matches themselves.

The illustrated leaflet of two sides only appears to reflect a popular pastime if its being No 2 proves anything. That said, apart from remembering our father’s weekly attempts to predict draws on the ‘Pools’ and always failing to win the big cash reward, this Pontoon Game based on football results rather leaves us mystified as to the way it was played!

From that reference to the News of the World newspaper’s Pontoon Table, we assume that it was created by the Staff Association to raise funds for its charitable purposes while pretty much copying a scheme already well established in that national newspaper, which no longer exists.

We would be delighted to know more of this game and any other BRWR Staff Association memorabilia relating to it.

In the 1970s the relations between British Railways and football was an ambivalent one, with trains regularly vandalised. This photograph shows a carriage having received the attentions of Oxford United fans at the beginning of the 1973 season.

Yet this was an era when players in the football league teams used to travel by train to away matches, and would be fed high protein lunches, such as steak, in the restaurant car to ensure they arrived in peak fitness.

One British Railways initiative was to offer a League Liner train in 1973, in the hope that offering a travel experience above the normal would gain respect from the fans. It even provided a disco carriage so they could work off excess energy!

TUESDAY 10 SEPTEMBER

A Mystery Object

Virtually all of the objects in the Great Western Trust collection have a use and are on record to make them self-evident. We in the Trust then expand upon that evidence to give their story, but today, as a topic for a different Tuesday Treasure Blog it’s time for us to admit that for the object we illustrate we have guesses as to its use, but nothing absolute. So perhaps our readers can help us to solve our puzzle?

The rather care worn and sadly broken tool illustrated has a specially shaped inverted ‘U’ end, attached to a very beautifully shaped wooden shaft, which has a solid cylindrical section ending in a deliberate rounded ‘knob’ end. Clearly branded ‘GWR’, it is about 3 feet (90 cms) long.

Care worn indeed, it came to the Trust many years ago, already badly consumed by woodworm, and now its wooden shaft handle is severed and in terminal decline. Hence our recording of it by a photograph as it is simply beyond conservation and display.

If however we know its designed use, and even better if another example in better condition exists, we will be delighted to know that!

Our guesses, could rather erroneously ‘lead the witness’ by inferring its generic use, when its true story could be far different. But with that warning, a guess is that it was part of the Goods Department’s staff use in the station goods yards, goods sheds or even in the massive goods stations at Bristol and Paddington? Maybe however, it was used by wagon inspectors?

Over to our readers … We, well only for just this rare occasion, are stumped!

TUESDAY 3 SEPTEMBER

Model Making

Today’s treasure from the Great Western Trust collection draws together a theme that has a very long history, namely that of locomotive and rolling stock model making.

At the very earliest days of the Great Western Railway, even its then very young first Locomotive Superintendent Daniel Gooch had a very fine model made of his Fire Fly broad gauge engine which is now part of the National Railway Museum’s collection. It is therefore hardly surprising that that interest was pursued throughout the GWR and BR evolution. First by individuals who had the wealth to afford this interest, and of course in more modern times, by those with modest incomes aided by availability of commercial fine scale or more general models of many types and gauges.

Daniel Gooch’s model of Fire Fly, now exhibited in the National Railway Museum. NRM photograph

The Trust collection is blessed with a number of those models, of which the larger scale live steam ones are on display in our Museum, all deserving their own remarkable story to be told. However, today we illustrate just one aspect of modelling that even the GWR Chief Mechanical Engineer’s Department at Swindon, was directly engaged in.

It is a modest officially typed letter to a Mr A J Maxwell of Plymouth dated 11 April 1938, replying to his letter of enquiry, by enclosing official GWR drawings relating to the Bulldog 4-4-0 class engine No 3341 and politely requesting in return the sum of three shillings (15 pence but with inflation about £8 today) as payment.

We might first pause to reflect that the fact that valuables were posted before being paid, is hardly the norm today, or even in BRWR days!

No 3341 Blasius with combined name and number plate. Blasius is the Latin form of Blaise, the patron saint of a church near St Blazey, Cornwall

Those regular viewers of Didcot Railway Centre blogs will surely have enjoyed those based upon the extensive and detailed work by Kevin Dare on digitising and conserving our massive archive of original GWR Swindon Works Loco Drawings. It is a treasure trove in and of itself, and includes examples of the very drawings described in the letter we illustrate. Today however, Kevin largely responds to requests for drawings from our fellow Heritage Railway locomotive preservation groups and of course our very own team at Didcot! This group of customers, rather than today’s modellers who can rely upon a vibrant model making industry to suit all taste and wallets!

Photographed at Exeter St David’s on 30 July 1949 by W Potter, No 3341 has been fitted with the BR smokebox number plate, but retains the combined name and number plate on the cabside. She was withdrawn in November 1949

We will return to this subject in future Blogs from time to time.

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