Tuesday Treasures - October 2024

TUESDAY 29 OCTOBER

Pride in the Job – 5

This theme provides a rich source on which to reflect on human nature and today’s blog from the Great Western Trust collection is of an undated and unattributed original photograph of shed staff with Great Western Railway 2-4-0 loco No 3515.

The photograph of No 3515 donated to the Great Western Trust earlier this year

Railway archives are blessed with countless such examples, the vast majority of which, like this one, having no details of the men involved or the location and date, or of course, who took the photograph! Notice that all have flat caps, a number look decidedly very young, so our assumption is that they were the loco cleaning gang with their foreman, the chap on the ground with his hands on his hips!

Whatever those regrettable and frustrating omissions create for us, the outstanding message of these photographs is ‘Pride in the Job’ and companionship at work. A very tough working experience for sure, and we must not sugar coat those realities, but these men clearly wanted the occasion recorded, and one hopes each one then had a copy of the image as a keepsake.

The photo was donated this year by a contact of a retired Didcot railwayman, and the photograph was indeed taken at Didcot shed, before our 1932 engine shed was built.

The curious structure to the right of the picture, made of two lengths of bridge rail, was a feature of the old Didcot engine shed, and it appears in the second photograph alongside Barnum class 2-4-0 No 3210, which is dated 1930.

The structure of two bridge rails in this picture matches that in the photo of No 3515 to confirm it is at Didcot

No 3515 was an engine with an interesting history. Built in July 1885, she was originally a tank engine in a batch of ten, numbered 3511 to 3520. The photograph of No 3512 shows how she would have appeared as a tank engine.

This photograph shows how No 3515 would have appeared when built as a tank engine

Ten more locomotives, Nos 3501 to 3510, were identical to the 3511 to 3520 batch but built with broad gauge axles and worked the last few years on the 7ft gauge before being converted to standard gauge in 1892. Five of the broad gauge batch were converted to tender engines in 1890 and 1891, and the fourth photo shows No 3508 as a broad gauge 2-4-0 with the driving wheels outside the frames.

Sister engine to No 3515, No 3508 running as a broad gauge tender locomotive

All of the remaining tank engines were converted to tender engines, No 3515 undergoing this metamorphosis in September 1894. After that she joined the rest of her class working the principal trains west of Newton Abbot, until they were replaced by 4-4-0s. No 3515 is recorded as being a Didcot engine in 1921, but she had migrated to Brecon before being withdrawn in December 1930.

TUESDAY 22 OCTOBER

Let's Go to Jersey

With a distinct autumn chill in the air, it seems timely to conjure memories of balmy sunny days and so this week we pay a visit to Jersey. Beloved by both holidaymakers and the very wealthy, the largest of the Channel Islands became a popular holiday resort with the advent of the railways and faster, more reliable ships during the Victorian era.

This brochure, produced jointly by the Great Western Railway and the Southern Railway dates from 1947, the last summer before nationalisation. The ‘sunburst’ image was often used in connection with Jersey, which shows its post war modernity by using a very bold image of a bikini-clad young lady to ‘arrest the eye’.

Also of interest are the dance halls, cinemas and sports stadium recently brought back into use.. Amongst the “coming events” are the Jersey International Road Motor Race on 8th May which featured the World’s leading drivers together with bands, a torchlight tattoo and fireworks. Later in the month on the 24th, Field Marshal Viscount Montgomery honoured the island with a visit on Empire Day.

Reg Parnell's Maserati being refuelled during the 1947 Jersey International Road Motor Race. Photo by Bert Hardy of Picture Post

All this, barely two years after VE day and the end of occupation by German forces, says much for the courage and resilience of the citizens of Jersey and indeed Channel Islanders generally. Notwithstanding the advent of cheap post-war holidays in southern Europe, Jersey still remains a magnet for British holidaymakers.

Reg Parnell, victor of the 1947 Jersey International Road Motor Race featured on the cover of Picture Post

With thanks to the Isle of Wight Steam Railway for the recent donation of this item to the Great Western Trust.

TUESDAY 15 OCTOBER

Train Spotting - 2

Our Tuesday Treasure Blog last week on this subject was well received and given that, as we mentioned, the Meccano Magazine regularly covered such subjects in its editions, we thought that this story needed an immediate follow up from our Great Western Trust collection.

So today we illustrate the cover of the edition published one year earlier in June 1952 showing the Britannia class loco No 70017 Arrow heading the BRWR Merchant Venturer express. This edition further demonstrated the importance the editors gave to such material as it contained a very detailed article by no less than O S Nock, regarding his timed footplate journey on the express and his observations of its running and the work of its footplate crew.

Oh, and we had to add the illustration of the magazine’s back cover advert for the wonderful, working, tower mounted crane! This design was pretty much derived from those then operating at dockside quays. Quite where that boy’s mother found a suitable place in her home for it, we are only left to wonder!

Britannia class No 70026 Polar Star hauls the Red Dragon, another Western Region named train, into Paddington station at the end of its journey from Wales on Wednesday 3 March 1954. Photograph by Phil Kelley

TUESDAY 8 OCTOBER

Train Spotting!

For those of us of a certain age, alongside stamp collecting a boyhood (yes mostly boys but a few girls too!) hobby was train spotting, or more accurately, locomotive number spotting. The Great Western Trust has a popular display in our Museum all about this subject and many of our visitors reflect on their times spent at stations and other railway locations or even on trains, annoying their parents with a complete fascination in the railway scene of old.

The very popular and long running publication, the Meccano Magazine, ensured that each monthly edition had some content devoted to railway matters, and occasionally, their coloured covers had attractive paintings of railway subjects, most almost certainly artist’s copies of standard monochrome photographs.

Our blog today illustrates just one such cover from our Great Western Trust collection, from October 1953, no less than 71 years ago! We chose it for its perfect recording of a scene so often repeated at major stations where young enthusiastic trainspotters would crowd beside the footplate of an express steam loco in the rare hope of being invited onto the footplate! In this scene however it is pretty clear that the fireman, who has for whatever reason left the locomotive, is now prevented from returning to it because his way is blocked by those same boys!

For us ex trainspotters, the fact that the locomotive is at Crewe on the London Midland Main Line is hardly to be criticised for a GWR and BRWR focused Trust, given that usefully the caption states she is BR Britannia class No 70015 Apollo which served for many years afterwards on the expresses on the BR Western Region, most successfully those between South Wales and London.

Apollo, intended for the Western Region when built, was sent instead to Camden in June 1951 and then to Stratford before being allocated to Old Oak Common in September 1953. In December 1956 she was transferred to Cardiff Canton. The 15 Britannias allocated to the Western Region were all named after former GWR broad gauge locomotives, apart from Flying Dutchman which was the name of the principal broad gauge train.

Old Oak Common's No 70015 Apollo on a lay-over at Plymouth Laira with the driver attending to something on the engine, having left his oil can on the buffer beam. His fireman is aloft bringing coal forward from the tender while water is taken ready for a working back to London. Photograph by Peter Kerslake/Rail-online. For more about Britannias on the Western Region see Great Western Echo No 224 Winter 2019 and No 227 Autumn 2019

Eventually, with BRWR keen to be rid of steam and become diesel-operating only, the Britannias which had all gathered at Canton – a depot which knew how to get the best out of the class – went back to the LMR, with Apollo being sent to Manchester Trafford Road. She then spent time at eight LMR depots before her final allocation to Carlisle Kingmoor where she was in a fleet of 13 former Canton Britannias, which were all withdrawn in 1966 and 1967.

At least they had a few more years of gainful service than if they had stayed on the Western Region, though far short of their true life expectancy when first built. Locos 70000 Britannia and 70013 Oliver Cromwell now survive in preservation, but sadly none of those adorned with ex GWR locomotive names.

Oh, and lest we forget, boys also had an enthusiasm for Meccano itself, as shown in the illustration of the back cover advert on this same edition. However, sadly very few boys could hope to obtain the massive excavator kit displayed there. And doesn’t that boy have immaculately groomed hair?

TUESDAY 1 OCTOBER

Mechanical Handling

Many of our readers may be surprised to know that in the early 1960s the then Ministry of Transport had created the UKRAS (the United Kingdom Railway Advisory Service) who published very informative booklets on numerous aspects of railway operation for public and commercial body exploitation.

Today’s Blog uses just one of those booklets from the Great Western Trust collection. It is entitled rather heavily Mechanical Handling and Alternative Means of Loading and Unloading Heavy Freight Bogie Wagons. Published in 1962 and comprising 12 pages with illustrative photographs, it provides quite an informative window on yet another attempt by the nationalised railway to demonstrate new methods, not least of road to rail and vice versa capabilities.

We illustrate the cover and one page of photos, although how today’s Health & Safety Executive would view the man standing inside a coal wagon we dare not speculate!

The cover picture alone is a stark example of how busy the railways once were in large scale freight transport, whereas today, all such goods by rail is bulk mode reflecting the changes advocated by a certain Doctor Beeching which led to the Freightliner system and on to today’s ISO container dominated methods.

Quite how successful UKRAS was, we have yet to explore. It may well have been decended from the Railway Research Service which was created at the Grouping of the railways in 1923 to supply the four British companies with centralised information on world-wide railway practice. Its secretary from 1924 to 1962 was C E R Sherrington, who also wrote two articles about his railway experiences in Great Western Echo (Spring 1972 and Winter 1973-4 editions)

This UKRAS advert dates from 1967 and describes the services offered to overseas railway organisations, much the same as Transmark was later to provide

It appears that UKRAS was abolished in 1969, coinciding with the creation of Transmark (Transportation Systems and Market Research Limited) formed in that year out of the market research section of the Corporate Planning Department of British Rail. It was a limited company wholly owned by the British Railways Board that successfully offered its expertise to transport organisations around the world. It was sold in 1993 to Sir William Halcrow and Partners Ltd.

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