Tuesday Treasures - April 2025

TUESDAY 29 APRIL

The Great Western Trust holds in excess of three hundred Royal Train notices dating as far back as 1859 amongst which are some of Queen Victoria’s earliest railway journeys. Ballater (for Balmoral) to Windsor in November 1892 took nineteen hours to cover the 589 miles. Leaving Ballater at 2.15 pm, the Royal Train spent 55 minutes at Perth and 20 minutes at Carlisle for refreshments, eventually arriving at Windsor at 9.10 am the following day by which time Her Majesty was doubtless ready for her breakfast.

We illustrate a more recent royal journey this week from March 1960 when HRH Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh was conveyed from Paddington to Plymouth. The Queen’s Consort was attending a ceremony where he was installed as Lord High Steward of the City of Plymouth. In order to be in the city by 10 am the train departed from Paddington at 11 pm the previous evening. Running through the night, arrival at Plymouth Millbay was at 4.55 am giving the royal party ample time to prepare for the day’s formalities.

‘Deepdene’ was a code word used by the railways to denote a Royal Train unless the monarch was being conveyed in which case the code word was ‘Grove’. Thus this particular train was run under ‘Deepdene’ regulations.

The above is a convoluted way of showing one of the Trust’s most recent acquisitions – the smokebox numberplate from Castle class loco No. 7033 Hartlebury Castle, the very engine which hauled the Royal Train featured here. It comes to the Trust through the generosity of the late Allan Machon, a very long term GWS member who passed away in February last. We are very grateful to Allan’s family for their kind gesture.

Shown here is No 7033 on a different Royal Train, running through Westbourne Park station sometime in the 1950s, with a train of Great Western stock. The second photo shows her on a (only slightly) less important job at Exeter St. Davids’s working the down ‘Torbay Express’ after she had been fitted with a double chimney in July 1959, and after the letter C had been introduced to headcodes of trains serving the west of England in 1962. No 7033 had been built in July 1950 and was withdrawn in January 1963 after a working life of less than 12 years.

Tuesday Treasures is taking a short holiday and hopes to return on 13 May.

TUESDAY 22 APRIL

Easter Entertainment

With Easter just passed, we focus upon just one of the long established sporting events that was associated with Easter, this time horse racing.

The Great Western Trust collection has a wide range of GWR and BRWR publications centred upon their travel facilities to attend such horse racing events throughout the year and the UK, including the Grand National in Liverpool!

The GWR sent its new Castle class 4-6-0 No 4077 Chepstow Castle to Chepstow in July 1926 to publicise the opening of the new Chepstow race course

Today, our Easter item is a humble BRWR handbill of February 1959 for services to Chepstow Races from Bristol, Bath and Weston-super-Mare area stations.

The terms and conditions are standard of their time, although we wonder how many children under three years of age took the opportunity to travel free! Also, if the races were cancelled in sufficient time to be notified, such advance tickets acquired could be refunded upon application.

The Great Western Trust has a copy of this lovely poster advertising the new Chepstow race course which opened in August 1926. The horses are rather in the background in this painting by Warwick Goble – no doubt the aim is to promote horse racing as a social event, to see and be seen

Such events at Chepstow, created a very significant logistics task for the local station staff, given the working of those special trains and the vast numbers of passengers de-training and later en-training at the small station, presumably, though not stated on the handbill, that buses took them to and from the racecourse which was more than a mile away up a steep hill!!

The authority of this handbill was no less than K W C Grand who began his career in the role of the GWR’s Commercial Representative in the USA based in New York, and later upon Nationalisation, to become the WR General Manager.

Another poster from the Great Western Trust collection is dated 1932 and emphasises the drama of horse racing

The handbill itself was printed for the WR by J W Arrowsmith of Bristol, which is an example of the generous business that all GWR and BRWR publicity provided to local printers throughout their region.

We will return to cover wider examples of GWR and BRWR racing events publicity, as it is a rich and very British form of entertainment and very much remains so today.

Chepstow station in the 1950s, with a Wye Valley line train

TUESDAY 15 APRIL

Boating Season

Our Blog today reaches back 121 years to early 1904 in the Edwardian Era. A small, breast pocket sized booklet in Great Western Trust collection, packs in a number of railway operation and social history elements that may well both surprise us today, and prove that in other respects, hardly anything has changed!

The illustrated booklet cover alone sets the tone. Its ‘Boating Season’ title was clearly one that chimed with the target public travelling audience of that era, but rather than detailing the coastal yachting events, say to be reached by travelling GWR to its Dorset, Devon and Cornwall coastal resorts, this booklet is solely aimed at those living in London, the Metropolis, and enjoying the upper reaches of the Thames, particularly along the Henley branch!

We illustrate its gushing text introduction alongside a detailed sketch map of the Thames and the relevant GWR stations to access it. That introductory text reflects the attitudes and their weekend social activities of the middling and upper classes of society, and the GWR saw them as having strong potential custom for a remarkable Sunday only special service they were offering. Sunday only, because at that time, most professional employees worked 6 days a week.

We further illustrate that service alongside two vignette photo images of Henley Royal Regatta and the Thames at Pangbourne. Here we expose quite how remarkable that train service was, at least to our current eyes and expectations. Not only was it advertised as a ‘New Through Express Service’ but no less commencing from Victoria Station!

Historically, the GWR once surprisingly shared ownership of Victoria Station with the South Eastern & Chatham Railway Company from even Broad Gauge days, having a dedicated platform within that station. Hence, how they could offer this ‘through’ service independently of the SE&CR.

Elegantly-dressed passengers arriving at Henley-on Thames in 1911

Social history is also key here. As the booklet makes its sales pitch, those of a certain class, and wealth, who had residence in the city were being offered this Sunday-Only service during the July to September summer period, to locations on the Thames certainly familiar to them and in respect of Henley alone, probably a location they visited for its famed annual Regatta. For that event, the GWR made every effort to provide suitable and sufficient trains, and here again the Trust collection includes an internal despatch from Henley’s station staff calling for more First Class carriages!!

Today, we may no longer have such special train services, but the attraction of the Thames and the area served by the Henley branch, retains its vital and extensive public attraction, especially the Henley Royal Regatta.

TUESDAY 8 APRIL

Railway Subject Postcards

We have previously covered two postcards from the Great Western Trust collection, but today we focus upon their primary designed use, to send personal messages, and we think the example we’ve chosen is just the ticket.

Whilst it is not an official GWR-produced postcard, of which we have substantial numbers in our collection on its locomotives, ships, ambulance trains and even its pictorial posters, to be covered in a future Blog maybe, this is an artificially coloured in picture of a GWR City class 4-4-0 No 3433 (later renumbered 3710) City of Bath with the ‘Flying Dutchman’ express, published by Raphael Tuck, who proudly state that they were then Art Publishers to Their Majesties the King and Queen (Edward VII and Queen Alexandra).

The image alone, coloured or in sepia was then a popular one of this express and that locomotive, as it was the famed GWR express, named after the horse that won the Derby and the St Leger and all but one of its 15 races. It was considered one of the greatest British racehorses of the 19th century. Little wonder then that the GWR named their crack express after him! Although the postcard claims the location to be Slough, that cannot be correct as the lines in that location were quadrupled many years previously. Indeed the 53 miles from Paddington had been quadrupled by that time, so the location must be west of Didcot.

Turning to our target subject today, the actual use of this postcard, we illustrate the reverse side message and address section.

Here we have Auntie Rose writing to her nephew Master Jackie Stiles asking him “How would you like to go in this train for your holiday…”? Posted using a half-penny stamp and franked 3.5PM 17 JA 05 ie 1505 on 17th January 1905 we can but hope that that young lad did get to have such an exciting start to a future holiday! Over the years and generations, countless aunts and uncles gave affectionate indulgence to train loving nephews, many in the form of children’s books and toys. Yet again, ever alert to such influence, the GWR also produced jigsaws, books and games focused on that massive marketplace.

Naturally, even with an unofficial postcard in use, the GWR would have been pleased with the message, as they extolled in their substantial publications and adverts, that they were ‘The National Holiday Line’ so as the saying goes ‘There is no such thing as bad publicity’.

The Flying Dutchman

The ‘Flying Dutchman’ name had been unofficially given to the 9.50 am Paddington to Exeter train from 1849, after a racehorse of the same name which won the Derby and St Leger that year. The racehorse had itself been named after the legendary ghost ship of Wagner's opera, first performed in 1843.

The name fell out of use when schedules were slowed in the 1850s, but was officially revived from 1 March 1862 for the 11.45 am train from Paddington to Exeter, as a response to the London and South Western Railway introducing a train over its own route from London Waterloo to Exeter, which made the journey in 4¾ hours. The GWR’s ‘Flying Dutchman’ was 15 minutes faster.

Over the next five years the timings of the ‘Dutchman’ became slower, although it was extended as a through train to Plymouth in 1865. The name was again withdrawn in November 1867, but the GWR soon realised this was a mistake and reinstated it in 1869, with new clerestory rolling stock.

Between 1871 and 1884 it was claimed to be the fastest train in the world, with a London to Exeter time of 4¼ hours. This included a dash from Paddington to Swindon of 87 minutes for the 77.3 miles, an average of 53.2 mph. On the Bristol & Exeter Railway’s metals the train was sometimes hauled by one of that company’s remarkable 4-2-4 tank locomotives with 9ft diameter driving wheels which were said ‘to run very steadily and smoothly at over 70 mph’. The schedule between Bristol and Taunton was 51 minutes for the 44¾ miles, or 52.5 mph average.

However, there was a serious accident to the up ‘Flying Dutchman’ on 27 July 1876 when one of the tank engines derailed at speed on a falling gradient. This was soon after the GWR had absorbed the Bristol & Exeter company. The 4-2-4 tank engines were withdrawn and rebuilt as 4-2-2 tender engines.

The ‘Flying Dutchman’ train name was again dropped with the end of the broad gauge in May 1892. However, an article in the March 1897 edition of Great Western Railway Magazine showed the names were still in use unofficially:

“The names given to the West of England expresses are of course familiar all over the line. The Cornishman, the Dutchman, the Jubilee and the Zulu are household words to every member of the staff, nor is it likely that these will die out. They are reminiscent of the good old days of the broad gauge. Some time ago, in the course of an interview with a representative of one of the London evening papers, ‘a prominent official at Paddington’ (so the paper put it) stated that ‘these fancy names’ were not recognised in official quarters, and professed not even to know to which trains they are applied. Certainly the names are in daily use among those who have to do with the trains, and we are very much mistaken if many of those even in official circles do not take pleasure in using names by which time and custom have stamped with individuality one of the finest express services in the world.”

On 4 August 1903 the 12 noon departure from Bristol inaugurated the first two-hour service from Bristol to Paddington. The train had started as the 8.30 am from Plymouth to Paddington and divided at Bristol with the two-hour journey to Paddington being hauled by the new City class 4-4-0s. The train ran over the new line via Badminton which gave a journey of 117.6 miles to London, about 0.7 miles less than by the route via Bath.

The name ‘The Flying Dutchman’ appears to have been revived for the train, at least unofficially, as the postcard shows with No 3433 City of Bath at its head. An article in the Great Western Railway Magazine June 1913 edition – Great Western Train Speeds – refers to this train as the ‘Dutchman’.

In August 1904, with six clerestory bogie coaches working the accelerated service, and timed by Charles Rous-Marten at the invitation of the Superintendent of the Line, the loco was No 3435 City of Bristol and the regular Driver Kirby (‘one of the GW's smart and able enginemen’ in the words of Charles Rous-Marten) often covered the 77.3 miles from Swindon to Paddington in 70 minutes or less. With easy running over new settling-in track for the first 40 miles via Badminton, one bad signal check at Challow (caused by a ‘blunder of a subordinate’ said Rous-Marten) when the train had been doing 80 mph, the time from Swindon to Paddington was 67 minutes and 28 seconds. The 53 miles from Didcot to Paddington were completed in 47 minutes and 46 seconds. The whole Bristol to Paddington trip of 117.6 miles was completed five minutes early in 115 minutes exactly.

Although the train name disappeared from official use, we must not forget the Dean single No 3009 named Flying Dutchman which had been built in March 1892 as a 2-2-2, rebuilt as a a 4-2-2 in 1894, and ran until February 1914. Some 40 years later the Britannia class 4-6-2 No 70018 Flying Dutchman ran on the Western Region in the 1950s.

TUESDAY 1 APRIL

A Tale of Endeavour and Achievement

We meet a personality this week. A little known figure from Victorian Britain who deserves greater recognition. Surviving records tell us that he was born in 1851, in the town of Dingle, County Kerry in the far south-west of Ireland. The town is well known amongst railway enthusiasts for the narrow gauge Tralee and Dingle Railway. His name was Sean and being orphaned at a young age, was sent to England to be raised by a distant relative who lived in Paddington. He must have been smitten by the sight of the nearby Great Western Railway for at the age of fourteen he found employment as an engine cleaner at Westbourne Park Loco Shed. He was hard working, diligent and worked his way through the grades, becoming a fireman on Sir Daniel Gooch’s broad gauge single wheelers. He was promoted to driver in 1892 at the time of the abolition of the broad gauge when each locomotive had its own dedicated crew. Seven years later near the end of the Victorian period he was given charge of William Dean’s 4-2-2 locomotive No 3040 Empress of India. In this photograph from the Great Western Trust collection, we see him with his fireman, a man of Italian descent named Rolf Paoli. Both are standing proudly in front of their magnificent steed, looking every inch like men at the top of their profession.

Being an orphan from rural Ireland, Sean’s surname was unknown, so he was for all his working life known by the name of his home town. And so it came to pass, in a wonderful example of a railway spoonerism that Sean Dingle became the driver of a Dean Single.

Such are the fascinating examples of social history held within the Great Western Trust collection.

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