Tuesday Treasures - November 2025

TUESDAY 25 NOVEMBER

A Special Event – No 2

In our April 2024 blog we focused upon on Monday 11 April 1927, now 98 years ago, when the GWR proudly hosted a very special ceremony to open The New Station at Newton Abbot and which was the title of the commemorative booklet they produced to mark that occasion, and which is in the collection of the Great Western Trust.

Today we go back further, to 128 years ago in 1897, and to probably an even more significant event for the GWR. At 12 noon, on Monday 29 November 1897, Her Grace the Duchess of Beaufort no less presided to cut the first sod on the GWR’s ‘South Wales and Bristol Direct Railway’ from Wootton Bassett in the east to Patchway in the west.

We illustrate an unissued invitation to this event, together with the internal GWR notice of the special train to take guests to the event leaving Paddington at 8:50 am, arriving at Yate on the Midland Railway at 11:28 am, returning at about 3pm.

The delight of such train notices for ‘Special Trains’ is that they detail its formation of which Saloon 248 (Built in 1881 as a First Class family Saloon famed for use by Opera Singer Adelina Patti and now gloriously restored on the Bodmin & Wenford Railway) and the Directors’ Saloon of 1894 (See photo page 47 of Harris’s Great Western Coaches 1890-1954) are noteworthy, though it excludes which actual locomotive was deployed, but no doubt it was in sparkling, exhibition standard condition!

Saloon No 248, now preserved on the Bodmin and Wenford Railway with her later number 9044. Photo by David Letcher

Always studying any primary source documents in our collection, we note that in traditional style, such events simply had to be followed by a formal meal, this one commencing at 1pm followed if time allowed, by fulsome speeches by key attendees.

The Railway News report of the sod cutting ceremony which also contains a useful map of the line. Sourced by Mike Peart

That detailed study also shows of course that the GWR could not avoid using the Midland Railway itself to get close enough to Yate for the ceremony. Were Midland Railway invitees there we wonder? There are none listed in the article attached from The Railway News of 4 December 1897.

Temporary bridge for contractor’s use at 24 miles 12 chains over the Midland Railway line near Yate, December 1898. Great Western Trust collection 

We judge that this special event trumped that of the Newton Abbot station rebuild in 1927, some 30 years later, because of the deathly threat by disgruntled industrialists in South Wales to promote their own direct line to London, having too long suffered the existing GWR route via Bristol. The GWR at long last woke up to the risk of losing such traffic and having another imposter in their regional empire, and so this new direct railway really did answer the justified crying need for it.

Bridge at 24 miles 12 chains shewing centres, 12 September 1899. The Midland Railway train is hauled by a 4-2-2 – a type that became obsolete until invention of steam sanding gear enabled the single driving axle to maintain adhesion on wet and greasy rails. Great Western Trust collection

That the Duchess of Beaufort undertook the ceremony reflects the vital role of her husband the Duke, and that is best captured in his legal right, embedded in the Parliamentary Act, to have trains call at the Badminton Station, on this new line, so that he could travel direct to London.

Bridge at 27 miles 67 chains shewing centres on 22 March 1899. Great Western Trust collection

The final closure of all stations on the line including Badminton thus involved BRWR gaining the Duke’s formal agreement to waive his legal rights! It appears in fact that for some time previously, he had been driven to Swindon anyway!!

Bridge at 27 miles 67 chains on 23 June 1899, with contractor’s locomotive. Great Western Trust collection

We have also reproduced photographs from a magnificent album, also in the Great Western Trust collection, showing construction of the line.

View of landscape from shaft No 6 of Chipping Sodbury tunnel looking west on 22 June 1899. Great Western Trust collection

TUESDAY 18 NOVEMBER

On the footplate with Kenneth Leech

It is early afternoon on Monday 19 May 1958 and we are on the footplate of ‘Castle’ class No 7015 Carn Brea Castle. The loco is hauling the 12 noon train from Bristol Temple Meads to Paddington and is approaching the western portal of Box Tunnel at around 65mph. Driver Charles Wasley and Fireman Tony Tyler are the crew and also on board is renowned photographer Kenneth Leech.

Mr Leech was an employee of the Westinghouse Brake & Signal Co. at Chippenham and in that capacity was often able to ride on the footplate of locos, particularly on the Paddington to Bristol main line. The second photo taken on the up platform at Chippenham some ten minutes later shows the loco crew posing for the photographer before continuing their journey to Paddington. These two images are part of a generous donation by Tony Tyler’s son, Julian.

Tony rose to be a senior traction inspector on British Railways (Western Region) and was of great assistance to the Great Western Society at Didcot in the 1970s and 80s. We are very grateful to Julian for his generosity which also includes copious details of his father’s railway career.

TUESDAY 11 NOVEMBER

Railway Air Service – Wartime

With our Tuesday Treasure blog coinciding with 11 November, Remembrance Day, we chose a remarkable WW2 item from our extensive Railway Air Services archive within the Great Western Trust collection. It highlights a wartime provision we believe deserves much wider public knowledge than received to date.

It is remarkable on a number of fronts, first because perhaps few railway enthusiasts let alone the wider public appreciate the fact that first the Great Western Railway, and then GWR & Southern Railway joined forces to create the GW&S Air Service Company before WW2 and perhaps most remarkable of all, it ran services to the Isles of Scilly, with government sanction, during WW2.

The timetable illustrated shows that service, and is one dated for services commencing Monday 6 May 1940.

The primary reference book on all Railway Air Services is that authored and researched by John Stroud, published by Ian Allan in 1987, pages 97 and 98 of which provide the full explanation of the Lands End to Isles of Scilly WW2 services.

Therein lies the heroism of such flights in wartime, given that on 3 June 1941 a flight was lost, with pilot W D Anderson, and five passengers all from the same family. It is reported that the de Havilland DH.84 Dragon II was shot down during a chance encounter with a Heinkel He-111 which was returning after an abortive raid on the carrier HMS ‘Indomitable’ at Barrow-in-Furness. That said, the service was continued!

The importance of its continuance can be drawn from the startling fact that during the war, these planes travelled over 248,000 miles carrying 31,113 passengers and 66.3 tons of parcels, freight and excess baggage! Oh, and lest we forget, flight timings co-ordinated with the overnight GWR train to Penzance, so as to deliver the London daily newspapers more promptly than by boat!

A British European Airways (BEA) Dragon Rapide at St Mary's. The nationalised BEA had taken over Great Western & Southern Air Lines in 1947

To add to the bravery of flight crews, it is noted that under direct operational edict of the wartime authorities, these planes also partook in evacuation of the British Expeditionary Forces from Dunkirk and later from western France.

Hence these brave people truly deserve our honouring on this crucial and emotive Remembrance Day.

TUESDAY 4 NOVEMBER

BRWR Savings on Mid Week Holiday Return Travel

Our blog today highlights the constant pursuit of boosting passenger custom in the otherwise low usage mid-week periods when trains still ran, but with poor financial return. Whilst the GWR were in the forefront of such measures, their BRWR successors had even more pressure upon them to champion such initiatives.

The example illustrated from our Great Western Trust collection comes from 1959, and beyond the savings in price on offer, it is remarkable in two other regards.

First, its tri-fold pamphlet design actually surprisingly gives a vast array of destination stations, not just on the Western Region, but believe it or not, even Aberdeen! Quite how many folk seized that opportunity for such a journey we will probably never know, but we must give credit to the BRWR publicity and operating departments for even offering it.

The other worthy topic it raises is the phrase ‘Second Class only’.

Way back in 1875 no less, the Midland Railway company stole a march on all its rivals, and much to their annoyance, by abolishing Second Class on their passenger trains, providing First and Third Class only. The GWR for example, were not impressed, but even though they shared Bristol Temple Meads station with the Midland Railway, and felt the passenger wrath of not doing likewise, it took them reluctantly to concede defeat in 1910, some 35 years later!

Cast forward to the Nationalised railways era and we find that only on 3 June 1956, (yes 69 years ago!) did BR abolish Third Class, by renaming it Second Class. And finally on 11 May 1987 (yes 38 years ago) was even the Second Class, rebranded ‘Standard Accommodation’.

This move had been trailed in a British Rail InterCity report published in the Daily Telegraph on 1 October 1986. An article on the new MkIV coaches being developed for the electrified East Coast Main Line announced: “The term ‘second class’ may soon disappear. Most British Rail passengers say there is nothing second class about modern express travel, and they are talking about ‘tourist’ or ‘standard’ rather than ‘second’.

So when the change came it was to Standard Accommodation, removing the C word (unless one decided to upgrade to First Class).

Unfortunately the subtlety was lost on most people – including railway staff and managers who should have known better – and the term Standard Class came into general use and remains so to this day.

Of course, the only unchanged discriminant has been First Class for the unchanging body of people (or maybe businesses) that could afford it and deemed it worthwhile. MPs used to have the privilege of First Class travel to and from their constituencies, but this was removed after the 2009 expenses scandal. Having to mix it with the electors in ‘Standard’ might cause the legislature to consider the future of First Class for others.

However, members of the House of Lords can still claim for First Class train travel, which probably ensures the future of upper class train travel for the forseeable future.

In Soviet Russia before the break up of the USSR, the Communist egalitarians skated round the hierarcy of first and second by dividing their trains into Soft Class and Hard Class.

So, yet again, one modest document has much to offer for us to reflect upon!

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