Tuesday Treasures

We are very fortunate indeed here at Didcot Railway Centre with our vast collection of historic locomotives, artefacts and memorabilia that forms our world-famous museum telling the story of the Great Western Railway and its employees. For our volunteers and staff there are objects of great interest everywhere around the centre, each item unique to keeping the greatest railway company on the rails.

Our Tuesday Treasures blog is designed to share this vast and historically important collection so enjoy our deep dive into the rich history in our Museum and Archives.

• Tuesday Treasures Index

Latest Blogs

TUESDAY 24 JUNE

A Royal Coronation - 2

Back in 2022 our Coronation themed blog covered two such events, that of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra in August 1902, and that of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. Today we focus upon that of King George V and Queen Mary on Friday 23 June 1911, almost 114 years ago to the day.

What is interesting about our document illustrated, is that it hasn’t anything to do with GWR train services, directly Royal or indirectly affected by Royal events. Rather, it is surprisingly covering the beneficial location of one of the Great Western Railway’s Offices located in London but not as we might expect, at Paddington.

It is an entrance ticket, made out to a Mrs Lenen for her to enter the second floor of the GWR Office at 26 Charing Cross, to observe the Coronation Procession of the King and entourage. The only important proviso is that she must be in her place by 9 am that morning.

The illustrations of the front and back of this ticket, No 13, of how many we may wonder, helpfully provide a map of the location of the office showing how advantageous would have been the elevated view it provided to those observers.

Quite who Mrs Lenen was, is a current mystery, but we can confidently assume that she, or her husband perhaps, was a person of consequence to the GWR. We also wonder about the significant GWR office staff activities that would have had to organise this viewing opportunity, the paperwork involved, and then its eventual staffing. Would refreshments have been provided too?

Some of those questions are explained by the wonderfully informative GWR Staff Magazines, issued monthly and which have become for our purposes in the Trust, a treasure trove of the widest range of material about the GWR as a commercial company, its staff and the changing social and economic times spanning continuously from 1888 to 1947. On page 166 of the June 1911 edition, we find an article entitled ‘Inquiry Bureau for American Travellers’, accompanied by four small photo illustrations of its interior furnishings. It states that it is under the management of the GWR Agent, Mr J W Haywood, and it has a suite of (we quote) ‘elegantly appointed rooms over the ticket and enquiry office’ below, which were ‘specially fitted up for the reception of American and other visitors to London who may desire information in connection with their travels’. Furthermore, ‘Prospective passengers may here avail themselves of the facilities for resting, conversation, writing and reference to various handbooks, time tables etc…’

With the above explanation, in the rich phrasing prevalent in that era, we can now link this location with the numerous publications, and specially created tours for the American market, that the GWR produced in quantity over many years, and of which we have based many previous Tuesday Treasure blogs in our ‘Enticing the Americans’ series based on examples in the Trust collection. So maybe we can speculate that Mrs Lenen was indeed an American?

Whilst naturally, this ticket was issued under the authority of Sir James C Inglis, this would have been his last year as GWR General Manager, as he died in post in December that year, having been knighted by the new King in February that year. That very fact exposes a necessary instant procedure given that King Edward VII had died in 1910. Literally, the Coronation of King George V was more ceremonial than bureaucratic, as he became King immediately upon Edward’s demise, over a year ahead of the extensive Coronation event and massive concurrent public celebrations. Hence Sir James became a knight before the Coronation.

TUESDAY 17 JUNE

Engineering Conference visit to Swindon Works in June 1907

Our blog this week is based upon a modest pamphlet in our Great Western Trust collection which has far more of wider Great Western Railway relevance than it first appears.

It had a fold-out construct, and was given to delegates to the Institution of Civil Engineer’s (ICE) Conference of June 1907 who were taken by special saloons attached to the 10.50 am departure from Paddington to Swindon Works on 21 June 1907, almost 118 years ago!

We illustrate its cover, then, its ‘Interesting Facts relating to Swindon’ central section and finally its Route March plan through no less than 24 of the specific Works Shops! No doubt the delegates were thankful for recovery on the return journey commencing 5.10pm! No locomotive images are used … you may already wonder why?

Perhaps easy to overlook is the modest small print on the cover ‘James C Inglis MICE General Manager’ under whose overall authority this was arranged and the pamphlet itself produced. That ‘MICE’ is the key, given that in his earlier role as the GWR Chief Civil Engineer from October 1892 to June 1904, his professional membership of the Institution of Civil Engineers was a necessary credential. But when he was elevated in June 1903 to be the GWR’s General Manager as well, he had already ensured the GWR Civils Department was well and truly recast and operating to principles he set in stone in his ‘GWR Engineering Department Instructions’ dated November 1898; covering all 298 pages! (The Trust proudly holds his personal copy).

So why would the ICE Conference delegates deem a conducted tour of Swindon Works worthy of their time? The Conference publications list three specific delegate debates on railway related matters, albeit focused upon material science and current practices, eg the chemistry of steel rails in permanent way. However, we overlook the fact that at that time, the ICE was very much the established ‘senior’ institution, whilst Locomotive Engineering and even Mechanical Engineering institutions were very much its junior. Hence ICE members had far wider professional interests than pure civil engineering ones, and Swindon under Churchward was then creating quite a stir with his revolutionary developments.

The iron foundry in 1907

We have yet to discover what Churchward provided as a demonstration for this august body, but surely his Saint and North Star locomotives, alongside those imported Frenchmen must have been centre stage? We can only speculate that his 4-6-2 The Great Bear completed a year later in June 1908, which was on the drawing board, and remained the only UK Pacific for 14 years, might have at least been hinted about? Oh for a Time Machine ..!

Having now mentioned both Inglis and Churchward, it needs to be said that both being ‘strong personalities’, friction was evident, and despite his paper to the GWR Board of Directors making a rational case for the General Manager to be responsible for ALL departments including Locos and Carriages, Churchward successfully resisted this, as by long tradition, he reported directly to a sub-committee of the Board and wasn’t going to give that relative independence up lightly!

Men working in G shop, early 20th century

Beyond such matters, it is clear that Inglis was held in the very highest regard by his peers in the ICE. A fact demonstrated by his appointment as its President for two consecutive years from November 1908 to November 1910. This was a rare honour at that time. By happenstance, in that role, he then had the unique privilege to lay the foundation stone of its new Headquarters Building in London in 1910. That building alone is a virtual temple to the Civil Engineering greats including Telford, Stephenson and of course Brunel! King George V knighted him in February 1911, sadly the same year in which Inglis died in December, exhausted by his GM duties during the system wide railway strike of August that year.

The steam-powered traverser in B1 shop, from a photo published in the Great Western Railway Magazine in 1911. This had formerly been the erecting shop for broad gauge locomotives

The final significant accolade to Inglis, is the on the record statement by his later successor as GM, one Sir Felix Pole, who judged that Inglis had been the finest GM the GWR had had to date!

A very modest pamphlet which has very much more to offer than at first glance!

TUESDAY 10 JUNE

Enticing the Americans – Part 7

We last covered this very broad topic earlier this year, and today it’s another brochure we highlight from our rich seam of material on this subject within our Great Western Trust collection.

The brochure whose cover we illustrate was published for the ‘1914 Season’, that phrase being well used by the GWR Publicity and Publications Department to reflect the broader pleasure and holiday travel period each year, Being otherwise unspecified, it meant pretty much the whole year, but bookmarked in fact by the specific services each individual publication detailed.

The cover wording immediately points to Americans, as the use of ‘automobile’ was of their invention and still in vogue today. Maybe using the GWR’s term ‘road motor’ would have been totally confusing to overseas visitors. Then the internal title page makes this assertion without doubt, by boldly stating ‘Attractive Tours in England Specially Selected for American Visitors’.

We also illustrate the internal pages showing that this modest booklet extended to 20 pages covering no less than 11 area or location specific tours. This alone underlines the extent of the staff resource commitment to researching and then creating each and every tour, plus the background work of all relevant GWR departments to set up the arrangements to operate and run all of them, subject to actual demand.

A number of the itineraries are aimed at depositing their customers in Liverpool which was still the home port for Cunard at the time. Therefore many American tourists would embark on transatlantic liners there for their journeys home. Cunard relocated its British home port to Southampton in 1919.

Such booklets, also provide to our eyes, a chance to see the private establishment adverts included at the rear. These include of course, high rank hotels, not least The Randolph in Oxford which boasts Electric Light throughout, and New Garage and Stables (to cater for all transport tastes?) and the Imperial Hotel in London having the ‘Finest Turkish Baths in World’!! The GWR naturally didn’t miss an opportunity to advertise its series of publications ‘The Holiday Books of the Holiday Line’ and of course its very own Hotels.

Perhaps the most impressive inclusion is a coloured folded map of the UK which strikingly under ‘Lines with Through Connections’, shows lines all over Ireland, and even to the northern tip of Scotland!!

We leave the hardest aspect to last. Each detailed tour, was available broadly from 30 May to 30 September. Clearly what was to become the Great War was declared on 4 August 1914, which begs the question as to what was the impact upon tours already booked and paid for in the affected months?

Such booklets from times past offer so many areas of social and commercial interest and raise questions that stimulate our desire to know more.

TUESDAY 3 JUNE

Safe Working Practices

As the Great Western Trust’s contribution to this year’s Railway 200 anniversary celebrations, we are devoting a large display in the Museum to the very wide ranging subject of Railway Safety, or rather, how the GWR and BRWR made great efforts to minimise accidents on their systems.

Our display covers both public and railway staff initiatives of both technical and procedural kinds. But our Blog today begins to cover this massive topic with the BR approach to its own staff operations in the form of four booklets, each entitled ‘The facts of Life!’ but then separately addressing four particular aspects, namely:-

Sense and Safety in Traffic; ….in Handling; ….in the Workshop; ….and in Shipping.

Published in sequence from June 1969 to April 1970 the covers deliberately and cleverly catch the attention by employing very amusing but relevant sketches of bad practices!

Each booklet was pocket size with no less than 32 pages of frank but effective text and sketches, and typical of their times, the central character, always doing something that ends in his (yes his) injury, was slightingly warned ‘don’t be a Charlie’. In those times, being a Charlie was the norm for giving any male individual, who did something silly or thoughtless, as ‘a Charlie. Perhaps a less pointed option than the unstated version ‘don’t be a fool’?

We illustrate the four booklet covers as examples of how important staff operating safety was, and indeed still is to this day. That on the railways these days, anyone working on the tracks, wears both high visibility dayglow orange gear and helmets, is a far cry from the GWR and early BR era, even during the wartime black-outs, when no such protective gear was used!

We can never gauge how effective these booklets were in changing staff working practices, as it is a truth of human nature, that familiarity breeds contempt, and until an accident struck an individual caused by such attitude, the message was only then brought home … but clearly rather too late!

We will return to this very broad subject in future blogs because regrettably, the accident records the Trust Archive holds, prove that the frequency, severity and human cost of accidents to staff and the public, remained damagingly significant and unacceptable, despite every effort by the GWR and BR to reduce them.

TUESDAY 27 MAY

Corporate Image on the Railways – 2

On 4 April 2023 our Tuesday Treasure blog covered the new BR Staff Uniforms introduced in April 1966 with information drawn from a staff booklet ‘Your New Uniform’ in the Great Western Trust Museum & Archive collection. Today we go back a few years earlier to 1964, when the staff received a striking folded pamphlet with the ‘Double Arrow symbol (white on red background) on its cover and no other wording!

Perhaps that striking emblem spoke for itself as a jolt to staff that things were about to change, and radically. Whilst that pamphlet covered many more areas of change, we chose to illustrate just three, sections, that introduce four topics that have had the most lasting duration and impact.

Illustration No1 has to be that double arrow symbol, not least because its dominant size had deliberate visual impact. It became the new British Railways corporate image, so familiar to us today on all our national railway stations, even after train service privatisation, and is surprisingly over 61 years old. It has certainly proved its worth in surviving all those years and appears to be here for a long while yet.

Illustration No 2 covers two topics. First, rather clever use of varied colours on the letters, brings about the migration from ‘British Railways’ to ‘British Rail. Like the double arrows, this is still in use today, and with our current era smitten by abbreviations, one might argue that it was a trend setter.

That Illustration also introduces the XP64 experimental train carriage stock which led to the migration away from BR Mark 1 stock to Mark 2 and then Mark 3 air conditioned stock. An unexpected and unplanned beneficiary of that evolution has been the heritage railway lines that now rely upon extensive fleets of once-redundant Mark 1 stock.

Illustration No 3 is perhaps the one that had the widest impact, as it affected every single station on the network, public issued documents, and even official headed letters.

First we need to go back much further to April 1948, when after 3 months of Nationalisation, where public notices and handbills had a very functional banner heading of ‘[British Railways (Western Region)] or other Region identity, using those words bounded by simple squared brackets, the ‘totem’ as we today describe it, first appeared. In a very comprehensive internal document of April 1948 was published this new image signage for all stations based largely upon the totem, adopting regional colours.

The text may be small, but under Note 1 we have the perfect example of new era thinking and the consequent dismissive attitudes to old or indeed then, current designs! The ‘totem’ is to be replaced by, we quote:-

“A new, more purposeful symbol. This replaces the obsolete ‘double sausage’ introduced nearly twenty years ago.”

So there it is. For those of us, and there are many, who admire and maybe even own our local station’s totem, we must reclassify it as a ‘double sausage’!! Such are the ways in which new ages claim new ideas, and justify them by trashing the current as ‘obsolete’.

Just as the April 1948 new age nationalised railways’ corporate Image signage rendered obsolete all the Big Four company signage, at significant financial cost to the taxpayer, so of course did the sweeping rebranding of 1964. We can only wonder what the 1964 advocates of change would now think of the auction prices reached for ‘double sausage’ station signs and the many expansive collections of them in museums like the Great Western Trust. We illustrate a Southall totem now in our collection.

The functional but bland 1964 station signage has far less appeal to collectors, and certainly consequently, relatively small financial value in the collector’s market.

In a future blog, based upon the Trust collection, we will return to this broad theme of corporate image, in the era of the original GWR and its contemporary railway companies.

TUESDAY 13 MAY

Railway & Bus Service Integration

The Great Western Trust collection has many examples of the Great Western Railway’s investment into, and very strong belief in, the benefits to the public and industry of integrated – that is organised and timed co-ordination of passenger and freight interchange between Rail and Road and back again.

A busy scene at Brecon station on 14 December 1949

The most striking example of this was the fact that the GWR introduced bus services (they called them road motors) in Cornwall and other counties, rather than extend expensive railway lines to other towns and villages. They were the owners and operators of more buses than even those in London!

Brecon station on 17 September 1962, photograph by P M Gates

Fast forward to 1 January 1948 and railway Nationalisation, and the Labour government’s primary objective was to even extend that ‘integration of transport services’ to embrace canals! Well sadly we all know that things never quite worked out as they had hoped for, and today’s blog shines a light on perhaps the extreme irony of matters when previously well served towns lost all direct railway services before and during the massive reduction of the railway network under Beeching and Marples.

Brecon station on 17 September 1962, showing the attractive design of ironwork supporting the platform canopy. Photograph by P M Gates

Our illustrated front and back covers of a BR Western Region booklet produced in June 1963 exposes the sad end point to the high objective of integrated services, with a title including “Road – Rail” (the very reverse of the original criteria), when railways had been the original hub and not at the end of the spokes! Here we have Brecon, once the vital hub of this district’s rail services, having to offer the public a 24-page booklet detailing how they can use local buses of many independent companies, to access the nearest railway stations, namely Newport, Hereford, Newtown, Swansea, Carmarthen, Neath, Merthyr and Abergavenny.

Brecon station decorated for the visit of the Queen in August 1955

The above publication arose from the cessation of passenger services at Brecon from 31 December 1962 – before the publication of the Beeching report – and worse was inevitably to come with loss of goods and parcels services from 4 May 1964. Quite how long those ‘connecting’ bus services to stations lasted in actual fact is another question to ask.

The Queen arriving at Brecon station in August 1955

Today, Brecon is a vibrant hub of tourist traffic, all benefiting of course from the massive public investment in new or improved roads.

We cannot turn the clock back, but documents like the one we illustrate today, record for posterity quite how far and unexpected, once laudable high objectives, can come crashing down, when overwhelmed by changed circumstances and of course, Government policy.

• Tuesday Treasures Index