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.

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TUESDAY 11 AUGUST

GWR Staff Social & Recreational Events – No 7

Our Great Western Trust collection is blessed with an amazing array over a long time-span of formal staff outings. From the very earliest examples we hold, most based upon Swindon Works or at least the Locomotive and Carriage Department be it at Swindon or Paddington HQ, it is likely that they began as an annual event in the 1890s. A recent posting taken from the GWR staff journals prompted an informative response from a viewer that he had been on probably a very late version to Minehead, by train of course in c1970!

The delight in holding our examples is their variety of staff departmental groupings, the varied locations and indeed timings, many returning home after midnight, and like that of this blog, the programme design itself.

We illustrate a modest four-sided card programme, for the GWR Carriage Finishers’ Annual Outing to Oxford and Trip on the Thames to Reading (by Salter’s Steamers of course) on 19 August 1905.

Not only is the programme, 3 inches by 4.5 inches made from quality very pale green card, but the design is predominantly in gold! The printer is Maybury & Sons of Regent Circus, Swindon, who went to some lengths on the graphic design and guillotined with deckled edge that we can admire some 121 years later! Given this, we feel justified in illustrating its entire contents!

The outing itself is a feat of endurance, leaving Swindon at 6.30 am and not returning home until 11.15 pm. There is also the brisk walk from Oxford railway station at 8.36 am to reach Folly Bridge by 9 am. Lunch in Wallingford was a leisurely two-and-a-half-hour affair with an abundance of meats, but just two hours after casting off from that town the steam launch arrived in Pangbourne where a ‘meat tea’ awaited!

Sadly, we cannot find any direct reference to this event in the GWR staff journals, which is hardly surprising given that so many similar events were being run by other sections of Swindon Works. However, we have found that the ‘Carriage Finisher’ rank was longstanding, and the GWR staff journals of October 1935 record the Isaac Williams’ family of Swindon employees attaining over 300 years of service of which one was a Carriage Finisher of 30 years’ standing. In fact not just Swindon had this trade, as Worcester reported such a person in their records for 1937. Given the detailed programme cover design, and its gold embellishment, we believe that that rank was a very highly skilled occupation, as gold leafing First Class, Director’s Saloons and Royal Carriages, demanded the highest of standards.

All this from such a small and thankfully perfect condition memento of a ‘Grand Day Out’ long ago!

This photograph of the Swindon Carriage Works Finishing Shop was published in the Great Western Railway Magazine, July 1924 edition

TUESDAY 4 AUGUST

Delivering the Goods – 11

We are further exploring the GWR and BRWR provisions for this vital traffic and look back to a late 1947 event, but one recorded and published in the very first edition of the BR Western Region staff journal in January 1948, the first month of railway nationalisation.

From the Great Western Trust archive of the GWR and BRWR Staff Journals, we highlight a very small article which demonstrates that as a ‘Common Carrier’ BRWR inherited the legal obligation to carry any goods traffic it was offered, however unusual. This example shows the then last-gasp work of a local station’s GWR staff to transport by rail, and then transfer to its own road haulage, a remarkably long at 83 feet, giant crane section. In fact this was just one of six such members!

Despite the unique challenges that any similar traffic load imposed, perhaps surprisingly the GWR had actively sought to carry such special traffic during its long existence, and regularly published ‘Exceptional Loads’ booklets dedicated to the facilities and multiple bespoke freight wagons they had built in order to accommodate anything that was offered.

Cover of the 1933 Exceptional Loads brochure using a Trojan Horse illustration 

Cover of the 1936 Exceptional Loads brochure

It is yet another example of a traffic service that is now long past into history. However, it is a fair point to make that such very difficult loads would have proven an even bigger challenge on a long road journey back then, in an age well before motorways!

The magazine’s report describes how the consignment was handled, including using a winch to transfer the load from rail to road vehicle:

‘A formidable task was recently undertaken by Great Western staff and cartage equipment when a consignment of six crane members was delivered to a Government factory in the Didcot area. Four of the girders were 79 feet in length and the other two 83 feet, while their weights varied between seven to nine tons each. Cartage equipment consisted of one of the latest type winch-fitted Foden tractors and two trailers fitted with swivel bolsters, each of the latter being capable of hand steering.

‘Didcot station was first considered to be the most suitable railhead, but the length of the loads was found to be too great to negotiate the sharp curve just after leaving the goods station. Second choice fell on Steventon station, though the loads had to be backed about 150 yards at that place. The normal length of each composite load (approximately 100 feet) necessitated a careful reconnaisance of the road route, and transit over the highway was eventually accomplished under police escort.’

The report refers to a ‘government factory’ in the Didcot area. At the time the atomic energy research establishment at Harwell, about four miles from Didcot, was being developed in conditions of some secrecy. We might therefore surmise that this consignment was destined for Harwell, a former RAF airfield taken over for nuclear research in October 1945, and where the aircraft hangars housed the first nuclear reactors. At this time, winter 1947-8, the roof of one of the hangars was being raised to accommodate the BEPO reactor – a possible clue as to the use of the ‘crane members’ which arrived by GWR.

The secrecy surrounding what was going on at Harwell aroused some resentment among the local population, particularly as it was common knowledge that it involved radioactive material.

A Giles cartoon published in the Daily Express, 31 October 1945

TUESDAY 28 JULY

A Staff Retirement Photo

Naturally, on the GWR and BRWR many of the station’s staff had served for many years, quite a number having done so at just a few probably rural branch line stations, for the whole of their working life.
Our blog today from the Great Western Trust collection is a modest printed monochrome photo of a frequent scene in the 1950s, taken by a member of staff no doubt, to record not one, but two individuals’ retirements at Goring & Streatley station c1950.

We chose it for its individuality and its unexpected humour!

Pencilled on its back, we extract the details as recorded, albeit incomplete. It appears it’s the dual retirement of the Station Master (regrettably unnamed) and the Signalman named as Bill Rippington. The ladies were from the booking office staff, with porters and shunters stood on the left hand side and the permanent way men on the right hand side.

Despite searching our archive of BRWR staff journals of the period, we haven’t yet found a reference to this event or any of the persons mentioned, but believe that as a copy print image, many of those persons in the image, had their own copies too.

Our comment on ‘its humour’ stems from the man peeking from behind the side of the cast iron post of the station running in board on the right hand side. Probably another permanent way man, who chose this spot for himself alone!

This photograph by Mike Peart shows No 5001 ‘Llandovery Castle’ on a down stopping train at Goring & Streatley station in the early 1960s

The cast of characters really deserves full listing, but our scribe’s notes on the back only added that he, Leo Glover a signalman himself, standing on the far right hand side, donated it!

TUESDAY 21 JULY

The Permanent Way – Trackside Fires

With our current continued excessive heatwave and lack of rainfall causing landscape wildfires, we thought it relevant to look back to much earlier times and the expected work of the GWR trackside, or as they were entitled Permanent Way (P Way for short) men, on this subject and the coincidental effect of Wartime staff reductions. From the Great Western Trust collection, we illustrate a very modest piece of internal GWR correspondence of 15 July 1918 from a Divisional Engineer’s Office member to his ultimate boss, W W Grierson, then GWR Chief Civil Engineer, about fires on the railway embankment at Brentham Halt situated near Ealing between Perivale Halt and Park Royal.

It should be noted that in ordinary periods, that is, outside wartime, a standard duty of each P Way ganger (ie head of a gang for a specifically measured length of track) was to ensure timely cutting back of any grass etc on the embankments in his domain, and even if possible, have that gathered for GWR sale locally as fodder! All this to minimise, though not prevent lineside fires from passing steam locomotives.

Despite locomotive spark arrestors etc, the GWR received numerous, and often expensive financial claims from landowners, mostly farmers, for burnt crops and structural damage. Hence not only had such claims when received, to be investigated (dare we admit that some farmers were known to start fires and claim falsely?), the GWR could not just rely upon the P Way men alone to reduce risk.

Brentham Halt from the air, at the bottom of the photograph, from an image on the Brentham Garden Suburb website: https://brentham.com/archive/brentham-halt-station/

Hence, as this letter illustrates, in particular locations with a high fire risk, watchmen had to be deployed, at cost, to give prompt warning and take action upon the discovery of a fire.

That the wartime servicemen shortages were clearly having an added unwelcome effect on top of such financial risks from fires, simply shows the extent of the problems faced by the company and its officers. In fact, that the letter is in response to the chief’s earlier one on this matter, proves that point, lineside fires had importance way beyond the immediate local damage and loss.

Just to conclude this discussion, the wartime dating is further emphasised as this ‘internal correspondence’ was typed on the blank rear of an unused GWR form which had been printed amongst a batch of 2,000 in September 1915!!

Waste not, want not is nothing new!

TUESDAY 14 JULY

The Great Western Royal Hotel - Paddington

Today’s blog from the Great Western Trust collection, centres upon the creature comforts beyond that of first class railway carriages in the form of the primary Hotel on the GWR system.

The Great Western Railway from its inception was wholly dependent upon private finance, being of course authorised by parliamentary act, but specifically given no public money to fulfil its then defined legal obligations. That money could only come from the section of the population with funds to invest and a lifestyle to allow this; in short the moneyed classes.

Brunel certainly understood this all too clearly from his and Charles Saunders’ (GWR Secretary) exhausting efforts to gain the necessary number of paying shareholders, and realised that that section of society had high demand expectations of the comfort and conditions of travel they were then experiencing by stage or private horse drawn coaches. A grand hotel was pretty much a must-provide facility, and hence the Great Western Royal Hotel at Paddington station was built.

Our focus and illustrations are of a quite modest publication that however speaks loudly of high social status and consequent expectations, in 1924 – mid way through the ‘roaring twenties’, that decade of optimism sandwiched between the First World War and the Great Depression of the 1930s. Events during the week of Monday 21 July to Sunday 27 July.

Perhaps its cover says it all as it were, where we quote ‘the Management take pleasure for presenting for your personal use and retention this copy of the current week’s issue of the London Weekly Diary of Social Events’.

We illustrate the cover and the title page and can extract examples of the ‘social events’ such hotel guests would naturally expect.

We have theatres, picture theatres (cinemas!), concert halls, art galleries, museums, sport events, lectures, libraries, places of interest and of course the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley.

In case we judge that all the above could be attended by the working classes, the accompanying adverts are rather out of their orbit, as they include Cartier for gems and pearls, Bond Street tailoring of Rimell & Allsop; Austin Car Hire Services of Mayfair, Gill & Reigate the house for fine furnishing; and then a host of shipping lines to far off continents! Oh and of course, a very useful listing of all foreign embassies in the capital.

Maybe, as the saying goes ‘The more it changes, the more it stays the same’ the now privately owned and operated hotel at Paddington, having been sold off by BR, is very much one that remains facilitated for those who can afford it. Being grateful for small mercies, we who can only look on enviously, can at least be grateful that this wonderful building still exists, survived the Second World War and continues to fulfil its original function.

TUESDAY 7 JULY

Railway Subject Cigarette Cards

We have previously covered railway subject postcards from the Great Western Trust collection, but today we turn to cigarette cards.

Yes, smoking cigarettes is not a recommended activity these days given its established health risks, but as we are a museum, we record history as it was, and cannot change it. So today we illustrate a few GWR-specific images from a set of 48 British Railways scenes and activities, produced with packets of Senior Service cigarettes.

Blog readers of a certain age may recall, and perhaps still have, the booklets filled with the multitude of subject cards by the Brooke Bond Tea Co, but these railway specific subject cards may be a surprise, having been produced by a completely different supplier..

From their short but informative descriptive text with each card, it’s clear the GWR provided some of the images, and the texts alone are certainly not without interest in their own right.

The four we have chosen are themselves, diverse topics, and two are surprisingly on subjects barely known to the then general public, let alone smokers!

First and perhaps predictably, with due acknowledgement to the GWR, we have surely a famous poster image of the Torbay Express on the coast line at Dawlish hauled by a King Class loco, with the text adding that it has become one of the most popular, all year round trains for over 25 years! As the Torbay Express train name was first used in 1923 this dates the cigarette cards as no earlier than 1948.

The second moves us to the very busy GWR Paddington Goods Depot interior, again acknowledging a GWR official photo and extolling the facilities that that building provided for goods traffic.

The third and fourth examples however, are on subjects not touched upon as far as we can ascertain, in any other GWR publications.

The third is the posed image of the Fire Lighter. Taken inside Old Oak Common shed, next to Castle class No 5006 Tregenna Castle we view this chap with a fully loaded special cart and his shovel laden with cut up wood and oily rags etc. In fact the GWR staff journal recorded that the GWR was unique in using a nested structure of wood off cuts to start firebox fires. Other companies used nearby furnaces to deliver hot coals direct to the firebox! Sadly the three-wheeled special purpose cart hasn’t survived, it seems.

Finally card four is even more a surprise detailed subject on the Signal Stores Train which the text explains ran every Monday from Reading to Didcot carrying accumulators (ie lead acid batteries in those days) and signal stores. Down the line, at signal boxes etc, the batteries were exchanged at track circuit and automatic train control equipment locations. Those batteries removed, were returned to the GWR Reading-based signalling works for recharging amongst thousands each year.

So, a rather unexpected source provides us with at least two specific insights into GWR operations that are otherwise lost in the mists of time. Of the 48 card series, only six appear to have been GWR focused, but nevertheless, we are grateful they were!

TUESDAY 23 JUNE

Not specifically a railway item this week but we feature a livestock sale poster from 123 years ago. Opened on 2 September 1850 with the GWR’s Oxford to Banbury line, Heyford Station was the site of a monthly agricultural auction on Monday 7 April 1873. Measuring 17” x 14” the poster gives a fascinating insight into Victorian rural life and the agricultural industry.

There is a wealth of information to be seen here at a period in time when the railways were changing the face of the UK and indeed, the world.

Fat sheep and cows were those that were ready for market whereas store pigs were sold on to be further fattened. Porkets were simply young pigs.

Jonas Paxton, the auctioneer, was born in Bedfordshire and was prominent in the Oxfordshire Agricultural Association and the Bicester Agricultural and Horticultural Society. He dealt in the disposal of land, property, live stock and sometimes the entire personal possessions of the deceased. He also put great effort into promoting the railway from Oxford to Bletchley, now open as far as Bicester and shortly to be reopened to Milton Keynes as part of the Varsity line (eventually) to Cambridge.

A view of the platform frontage of the Heyford station building currently being reconstructed at Didcot. It appears to date from the early years of the 20th century. The photograph is also on the Heyford project website

The 1873 GWR timetable is in the Great Western Trust collection and it tells us that the 12.19 arrival, which heralded the start of the sale, had left Paddington at 8.0am, dawdled its way to Oxford, arriving at 11.05am and departing 45 minutes later. After leaving Heyford it made its way north, destination Birkenhead due at 7.50pm, just shy of twelve hours after leaving the capital.

The station building from the down platform at Heyford was carefully dismantled by Great Western Society volunteers in 1985 and is currently being meticulously reconstructed at Didcot Railway Centre.

For the latest information go to http://gwsheyford.org.uk/index.html

This postcard of Heyford station is from the collection of the late David Castle. The building which is now at Didcot is the one of the left, beyond the signal box

The Tuesday Treasure is taking a holiday next week and will return in July.

TUESDAY 16 JUNE

Man’s Best Friend

Certainly we Brits have a passion and fondness beyond description for pets, and high up in that animal fraternity must be dogs! Today’s blog from the Great Western Trust collection is but a single example of the GWR recognising that affection but doing so in a clever scheme to raise even modest further income from passengers!

We illustrate all sides of a very modest, pocket size, folded leaflet that is packed with information. But of course the vital cover sketch is of a Scottie dog looking rather upset under that emotive title ‘Don’t leave me with strangers’ Hardly an image that doesn’t catch the attention.

Although undated, it can only be sometime between 1929 and 1947 under the General Manager, James (later Sir James) Milne.

So the GWR used this advert to detail both cheaper rail travel for dogs and even weekly season tickets for them! Not so generous, however, to let slip a dog owner using one ticket for multiple animals. Yes each dog had to have a ticket of course! Surprisingly rules are more relaxed nowadays, with up to two dogs travelling free of charge per passenger.

Dogs were certainly popular for other reasons, such as the celebrated ‘Station Jim’ dog at Slough which was most successfully employed to gain coinage donations to the GWR Widow and Orphans Fund charity from waiting passengers, even including Queen Victoria! On his death he was taxidermied and placed in a special display case, where yet further donations could be given! He has been splendidly conserved and is on display there on platform five.

This Lucky Dogs poster in the Great Western Trust collection dates from the mid 1920s

TUESDAY 9 JUNE

Children’s Education through Railway Publications No 7

In six previous blogs on this subject we have focused upon how the Great Western Railway produced children’s books and games that provided their image and gave varying degrees of educational content, and then added the contribution of the Daily Mail national newspaper.

Today we are stretching the title rather, but feel that a rather hidden aspect of the Great Western Trust collection deserves publicising, that of children’s railway books.

The railway era fundamentally impacted society, commerce and of course transport, and children’s books are an often-overlooked subject within the ‘impacted society’ topic. The Trust collection, especially of contemporary unofficially published books (3,500 and growing) deliberately embraces the GWR and BRWR alongside its fellow railway community. Only this perspective, we believe, can give balance to assessing the GWR’s achievements and activities. Children’s books outside GWR official ones, are part of that wider perspective and they are on occasion a joy to study!

So today we illustrate one of the nearly 700 books we hold of this genre, including of course a complete set of First Editions of the Thomas the Tank Engine series!

Today it’s the Railway Train Book published by Ernest Nister in London & E P Dutton & Co of New York, and printed in Bulgaria. Ernest Nister (1841-1906) was German, based in Nuremburg, but had an office in London. Edward Payson Dutton was his American publisher.

The book is sadly undated, a common publisher’s way of avoiding unsold books on the shelf showing they are out of date! The images point to c1900-1914. With stiff card covers, it’s clearly aimed at the younger child to have sufficient robustness for harsh handling. It also has the briefest of image captions, no doubt for doting grandparents et al to use!!

We have chosen it for its artistry and the limited but nevertheless delightful unnamed artist’s paintings of GWR locos and trains, of which we illustrate the cover. This is surely an attempt to portray a Bulldog class loco with clerestory-roofed carriages, admired by nearby cattle, who would surely in reality be running away, frightened by the movement, noise and steam. Also a reasonable side elevation of Dean 4-2-2 No 3046 Lord of the Isles, surely based upon contemporary photos, given its accuracy?

The rest of this book is devoted to a few other English railways, namely the South Eastern & Chatham, the London Brighton & South Coast and the London & North Western. The remainder are of European, South African and American railway subjects. Perhaps a strange mixture, but each painting presents action or an impressive station scene, all to capture the child’s attention and imagination. Of course, we acquired it because of the GWR being on the cover!

Yes that cover image is rather spoilt in our eyes by the most unrepresentative semaphore signals, but again we hardly think the child who had this book ever viewed it in such a critical way!

TUESDAY 2 JUNE

Holidays by Train – Part 16

We have previously covered many GWR and BRWR examples of their publications using the many items of this kind in the Great Western Trust collection.

With summer imminent we thought it worthwhile this time to illustrate an early GWR pamphlet in which in true GWR style the claims for the Devon and Cornwall climate and attractions are bold and maybe to some communities elsewhere in Britain or even in Europe, questionable!

We illustrate both the fully opened sides of this delightful publication, which was formed from one sheet folded into three for ease of pocketing for future study by potential customers.

The artist’s sketch scene, already catches the eye, particularly that pipe smoking gent leaning on the fence, probably having binoculars hanging from his neck, taking in the seascape and costal view, most certainly based upon St Ives, with the GWR terminus station on the left hand side. The bathing huts might point to a late Victorian or early Edwardian era and although it is undated, the identification of Frank Potter as General Manager and Charles Aldington as Superintendent of the Line respectively at least gives us a period window spanning January 1912 to July 1919. Hence it is early George V and most likely is pre WW1.

St Ives station photographed by P M Gates almost exactly 90 years ago, on 27 May 1936. 2-6-2T No 4503 has just arrived and there are some great characters on the platform

For a small publication, in true GWR fashion, it packs in quite a lot. So we have the Tourist Ticket prices from a very wide range of GWR stations including Chester, but the real joy is the expansive text under ‘A Holiday Round in Devon and Cornwall’ where we are given to understand that there ‘is probably no English District which presents such an extraordinary diversity of attractions …’

And even the claim ‘... In the matter of climate, it must be remembered England possesses in the peninsula of Devon and Cornwall a Riviera which is outrivalling the more well known foreign resorts’!

Never ones to miss a publication sale opportunity, we have helpfully adverts for the GWR’s very own Booklets at three old pence and one penny respectively.

With that combination of attractions in a Riviera climate, why go abroad?

A more distant view of St Ives station, again by P M Gates, on 27 May 1936

TUESDAY 26 MAY

Special Sailor Trains

Our blog this week from the Great Western Trust collection records the staff notice regarding very particular running arrangements for two sailor trains from Plymouth to Keyham and Dalmuir via Bristol, the Midland and Caledonian Railways on 91 and 20 May 1905, some 121 years ago.

The delight of it is in the detail which is covered in the single page we illustrate.

Not only must these trains be very carefully moved to Keyham Junction and the Naval Barracks platform for loading, but to do so a very complex scheme of double heading, then detaching the locos to run around, and then to push the trains into the naval platform, followed after loading, by a push to the main line itself, for yet another loco or locos to be attached for its actual onward journey!

Oh to have been a trainspotter to observe that amazing activity, no doubt demanding acute co-ordination of all train staff and affected signalmen.

Beyond that detail, the railway transport of naval personnel, and of course all military personnel, was a crucially importance service all railway companies provided, not only during wartime. For the GWR, Plymouth (Dockyard) and to a lesser extent Kingswear (for the Dartmouth Naval College) were long established customers. At Didcot we are proud to have the once Broad Gauge wagon turntable from the dockyard, demonstrating how important its traffic was to the GWR.

The notice was issued under the authority of G Grant the Superintendent of the Plymouth Division. He was very highly respected and upon his retirement in April 1911 after 47 years of service in increasingly senior operating posts and as Plymouth Division Superintendent since 1903, his valedictory article in the Great Western Railway Magazine of June 1911 (page 171) explained that earlier in his career in 1890 he had committed his own funds to try to create a Widows’ Fund for the salaried staff.

Such men who rose to these important ranks on the GWR were there because of their ability, attitude and vast experience gained by sequenced transfers to key operating locations. It is perhaps telling that the Trust collection also holds a personal letter to him from C Kislingbury long term Superintendent at Bristol (see the Notice for his inclusion) lamenting his retirement and confirming their long established personal friendship besides. Such were the strong bonds on railway operational matters and inter-person respect that in combination helped the GWR to work so effectively as a transport company.

Visits to Devonport Dockyard advertised in an Edwardian-era poster, from the Great Western Trust collection

TUESDAY 19 MAY

Christmas Poultry

Shropshire has long been a centre of poultry and egg production and the densely populated areas of Birmingham and the Black Country would have relied on the county as a source of food to feed the growing masses.

In late Victorian times though, the goose would have been the Christmas bird of choice for most households, a situation that continued well into the 20th century when intensive turkey production made them affordable.

Handbills by their very nature are ephemeral and the vast majority of those produced do not last. For one to survive from 1897, Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee year, is rare indeed. A recent donation of paperwork recovered from Hereford Station in the 1960s included four identical handbills, all of them in a parlous state, which we have attempted to meld into one rather fractured image here.

Thomas Griffiths collection, Great Western Trust

The poultry markets of the four towns mentioned here must have been working flat out to supply vast amounts of meat and other perishable foods to the country’s second city. One of the railway’s great contributions to humanity was to bring fresh food into large conurbations. Diet improved, and the Great Western Trust collection has many such items to illustrate the effect of the railways on the health and longevity of the population.

Leominster station, with its magnificent signal box is shown here in two photographs from the 1960s.

Great Western Trust collection

TUESDAY 12 MAY

Holidays by Train – Part 15

On this very rich subject, we have previously covered many GWR and BRWR examples of their publications using the many items of this kind in the Great Western Trust collection.

We thought it worthwhile this time to illustrate a BRWR version which has undertones not immediately obvious.

We illustrate the cover painting of the Red Lion at Clovelly in North Devon, by the artist George Dickenson and within the brochure is a delightful pen & ink sketch of an animated beach scene! Now, although North Devon was really Southern Region, the territory had recently been taken over by the management at Paddington who promptly began to close large sections of the Southern’s ‘Withered Arm’ – an action which caused deep resentment among railwaymen in the area.

We are confident in our claim of its BRWR creation, despite it having only the ‘British Railways’ Totem logo, given that even in the separate and expansive texts to support its photographs and pen and ink sketches, their sections draw upon GWR publicity titles, namely ‘Smiling Somerset’; “Glorious Devon’; ‘Sunny Cornwall’ and ‘Western Hills & Moorlands’, and that it includes under the title ‘Main Trains to the West’, three expresses, all from Paddington:- the Cornish Riviera Express, the Torbay Express and even the Bristolian!

Whilst this brochure is undated, it draws upon or precedes a sequence that were dated from 1960-1962 and this is one of two undated versions in our collection, of which had the internal BR printing or accounting reference BR35142/1.

We hope you enjoy the nostalgia evoked, and start planning your Summer Holiday in the West Country, travelling by train of course!,

TUESDAY 5 MAY

Delivering the Goods – 10

We periodically explore the GWR and BRWR provisions on this vital traffic and today we look back to matters in the West Country in May 1905.

From the Great Western Trust archive we illustrate an illuminating notice issued to relevant GWR operating staff covering extra trains and special arrangements on Tuesday 16 May and Thursday 18 May. That it was Notice No 135 gives further demonstration of the frequency of such notices, their importance and of course the level of traffic being handled, month by month, day by day. Seasonal traffic was an added consideration, and our example today, is dominated by one important annual event, the Devon County Show.

The front page of this double sided notice reveals the very precise arrangements of livestock freight trains and the numerous stations they cover to pick up each wagon from. Fancy trying to replicate that on a train set? The sheer investment in train running, wagons and men, is beyond belief, but that county show was an annual landmark event worthy of such GWR investment.

Had the notice only covered that traffic it would have been interesting enough, but it had to cover any other important, out of standard arrangement trains, and the illustrated reverse side of the notice shows an altogether different traffic! A convict escort from Paddington to Princetown no less, plus sailor trains from Keyham to North Road, Plymouth!

‘Delivering the Goods’ clearly had a wide interpretation, and whatever was being transported, due detail was essential. Quite who the ‘prisoner or prisoners’ were is intriguing, but all we have is their necessary separation from normal, law-abiding folk, by the party being given a separate saloon carriage! Quite a comfortable journey for persons then locked up in the bleak Princetown prison on Dartmoor!

The sailor trains probably related to navy personnel based at Plymouth Naval Dockyard. Dual-braked vehicles would be required for the journey on 16 May to Hebburn on Tyne because the North Eastern Railway used Westinghouse air brakes, rather than vacuum brakes.

Finally, it is worth noting that the GWR used a local printers, Latimer, Trend & Co of Union Street Plymouth for this and numerous other such notices. No doubt that was then a valued and regular custom for a local business.

TUESDAY 28 APRIL

Conference Ticketing Arrangements

Our Blog today turns to a new subject based upon the Great Western Trust collection, and probably today, seems hardly credible to think that the traffic involved deserved such extensive consideration.

We look back to a humble Staff Circular, of which in each year, many hundreds were produced by the various departments within the GWR and then duly sent to all relevant staff to be pasted into their ‘Guard Book’ ledgers as reference copies, and then receipt acknowledged by return of a detachable slip to the originator. Clearly a mountain of paperwork alone, simply to give out definitive instructions!

We illustrate the title page of Circular number 3127 from the Superintendent of the Line, then Charles Aldington, dated 28 April 1913. It not only lists no less than 30 Annual Conferences of mainly church organisations, but also disparate groups such as Esperanto, Shorthand Teachers and Commercial Travellers. The circular points to the special price GWR ticket arrangements for them, by referring to separate GWR circulars for specific details! Butterley station, which features, now lives on within the Midland Railway Centre.

As it extended to three sides of a four-sided pamphlet, it went on to cover the Bristol Eisteddford from 19 to 24 May, the Welsh Miniature Rifle Meeting at Wrexham in May, ‘The Queen’s’ Regiment Annual Dinner in London, and even Golf Meetings including the Ladies Open Golf Championship at St Annes on Sea!

Today, any or pretty much every one of those organisations or events, has to create its own travel arrangements, which will only include rail travel, if any, organised and paid at standard fares, by individual attendees.

So much for progress? The key change of course is the motor car and coaches. In 1913, privately owned cars were strictly for the wealthy and it’s a fair connection to say that until the post WW1 demobbing of men trained as mechanics and drivers, and mass-produced cars from America, combined to set the seed for the very different multifaceted transport options we enjoy today. 

TUESDAY 21 APRIL

The British Workman

From the Great Western Trust collection, we focus upon a remarkable publication with a very eye-catching artist’s recreation scene of a railway erecting shop. Sadly it’s clearly not drawing upon a Great Western Railway workshop scene, but we think the image is very typical of that era, even to the extent of practices that would not pass scrutiny by today’s health and safety guidelines!

The publication title rather misleads its real content and purpose, at least to our untutored times, in that it was the annual summary edition in hardback of a monthly journal with the full title of ‘The British Workman and Home Monthly’. Our example covers the year 1912 as a retrospective collection of its monthly editions for that year. It was clearly a popular and financially viable publication given that this 1912 year, was proudly its 58th volume!

Perhaps we can gather quite why it had such a long standing audience through the underlying theme and message of its journalistic contents. That was both a moral and a religious one, extolling the benefits of both, in creating a good character, and by extension, a society of upright individuals being a benefit to the community and god-fearing in moral compass.

So why should it even be in the Trust’s collection?

The answer lies in two specific articles that focus upon matters GWR and the example set by three senior GWR officers who all came from humble roots, to rise to the most elevated ranks through hard, honest and productive work! In fact the editors clearly viewed the GWR as an important source of material, given that it had previous editions recording GWR staff social activities.

The most senior man, then given his own article was Frank Potter, who had just become GWR General Manager though having joined the GWR in 1869 as a junior clerk in the Goods Dept. His career to date was then detailed, including the very important GWR men whom he worked under, on his gradual rise up the ranks. Perhaps the most telling quote is that used in the header to this very full article, namely ‘The Opportunities that our Great Railways offer to Talent and Grit’. Beyond all such detail, comes the other key link to why he is devoted such an article in this journal; he had a strong religious conviction being a Baptist Deacon at his local chapel, and highly respected in that congregation.

If the above isn’t enough about the GWR, this compendium edition also had a shorter article about the appointment of T H Rendell as General Manager of the Barry Railway having previously been the GWR’s Chief Goods Manger, and his being replaced by C A Roberts in that role. The article extols both men’s rise within the GWR ranks from the very similar timelines and with the same admirable work ethic as Frank Potter.

We should record that Frank Potter, went on to be a pivotal individual in leading the GWR through the First World War, and sadly, through overwork and exhaustion died in post in July 1919. His passing reflected in widespread regrets by all who knew him.

The Great Western Trust collection seeks out all manner of contemporary information on matters GWR and its staff, and that means searching far wider than the GWR’s own publications and records. The British Workman’s journal alone, demonstrates the benefit of such an outlook, as its content shows the contemporary view of GWR operations and employees, beyond pure railway operations.

TUESDAY 14 APRIL

Train Spotting – 5

The trains which started at Swindon were probably used as running-in turns for locomotives which had been under overhaul in the works, explaining why Castle (5063), Hall (49XX and 69XX) and Manor (7823) classes were used. The Queen and Duke of Edinburgh opened the Chew Valley Lake reservoir for Bristol Water that day, explaining the presence of the Royal Train

In adding to our series of blogs on this subject we are delighted that happenstance allows us to look back almost precisely 70 years to Tuesday 17 April 1956. On that day a young David Castle very neatly recorded a list of the trains he saw that had passed Wantage Road station over quite a long period during the morning. These lists are among the many artefacts that David bequeathed to the Great Western Trust.

2-6-0 No 7341 approaches Wantage Road with a local passenger train on 25 June 1957. Shedded at Oxley (84B) she is quite likely on a running-in turn from the works. Photograph by Aldo Delicata

To try to make this record today would leave the listing perhaps blank for express passenger train set numbers, because the speed with which the IET trains pass prevents reading them! And of course lest we forget, the location where the station once stood to serve the local community is just flattened earth. So perhaps only the freight trains with their American diesels might get recorded, given their very large identity numbers!

The record taken by David was also in the years preceding the diesel hydraulics on the Western Region, so we have both ex GWR and early BR steam locomotives in their dominant numbers.

The first locomotive in this list, No 4062 Malmesbury Abbey, was one of three remaining Star class 4-6-0s. She was to be withdrawn in November that year

David was studious in noting more than mere numbers, by including the type of train and its originating station and time of departure. And blessed with all that we attach scans of his lists.

David’s shorthand ‘UP’ & ‘DOWN’ relates to towards London & towards Swindon, respectively. On the freight train notes, we assume that ‘Fly’ next to No 5675 was the service to stations from Didcot to Swindon delivering and picking up wagons, as required from their local yards.

A fair representation of War Department (WD) 2-8-0s of the 90XXX series in this list. They were known as dub-dees to trainspotters

For those who were once youthful trainspotters, we will allow you to remember the names of the locomotives, and we hope these records will prompt memories of your own days like this and those special occasions you will never forget.

WD 2-8-0 No 90466 with a down goods at Wantage Road in 1962. Photograph by Mike Peart

TUESDAY 7 APRIL

Something of a curiosity, this beautifully cast steel bull-head rail chair, from the Great Western Trust collection, measures only 3½” x 2” at its base and is around ¼ full size. The question is why was it produced? Is it an apprentice piece? Possibly. Was it made as a manufacturer’s sample? Unlikely as they were produced by the million over many years. It has correctly an indication of two holes for fang bolts to attach it to the sleeper, as was Great Western Railway practice, whereas other companies used three coach screws for attachment.

Our best guess, given ‘GWR’ and the year ‘1924’ in the casting is that it was a souvenir paperweight from the Empire Exhibition at Wembley. One can imagine it being given to an influential client of the GWR whilst gazing upon the impressive sight of Caerphilly Castle or, the following year Pendennis Castle, freshly painted after her triumphant work on the LNER during the loco exchanges of 1925.

If any readers have a better theory as to its origin and purpose, please let us know.

• Tuesday Treasures Index