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 10 FEBRUARY

GWR Instructions to Engineering and Traffic Department Staff 1899

In a previous blog in November 2022 we introduced the role of internal communications from on high in the GWR to the various staff by way of Staff Circulars. That particular example was for Passenger Guards dated 1874.

Our blog today is a little later in date, being January 1899 but is still over 127 years ago, and is from our Great Western Trust collection that equally highlights the extent of the change from ‘then to now’.

To remind us of the context, before the current age of texts, phone, emails etc, the only formal means of recording important instructions to staff, and do so in such a way that those staff could not deny their existence, was the hard copy, printed Circular.

Produced under the authority of the various heads of departments, the hierarchy being from the General Manager, the Superintendent of the Line, Chief Goods Manager, followed by divisional officers and departmental heads. Each such Notice or Circular in this case, was sent to every, yes every, relevant station and location, to be duly noted by the senior staff member there and pasted by a clerk into what were called ‘Guard Books’, effectively very large, bound ledgers with blank sheets to which each Circular was pasted. Then the senior staff member had to ensure all relevant employees under them, had read the content so he (yes he) could confirm back up the management chain, that the content was noted and would be acted upon. Any subsequent failure to comply was a disciplinary offence!

So to the Circular we illustrate, itself issued by the top officer, the General Manager, at the time one J L Wilkinson. It uses quite delicate phrasing to effectively overcome what it states is a ‘misapprehension’ that had clearly been a sufficient gripe between two departments and their local staffs to warrant his direct involvement.

That it actually defines the delineation of responsibilities at stations for ‘Cleaning of Station Yards’ is quite a remarkable level of detail that must have truly been the subject of heated exchanges on the ground as it were!

Two aspects deserve comment.

First, that to even have such demarcation of duties at every station and its goods yards, demonstrates that labour to undertake these duties was clearly in abundance, and moreover, administrative resources were seemingly committed to ensure that each of the two departments fulfilled their roles to satisfaction.

Second, that this Circular of 1899 referred to a previously issued one of 1878, then superseded. Sadly our collection does not have that earlier edition, but we are tempted to assume that 21 years earlier the same dispute had been a live topic. In fact, this connected reference also demonstrates the superb administrative system the GWR already had, to even know that 21 years earlier a suitable Instruction of relevance to the current problem had been issued!

Overall, it is worth reflecting upon the sensitive subject of ‘manure’. At that period, and for all the preceding years of the GWR station operations, horse cartage was a given. So beyond the manure from farm animals transported from some station yards, the company’s own horse usage came with its own issues of clearance. To underline how commercially astute the GWR were, it is known that as part of allowing private agent’s horse carriages to serve passengers at Paddington, the GWR had the right to collect all their droppings which they then sold on to farmers and other traders!

So what by comparison happens at stations today? Rather simpler if only because railway goods traffics at stations, of the kind in 1899, is no more! So Network Rail and the passenger train franchises contract out station cleaning, now dominated in reality by collecting the waste from plastic bag receptacles!

TUESDAY 3 FEBRUARY

A Grand Day Out

If you were a young lady typist employed at Swindon Works in the early 1950s you probably did not venture far from the town, the annual holiday being one of the few occasions. Imagine the excitement then approaching Tuesday 12 June 1951 and the Locomotive Works Manager’s Office Typists’ Section, Annual Outing, to Southend-on-Sea.

Recently acquired by the Trust, this little gem measuring 4½” x 3”, has survived to tell us the programme for the day.

Beginning with an early start from Swindon, a pedestrian journey to Paddington took nearly two hours including a change at Didcot. Across London to Fenchurch Street, thence to Southend-on-Sea on the old London, Tilbury and Southend line arriving at the Essex resort just after 12 noon in time for lunch at the Rayleigh Restaurant.

Then to decide between a few hours on the beach or a visit to the famous Kursaal, one of the world’s first amusement parks opened in 1901 by Lord Claud Hamilton, who remarkably served for fifty years as a director and latterly chairman of the Great Eastern Railway.

Back to the station for the 5pm departure arriving at Fenchurch Street in just an hour in time for what many of the ladies must have regarded as the main event of the day. In 1951 Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel, at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane was the biggest show in town. Having opened the previous year it was playing to packed houses and tickets were much sought after.

After the show, our weary typists made their way back to Paddington to board the 11.50pm Penzance sleeper to Swindon where they arrived probably exhausted, at 1.13am. Doubtless, after a few hours sleep they would have been back in the Works Manager’s Office, bleary eyed, the following morning.

TUESDAY 27 JANUARY

The World War 2 Railways – The GWR Firefighting Service

The blog we previously posted in November 2020 on the GWR Home Guard in WW2 was just one key part of the voluntary nature of GWR staff way beyond what by then had become a very heavy and in many ways dangerous working experience, day by day. Today’s blog extends that example further, by extracts from the Great Western Trust collection of materials centred upon their fire fighting activities.

Our example is from one year, 1943, January in fact, some 83 years ago illustrating both the Certificate of Merit and the photo of the proud male team who were awarded a Certificate of Merit at the then annual ‘GWR All-Line Trailer Pump Competition’.

All-Line meant that the competition was open to all the GWR system’s staff and departments. Here we find the team from the large GWR Reading Signal Works comprising 5 men, all named, who are our focus, rightly so.

The competition was stimulated by the obvious urgent need for the wartime local firefighting capability across the GWR’s vast estate of buildings and works, to be both quickly available and not wholly dependent upon the then very over stretched National Fire Service. Hence the GWR began to purchase petrol engine powered, highly mobile fire pumps, ‘Trailer Pumps’, and each vital location then needed local staff teams to operate then efficiently, and above all QUICKLY. By 1943 the GWR owned no less than 225 such pumps and were buying yet more because of their obvious utility.

Hence the idea of an annual competition, which was sponsored significantly by James Milne, then the GWR General Manager, in which under scrutiny of National Fire Service observers to ensure the highest standards and no internal bias, in January each year commencing in 1942 saw the climax of a series of system-wide elimination events in November, in the grand final held either at the mint stables at Paddington or in Bristol, probably determined by bombing threats or damage. There were men’s and women’s teams.

The event itself was no mean test. A very specific course was created which demanded that each team had to move the trailer, set up the necessary pipes, connect them to a hydrant and then direct the jet at the fire itself, all timed to the quarter of a second. That’s sadly how our Reading Team only gained second place from the winners having achieved a time of 1 minute 37 seconds, to be beaten by just one second!

Yet again, we can only stand back, admire and respect all those GWR staff who undertook firefighting duties voluntarily during those extremely hazardous and tiring times, and did so with such commitment and reward.

TUESDAY 20 JANUARY

Cardiff as a Travel Centre

The Great Western Trust collection holds a wonderful array of GWR and BRWR publicity brochures, covering public and business services and recreational attractions.

Today our blog looks back to one published by the GWR in January 1932, yes 94 years ago! It boldly asserts that Cardiff was the ideal centre for exploring historic Wales, and does so using an eye-catching photo and coloured image of the very expensive rebuild, funded by the Marquis of Bute, of Cardiff Castle.

If the cover statement wasn’t enough to impress, then the brochure opens to an even stronger recommendation ‘The Finest Tourist Centre of Wales’ authored by Maxwell Fraser FRGS. Fraser was regularly used by the GWR to extoll in flowing and to our age, rather over rich wording, the delights of the particular location, or region of their system, each brochure covered. And of course, Fraser separately authored a series of GWR books for the tourist clients.

Maxwell Fraser was the daughter of the GWR’s publicity agent, W H Fraser, who had been appointed in 1924 by the General Manager, Felix Pole to head up an enlarged publicity department.

We illustrate various parts of this particular Cardiff brochure and draw attention to the rear cover which naturally for the GWR includes notice of their General Agent, C Rayner-Smith based in their office at 500, Fifth Avenue, New York City, USA!

TUESDAY 13 JANUARY

Farewell to the HSTs

In our first blog of 2025 we used the then current wintery weather as our focus, but for 2026 we feel that another article on our weather is too much to ask of our readers. So an entirely different topic has been chosen, though our blog subject can in equal measure be viewed as both a celebration and a lament given the recent and final withdrawal from public passenger service on Great Western Railway of the HSTs – in this case the Castle class of four coaches and two power cars which ran in the West of England and South Wales. HST stands for High Speed Train with its 125mph maximum speed, they were also known as Inter-City 125s or class 253s. Inter-City 125, the marketing term, proved too long-winded for internal use in railway notices!

British Rail Western Region (BRWR) was chosen as the first route to receive the HSTs because, quite simply, the route laid out by Brunel 140 years previously was the easiest across the whole of BR to bring up to standard for 125 mph trains.

From the Great Western Trust collection we illustrate a quite remarkable leaflet offering ‘125 mph for just 125 pence’. It was issued by BRWR London Division in November 1976 for selected trains, from Paddington or Reading to South Wales and back on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays; and Paddington or Reading to Bristol Temple Meads and back on Saturdays only. Mondays and Fridays were excluded because of their already well-established Weekend Return custom.

Because of the anticipated high demand, one had to book in advance for tickets, providing a cheque to BR for the said £1.25p and stating a first and second preference for the date and the outward and return trains, and to do so by post at least 4 days in advance or 2 days if applying at Reading or Paddington Travel Centres. High demand was very much anticipated and ‘tickets were strictly limited’.

Quite how many people seized this opportunity we are not sure but we have to admire the proactive energy of both the BRWR Publicity and Traffic Department’s staff to create such an offer when the HSTs had already transformed services on the WR system with increased customer demand.

The prototype HST at Reading in 1974. On the right is Western Tower, the WR London Division Headquarters with its sandwich bar on the top floor, offering panoramic views of the railway

The HSTs first went into public service on 9 August 1976, with the intermediate high speed timetable being introduced from 4 October 1976 and the full high speed service in May 1977. BRWR Bristol Division was less generous than the London Division, charging 125p each way for its introductory fares. Not that it put any brake on demand, and on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of half term it put on an HST special non-stop from Bristol Temple Meads to London Paddington to cater for all the passengers.

Inside the cab of an HST at 125mph

To give a clear run, the Bristol control office phoned their colleagues in the London Division control office at Reading and asked them as a favour to hold a conventional train from South Wales to London – class 47 diesel and 11 coaches – for about five minutes in platform 5 at Reading until the flyer had passed. On the Tuesday the news came through that the flyer had reached Paddington in something like 69 minutes. The PR people got excited and decided that if something similar could be achieved on the Wednesday they would invite the press along on the Thursday to enjoy the fun.

The Wednesday run was successful, and all seemed set for press run on Thursday. Unfortunately a senior manager had got to hear what was going on. He had a railway background in South Wales and contacted the Reading control office: “I will not have full-fare paying passengers from Wales delayed by excursionists from Bristol.” He thundered : “You will send the South Wales train out in front of the HST.”

An HST in the Thames Valley on 28 June 2012

Those in the know went up to the sandwich bar on the fifteenth floor of the London Division office at Western Tower to watch what happened. The South Wales train was in the platform, and looking in the distance, the HST flyer came round the curve from Tilehurst … and stopped! The class 47 and its 11 coaches lumbered from the platform and crossed onto the main line to Paddington, then accelerated slowly. A few minutes later the HST followed slowly with its tail between its legs. Railway politics had turned a PR triumph into a disaster.

A few months later the Bristol Division achieved the Bristol Temple Meads to Paddington record with a non-stop Jubilee Special on 7 May 1977 which did the 117.6 miles via Badminton in 68 minutes, 23 seconds, or an average speed of 103.3 mph. The return journey took 67 minutes and 35 seconds, at 104.4 mph average speed.

The absolute HST record between London and Bristol was set on 30 August 1984 when a formation of two power cars and five coaches accomplished the journey in 62 minutes and 33 seconds, an average speed of 112.8 mph. What is more, it was broadcast live on BBC television, during the Top of the Pops programme with live music performances on the platform at Temple Meads.

One unwelcome feature of the HSTs in the early days was the smell sucked into the air conditioning from the linings of the disc brake pads. On one early Monday morning journey from Didcot to Paddington a young couple, who from their conversation had spent the weekend with wealthy parents at Blewbury – one of the more favoured South Oxfordshire villages – sniffed the odour as the train slowed through Reading. “I would hate to live in Reading”, said one to the other. “There is always the most awful smell when we go through there.”

The last HST to arrive at Paddington station in regular timetabled service, on 18 May 2019. Power car No 43002 had been repainted in the original Inter-City livery from the 1970s, and named Sir Kenneth Grange, who had redesigned the front end of the production units compared with the prototypes. The HSTs lived on for a few more years as the shortened Castle Class sets in the West of England and South Wales

On their passing into railway history, we must not overlook another key factor that the HSTs adopted, that of its fixed formation, a train set driven both ends and one which we now take for granted in this era of IETs etc. Yes, the commercial disadvantage of limited accommodation, leading to over-packed central aisles and vestibules, had to be accepted given the massive benefit operationally of fast turn-around at termini and much reduced reshuffling of carriages and need of pilot diesels that had long been unavoidable.

Whether passengers and railway enthusiasts will equally lament the passing of the current IETs in future years is a matter for future generations!

TUESDAY 23 DECEMBER

Christmas for the Departmental Railway Staff – 2

In the spirit of Christmas and the New Year coming, our blog today from the Great Western Trust collection, is in fact related closely to that which we used this time last year. It is an official card produced by the GWR Locomotive and Carriage Department for the 1901 - 1902 holiday festival. Last year’s version covered season 1903 - 1904. Whilst sadly unissued to an individual, our illustrated example still has lots of historical interest.

First we have the message addressed from John Armstrong and his staff, from the Department’s Offices based at Paddington.

Second we notice that unlike last year’s version that included Armstrong’s ‘hearty’ Christmas greetings, this earlier version is a more even-toned message of simple ‘greetings’ and is surely designed overall for internal departmental use rather than outside the GWR.

Finally, we have the splendid photo centrepiece of a Badminton class 4-4-0 hauling a train of clerestory coaches on Goring water troughs, with a permanent way man rather too close for his comfort? Blog readers may recall that the 1903/1904 version had a photo of the large-boilered No 3297 Earl Cawdor.

Although the photograph is not particularly crisp, we can see the nameplate has a short word followed by a longer word. Of the 20 locomotives in the Badminton class the only member to have that short/long pattern of name was Earl Cawdor, so we can surmise that this card features the same locomotive.

Hence these cards, even though for internal use, had photos of the then indicative locos of the company, presumably as a matter of departmental pride.

We have also included a photo of Earl Cawdor in original condition, and the same loco hauling a milk train past Acton, having been fitted with the experimental large boiler in 1903.

After a long year of Tuesday Treasure blogs, this is our last of 2025, so that our Trustees and volunteers can take a well-earned rest.

From all the Trustees and volunteers of the Great Western Trust we wish our blog readers a Happy Christmas.

TUESDAY 16 DECEMBER

PIC-NIC

Dating from May 1902, a piece of ephemera this week in the shape of a handbill advertising reduced fares for PIC-NIC or PLEASURE PARTIES. Recently donated to the Trust by a member of Didcot’s Carriage and Wagon Department, the handbill consists of around 12 different fonts, all carefully set by a compositor, without the benefit of electric light, at Martin Billing, Son & Co, in Livery Street, alongside the GWR’s Birmingham Snow Hill Station.

The word ‘picnic’ (with or without hyphen) dates to the 17th century and comes from the French ‘pique’ meaning to pick and ‘nique’ – something of little importance, a trifle. It means the same now as it did 120 years ago although ‘Pleasure Party’ has perhaps lost some of the innocence it had then.

The wonderful collection of coaches at Didcot includes 6-wheel saloon No 2511. It is one of 54 built for private hire by affluent families and their servants to attend social occasions such as horse race meetings or Henley Regatta. The vehicles were known as ‘Family’ or sometimes ‘Picnic’ Saloons, making this a good opportunity to show photographs of this beautiful vehicle rescued, as a riverside dwelling, from Purley-on-Thames in 1972.

Restored No 2511 on the traverser

The interior of No 2511, with passengers sitting around a central table with drop leaves on which the ‘pic-nic’ would be laid

No 2511 as we first saw it in 1969 as a riverside chalet, protected by a pitched roof and verandah

TUESDAY 9 DECEMBER

Christmas is Coming! - No. 2

Those who enjoy our Tuesday Treasure blogs and have long memories, may recall that in 2020 we used this title to illustrate the children’s book entitled ‘The Railway Story Book’ featuring a GWR King Loco on an express on the line near Dawlish. Our focus was upon its potential as an exciting Christmas present for any young railway enthusiast.

Today, with Christmas again fast approaching, and parents and grandparents worrying about what to buy for their cherished youngsters, we turn to a much later, post WW2 period when Ian Allan had become so very successful, that his organisation could confidently expand its products beyond railway publications and indeed, do so supported by their own leaflet detailing those products specifically marketed for the Christmas trade.

We illustrate from our Great Western Trust collection, sections from that folded leaflet, and note that they were truly bold enough to state ‘Ian Allan periodicals Lead the Field’..!

Yes it is dominated by periodical and book details including subscription services for many of them, but also includes ‘New! Railway Chinaware with Locomotive Designs Now in FULL COLOUR’. And for those with sufficient funds, the back page advertises a ‘Swiss Railtour De Luxe’ for £50 First Class and £44 Second.

Focusing upon that chinaware we illustrate the butter dish complete with colour painting of GWR Castle Class 4-6-0 No 5005 Manorbier Castle in WR livery. The manufacturers were Sandland Ware and from the leaflet it appears it could be acquired for only 3 Shillings and 8 Pence in pre-decimal currency.

Knowing the ‘collecting bug’ that too easily overtakes any enthusiast collector, we expect a complete set of cups, saucers, trays and butter dishes are on a display shelf or in a box in the loft, somewhere!
So what will Father Christmas bring for a young railway enthusiast this year?

TUESDAY 2 DECEMBER

Railway Quiz Booklet

Our regular Tuesday Treasures blog has previously given a number of articles based upon the Great Western Trust collection devoted to education-based upon railway themes, the majority focused upon children. Our blog today extends that function to a wider audience of Railwaymen and Railway-Lovers, as quoted from its cover.

This is a booklet published by Transportation Press Ltd of Tudor Chambers, London, at one old shilling, but undated. By its contents we believe it was in the late 1940s, as one question on the then oil-fired conversion of steam locomotives mentions GWR loco No 5955 Garth Hall, converted in 1946.

From its cover we note it was in fact the second edition, and its introductory page celebrates the popularity of the first edition! The locomotive in the photograph is an LNER A3 class 4-6-2, Gainsborough built in April 1930 as LNER No 2597 and renumbered 86 in October 1946, then became BR No 60086 in September 1948.

No less than 311 questions are covered, ranging over all relevant subjects, and helpfully it includes their answers!

Frankly, we can appreciate that it was indeed targeted for railwaymen or very keen enthusiasts, because many of the questions were not the simple ones for the general public.

We also illustrate the centre page spread drawing, by R Barnard Way (a celebrated author too) of ‘An Impossible Goods Station’ deliberately including numerous ‘impossible’ features which the reader was then expected to identify!

As this particular booklet was the second edition, we would naturally be delighted to obtain the first edition for our collection. Is there one still out there?

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