Railways Through the Vale of the White Horse E-Book

Adrian Vaughan

• Herausgeber: Crowood
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 269

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

This commemorative history of the railways of the beautiful Oxfordshire district 'Vale of the White Horse', running twenty-seven miles from Steventon to Wootton Bassett, covers the route from the opening in 1840 until 1965, when British Rail withdrew all the local passenger services between Didcot and Swindon and all the intermediate stations were closed. With personal insight and images from railway historian Adrian Vaughan, the book covers the Great Western Railway's development of the route, as part of Brunel's 'Bristol Railway' and shows the original correspondence between Brunel and his staff. Fully illustrated with hundreds of historical photographs and detailed track diagrams, Railways Through the Vale of the White Horse is an ideal resource for anyone with an interest in this scenic railway route and a nostalgia for the early days of railways in Britain. Includes: the building and progression of all the stations from Steventon to Wootton Bassett; station staff, passenger statistics and goods income reports; the signal boxes, introduced in 1874, through to their abolition between 1965 and 1968. Fully illustrated with 200 black & white images and 37 diagrams of the track layouts.

Leseprobe

RAILWAYS THROUGH THE VALE OF THE WHITE HORSE

Adrian Vaughan

THE CROWOOD PRESS

First published in 2015 byThe Crowood Press LtdRamsbury, MarlboroughWiltshire SN8 2HR

www.crowood.com

This e-book first published in 2015

©Adrian Vaughan 2015

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 84797 872 1

Illustrations are from the author’s collection

except where otherwise stated.

Frontispiece: The 8 a.m. Cheltenham speeds through the Vale on its non-stop run from Kemble to Paddington. Seen here from Challow signal box in 1962. AUTHOR

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter 1     The Route through the Vale

Chapter 2     Steventon

Chapter 3     Faringdon Road

Chapter 4     Wantage Road

Chapter 5     Challow

Chapter 6     Uffington and Faringdon

Chapter 7     Shrivenham

Chapter 8     The Stratton Park Halt and the Highworth Branch

Chapter 9     Hay Lane and Swindon Junction

Chapter 10   Wootton Bassett

Chapter 11   The Vale Signal Boxes

Notes

Index

Acknowledgements

I must thank the following kind friends for their assistance:

•

Jim Brown for his courtesy in allowing me to quote at length from his book on Challow station, Jim Brown Remembers his Wartime Boyhood in the Vale of the White Horse.

•

Don Lovelock for his courtesy in providing so many of his photos.

•

Austin Attwell and Sandra Cox of Pendon Museum for their kind cooperation in making available to me the Pendon Museum photographic collection. The magnificent Pendon Museum of the Vale of the White Horse at Long Wittenham is a must-visit place for anyone interested in the Vale.

•

Michael H.C. Baker.

•

Mark Howells, Engineer, Network Rail.

•

David Collins, Chris Hall, Alan Pym and Danny Scroggins, all experts on GWR and Western Region signalling.

•

Elaine Arthurs, Curator of STEAM, Museum of the GWR at Swindon, for her prompt help on the image of Exeter Street, Swindon.

•

R.A. Cooke for his painstaking research published in his Track Layout Diagrams of the Great Western Railway and BR Western Region, Sections 20 and 23. I credit information from this source as ‘R.A. Cooke, Section 20 or 23’ with the page number.

The signal box diagrams were drawn by Signalling Record Society (SRS) experts using official GWR/ WR information painstakingly gathered over many years and combined into the SRS’s Signal Box Register, volume 1. The diagrams and the register of signal boxes are obtainable from the Society – see the SRS website, www.s-r-s.org.uk

All references beginning Rail, MT and MFQ are to be found at the National Archives, Kew.

A note on measurements

Introduction

To quote from Miss Eleanor Hayden’s 1928 book Islands of the Vale, the land of the Vale of the White Horse ‘slopes from the setting sun to the dawn’. It was thus perfectly situated to carry Brunel’s railway out of the Thames Valley and up to the summit of the route before dropping away into the valley of the Avon.

The 24 miles through the Vale cannot be described as an exciting piece of railway compared with, say, Oxenholme to Shap, or Settle Junction to Ais Gill, but it was, after Reading, where I grew up with what had been the Great Western Railway. That coal-fired, mechanical railway was a handsome thing in itself. Its stations and its signal boxes fitted perfectly into the beautiful landscape, tall with elm trees, dotted with farms, cattle, woodlands, and parallel with the long green line of the Berkshire Downs away to the south – that splendid skyline – where not a single hawthorn or shrub blotched the green velvet but brushy beech plantations clung to slopes and crowned the ridge, complementing the bold line of the hills.

All was handsome, well made, perfectly proportioned in the landscape and the railway that ran through it. A train journey through the Vale was as if through a well-kept garden. The tracks and the side banks were perfectly, neatly, cleanly kept by hobnailed sons of Berkshire toil, weather-beaten and true. No weeds, no scruffy shrubs, no brambles, because they burned off the dead grass from winter each spring.

The Vale of the White Horse in 1939. H.O. VAUGHAN

On the south side, just by the fence, were the tall poles of the telegraph system. The poles, with their many crossbars carrying dozens of wires, gave the dignity of height to the route. Sitting on the grass at the lineside one heard the wind singing in the wires, wistful and haunting. From the train the festoons of wire looped briskly up and down as the train sped past them, a perfect accompaniment to the rhythm of the wheels. Through the window, between drifts of the locomotive’s exhaust, one saw the wide grasslands. In winter, one might have seen the Old Berks Hunt streaming colourfully across the fields. You would see a lonely homestead here and there, clefts of the steep hillside leading to the ridge and, clearing the cutting at Uffington, the crowning glory of the Downs – White Horse Hill.

This was where I grew up and learned how to be a railwayman while still at school. It was a timeless place: the railwaymen joined as school leavers and spent fifty years in the job. Nothing much changed, not even the timetable – at least, it changed only a little. Some trains, like the 5.30am Paddington to Penzance had run through the Vale in Brunel’s time. But in 1965 the ‘white-hot cutting edge of technology’ started to cut jobs, cut roots. Sometime soon, we are promised, the picturesque delights of the overhead catenary for electric trains will grace the Vale. The price of progress is high.

I have collected here some history and some photographs to commemorate a gentler time. I hope you will enjoy the result.

Adrian VaughanBarney, North Norfolk

Signpost over the Vale in 1965. H.O. VAUGHAN

CHAPTER 1

The Route through the Vale

The railway through the Vale of the White Horse is part of the route chosen by Isambard Kingdom Brunel. On 7 March 1833 he was appointed the Surveyor of not one route for a railway from Bristol to London but ‘as many [routes] as might appear to offer any advantage peculiar to themselves’. In his diary that evening and until 26 August, he referred to this work as the ‘Bristol Railway’. The glorious title of Great Western Railway was used for the first time, as far as can be known, at the top of page 1 of the London Committee of Management’s minutes dated 27 August 1833. Brunel was not shown in those minutes as being present but that evening, when he recorded in his diary that he had been appointed Engineer of the line, he also wrote the title for the time.

Railways to connect the two greatest cities in Britain had been proposed in 1824, but these were the work of ordinary men, going by unimaginative ways, winding and hilly. Brunel was unique among the railway engineers in that he was an artist, a dramatist; he loved the exquisite. His biographer, L.T.C. Rolt, wrote that Brunel said ‘The railway I shall build will not be the cheapest but it will be the best.’ No one living today, including the long-serving archivist of the Brunel Papers at Bristol, Nick Lee, has been able to find the paper on which Brunel wrote that, but, looking at the results of Brunel’s labours, one can see that he intended his railway to be a work of art.

His architecture was either grand or pretty, depending on circumstance, while the route was chosen for high speed and economy of fuel. This had to be achieved without any regard for the formidable engineering difficulties that it would entail. He was particularly aware of the resistance to movement a train encountered even on the level, quite apart from even the slightest rising gradient. He wrote to his directors on this subject on 15 September 1835. Large expense in construction, he pointed out, would be repaid over the years in reduced fuel bills due to having as level a track as was humanly possible. He would engineer a railway that, in 118¼ miles, had 115 miles of track where a gradient of 1 in 660 (8ft/mile) was the steepest – and there was not very much of that.

He also adopted a gauge – the space between the two rails on which the train ran – of 7ft ¼in. His reason for this was that he wanted to use very large wheels: they would revolve more slowly and thus the friction in the axle bearings would be reduced and less fuel would be needed to haul the train. Brunel wrote that, with the wheels outside the carriage, the wheel diameter could be ‘unlimited’ and therefore to have a floor space of any practical size he would place the rails wide apart. He also stated that placing the carriage body over the wheels ‘raises the body unnecessarily high and limits the size of wheel’. In the event he placed the rails 7ft ¼in apart but the wheels were only 4ft in diameter – 6in larger than on other lines.

The reduction of friction resulting from this increase in the usual size was infinitesimal, but the number of passengers that could be seated in these carriages was one-third less than could be seated in the carriages of the London & Birmingham Railway running on the ‘narrow gauge’ – the ‘standard gauge’ of Great Britain. At the time Brunel introduced this plan, ball bearings had been invented for thirty-eight years. Ball races on all axles really would have been a great advance, and would have saved the eccentricity of the broad gauge.

The low carrying capacity of the original coaches was quickly rectified. Brunel designed an excellent chassis running on six wheels and placed the carriage bodies – inconveniently – over the wheels. The wheels came through the carriage floors, under the seats, protected by a cowling. Brunel probably ought to have reduced the gauge, too, as the railway was then only 22 miles long, but the 7ft gauge remained.

Brunel’s ordinary brick arches over the track were only very slightly higher over the left-hand rail (in the direction of running) than on the other major main lines, which meant that the size of GWR engines was always restricted to standard gauge height. Broad gauge express engines were, for a time, the fastest in the world but this was due to the skill of their designer, Daniel Gooch: his broad gauge boilers and cylinders could just as easily have been carried on standard gauge axles.

From Wootton Bassett, 83 miles from Paddington, the Great Western line climbs at 8ft/mile for most of the way to the summit of the whole route – Swindon – 77¼ miles from Paddington. Swindon station is approximately 320ft above sea level,1 290ft above Bristol Temple Meads and 270ft above Paddington. About 150yd west of the platforms the railway crossed above the North Wiltshire Canal on a 34ft span bridge that was formed with cast-iron girders. These double and single flange girders, five in all, were cast by Perry & Bassett at their Katesgrove Foundry in Reading on 24 August 1840; they were ‘proved’ by being loaded at their centres with 21 tons of pig iron. When the canal was abandoned, the tunnel under the railway became a subway to the locomotive works. The ancient beams are still supporting the tracks.

Childrey Reading Room, 1963.

From Swindon to Paddington the line is downhill or level for almost the entire distance – there is a rise and fall of 4ft/mile between West Drayton and Southall to lift the line over two crossings of the Grand Union Canal. This is ‘Brunel’s Billiard Table’, the Great Western’s ‘Galloping Ground’. Leaving Swindon, the line was designed to fall eastwards at 6ft/mile for 4¾ miles, followed by 2 miles falling 5ft/mile, then level for 1½ miles to the 69 mile post, where Knighton level crossing gates used to be and where it crosses the 300ft contour. From here it falls 8ft/mile, level and 7ft/mile, through to Steventon, at the 56½ mile post. At 53 miles 23 chains from Paddington – just west of Didcot station – the line crosses the 200ft contour.

There are no exceptionally heavy earthworks in the Vale. Perhaps the tallest embankment is that between Marston and the twin arch ‘Acorn Bridge’ at the 72 mile 60 chain point. Each span is of 38ft 2in, carrying the railway over the Swindon–Oxford road and the Wiltshire & Berkshire Canal. The railway crossed the canal again at about the 68 mile 50 chain point; this was another cast-iron beam bridge, of 20ft 9in span, making a short tunnel through the embankment. The deepest cutting is at Baulking, extending from 66 miles 60 chains to 65 miles 60 chains; the deepest section of this is 35ft for about 200yd. The bridge carrying the Uffington–Baulking road crosses the cutting at its deepest part with a brick arch of 29ft 6in span. At the 63¾ mile post the line passes the site of Challow station. The GWR staff cottages are on the north side, and 2 miles to the south is the village of Childrey: the station is just outside the parish boundary and so missed being called ‘Childrey’.

Childrey pond, 1963.

The line continues eastwards on moderate embankments and shallow cuttings, crossing the canal for the last time at 59 miles 27 chains, a lonely spot in the wide open, fen-like fields. The bridge was named ‘Ardington’ after the village 2 miles to the south. Lying alongside the low embankment on the north side of the line, east and west of the canal bridge, are the mysterious ‘Cuttings’, so named by local railwaymen. Their position suggests that they were dug to provide spoil to build the embankment, although the railway did not take possession of the land in which the cuttings are located until May 1841. Maybe the company paid the then landowner for permission to dig there in 1839–40 and then had to buy the water-filled pits.

Ardington was another bridge of cast-iron beams, cast by Perry & Bassett. There were two spans, one of 12ft 2in over the tow path and the other 25ft 5in over the canal. Brunel did not remove these cast-iron beams after he expressed his distrust of such things after the Dee bridge disaster of May 1847. The Ardington bridge was taken up and the canal beneath filled in on 17 November 1955. The embankment runs into ordinary ground level a mile before Steventon station, and enters a cutting at 56½ miles where we must turn back into the Vale.

The Great Western Railway route, approved by I.K. Brunel and George Stephenson, was authorized by an Act of Parliament and received the Royal Assent on 31 August 1835.

Having argued – at great expense – in Parliament for this splendid line and having gained the Act, Brunel had second thoughts. He now realized that the land was falling downhill north of where the line was to cross the North Wiltshire Canal at Swindon. This was amply shown by the existence, a mile north of the line, of the first of the twelve locks that dropped the waterway into the Thames Valley. He realized that he could have a summit level nearly 15ft lower by bringing the railway across the canal north of this lock. This would allow him to have one gradient – rising 6ft/mile – all the way from Steventon to Swindon and the same – but falling – to a point a mile or so beyond the eventual site of Wootton Bassett station.2

He was also dissatisfied with his authorized route in that it had a variety of curves from about the 65 mile post which, on the map at least, do look untidy – certainly Brunel had come to dislike them. The deviation he wanted would make a line running in one, very wide, arc, fully in keeping with the shape of the route east of Steventon to London.

The Parliamentary line passes Steventon on an exactly east–west line but, just after it crosses the Wiltshire & Berkshire Canal, it starts a curve slightly south of west, climbing the natural swell of the ground as the line moves closer to the Berkshire Downs. Brunel proposed a deviation that continued due west from the canal bridge, keeping the line in the lower lands and passing close to Denchworth and Goosey where the deviation would be ¾ mile north of the authorized line. The higher ground through which the Baulking cutting was authorized to be made was less high ¾ mile further north. Shallow cuttings would suffice from there and across the face of Barrowbush Hill, south of Fernham. The deviation would cross the Longcot branch of the canal, which Brunel felt sure was of little use, and pass very close to Shrivenham village.

The deviation would slightly increase the distance between Bristol and London, but it would have had a continuous gradient of 6ft/mile and only one long, and imperceptible, curve. Brunel estimated the cost of the deviation at ‘an additional £16,000 to £18,000 over the old line’. He tried hard to have his change of mind accepted, but GWR’s Lord Barrington objected as the deviation would pass very close to his mansion at Beckett Park, on the eastern edge of Shrivenham. Brunel bombarded him with very polite letters, but Barrington did not want the railway close to his house – even though the tracks would be in a shallow cutting. Barrington was a director of the GWR’s London Committee of Management, and the London Committee was not – like the Bristol Committee – under Brunel’s spell. The railway through the Vale was laid out on the route authorized by the 1835 Act.

Brunel’s proposed deviation.

The route was divided into five construction contracts, 1S to 5S (‘S’ for ‘Swindon’), from ‘Dudcot’(sic) to Lydiard Tregoze, just east of Wootton Bassett. In a massive ledger3 the names of those contractors who tendered for the works are given, the price they each quoted and the name of the contractor winning the contract. There are no dates, though it is known that the book was started in 1835. Undated, the book also lacks, in some instances, a full heading to a page – as if the clerk writing it was called away to something else and forgot to complete the entry. Some descriptions of the extent of a contract are incomplete.

As far as the Vale route is concerned, the first contracts must have been let towards the end of 1838 because it was in June 1838 that Brunel wrote to his directors recommending that they adopt the deviating route. The idea was rejected and only then could contracts be advertised and awarded:

•

No. 1S was from ‘Dudcot [sic] Bridge No. 16 to the west bank of the Wilts & Berks canal’. This went to Mr E. Jackson for £35,000 and included the canal bridge.

•

No. 2S, from the west bank of the canal (the page heading is incomplete, so the exact end is unknown) went to Richard Cogswell. The price offered is not recorded but the next, higher, price, from William Oldham, was £48,295.

•

No. 3S was from a field near Uffington to a field near Woolstone, possibly to where the Woolstone–Longcot road was to cross the railway. This went to Mr S. Simpson for £18,082. His was the only tender

•

No. 4S was awarded to Thomas Bedborough for £58,700. (Bedborough was the contractor who built the Maidenhead bridge.) No. 4S was from a field east of Shrivenham to the east bank of the North Wiltshire Canal – the summit of the line.

•

No. 5S took in the bridge to be made over the North Wiltshire Canal and onwards to a field near Lydiard Tregoze, east of Wootton Bassett. Only one man tendered for the work: William Oldham, quoting £20,539.

CHAPTER 2

Steventon

The GWR directors were undecided about what stations they would need in the Vale. It was a lonely place and the line did not pass close to either of the Vale towns (Wantage and Faringdon). In 1840 they decided on three: Steventon, 56¼ miles from Paddington; Faringdon Road, 63¼ miles; and Shrivenham, 71 miles. These are the pre-1855 mileages; when the existing Paddington station was opened in 1854, ¼ mile had to be added to mileages.

The station office building at Steventon was on the north-side platform – the Up side. The contract drawing for the station office shows an entirely wooden building with a low-pitched roof with hipped ends. Along the length of the office, covering the width of the platform, was a steeply pitched roof on wooden columns. A canopy was cantilevered out over the entrance to the building on the yard side. The simple wooden shed design implies a temporary job and the station did have a temporary roof. A minute of the GWR General Committee of 3 May 1842 states:

Considered a tender by Mr Abbott, the contractor, for removing the present, temporary roofing at the Steventon station and Faringdon Road stations and substituting slate at the following prices: Steventon £48; Faringdon Road £78.1

The station building was only intended as a temporary structure but the rest of the station’s building were built solidly in brick and stone.

Steventon station contract drawing, 1839.

Steventon station contract drawing, cross-section.

Parallel to the south side of the railway, a few yards beyond the west end of the Down platform, there was a terrace of ‘9 cottages of railway brick under slate roofs’. Of these, seven formed a terrace of what must have been dark and cramped single-storey dwellings, in a Tudor style on the outside. At each end of the single-storey terrace were two-storey, ‘Tudor’ gabled houses: at the east end the gables faced east and north, and at the west end west and north. A ‘Superintendent’s House’ and a ‘Public House’ are shown in elevation on the contract drawings of 1840. The ‘Public House’ was not built.

Superintendent’s house contract drawing, 1839.

Steventon workmen’s cottages. Contract drawing.

Steventon hotel/superintendent’s house, south gable, 1971.

Steventon hotel/superintendent’s house, east side, 1971.

Steventon hotel/superintendent’s house, west side, 1971.

Brunel employed J.H. Gandell as his architect for Steventon and also as Resident Engineer to supervise the six contractors of the Vale route. Gandell had been a Resident Engineer under Robert Stephenson on the London & Birmingham Railway, and when the L&BR was complete and opened, in June 1838, Gandell was taken on by Brunel – with a glowing reference from Robert Stephenson. Gandell had an architectural practice with offices at Wolverton on the London & Birmingham Railway. He was ultimately responsible for developing the external and internal design of the housing at Steventon. J. & C. Rigby built Steventon station office building and all the original stations through to Swindon inclusive.

Gandell, like Brunel, had assistants in his office who worked out the detailed construction plan and produced the finished drawings: Brunel made sketches and Gandell or his assistants actually made the designs. This was normal practice – the terminal office buildings at Bristol Temple Meads were sketched by Brunel, and the design and working drawings for the builders were developed in the office of an architect called William Westmacott. This can be seen in a letter from Brunel to Westmacott at the National Archives.2

Gandell and his employees were working for Brunel’s project and Brunel was charged according to Gandell’s costs. Brunel kept a very close watch on costs. He decided Gandell was charging too much for his services and on 13 April 1839 he wrote to Gandell:

In looking over the quarter’s expenses I find that yours is the heaviest by far in proportion to the work in hand of any upon the line – your establishment of draftsmen is out of all reason. You have as the Head one who was formerly with me at Duke Street – Freeman – but who was actually too expensive – you must get rid of him and reduce your establishment very considerably.3

Gandell wrote back saying Brunel was being ‘tyrannical’ and said that he, Gandell, would not sack such a good man but would pay Freeman from his own pocket. Brunel was not satisfied with that fair way out of the problem. He resented Freeman and wanted to hurt him. Brunel replied, denying tyranny, and wrote:

as to your doing such a foolish thing as paying Freeman yourself you will oblige me very much by plainly telling him the state of the case and giving him fair and reasonable notice.

That Brunel assumed he had the authority to order Gandell how to spend his own money is a mystery of vendetta. Whether Gandell did as Brunel ordered is not known, but he swallowed the insult and continued as both an architectural contractor and as a Resident Engineer for the Steventon–Wootton Bassett section. Brunel’s letters to him are often verbose to the detriment of clarity and carry an oddly superior tone. On 20 April 1839, he wrote to Gandell:

The gradients as sent to you by Mr Clarke are the result of rather a laborious and careful balancing of all the quantities and other considerations which I am in the habit of going into myself before they are finally fixed upon for the contracts and you cannot, my dear Sir, suppose that I would neglect such reviews merely because the sections and calculations were ready on the old line, besides, they are also all ready as the gradients are now fixed by me – I mentioned this in my letter of yesterday but clearly understand that this does not in any way influence my decisions.

You evidently do not at all understand me but I have no doubt when we know each other better we shall get on very well. I shall endeavour and go into all these matters – as regards the bridges in these contracts – you will of course maintain exactly the same character as in the bridge of No. 1 and 2S. The bridges under the railway may be exactly like them the bridges over must be similar to Drawing No. 7 Pangbourne contract adopted of course to the particular cases – slopes etc but the form of the main arch to be constant and exactly like No. 7 being 15ft 3in over the outside rail or at 10ft 2in from the centre, the course of the extrados or of the string course to be governed by the inclination of the ascent (if any) of the road.

•

Turnpike road 1 in 30

•

Parish road 1 in 20

•

Occupation road 1 in 20

Widths between parapets at the plinth

•

Turnpike, 18ft

•

Parish, 15ft 2in

•

Occupation 14ft

I have made some alterations in pencil on the Drawing No. 7 – this arrangement of three arches ought to have been followed in 1S and 2S and I don’t remember why it was not – I must talk with you about altering them.

I enclose you a statement of the diversions of your next three contracts with the bridges required in the contracts let me know immediately how many and which you can prepare. In giving the angles of the skews we want the angle from a line square to the rails so that 0 degree would be a square bridge and the example above would be a 20 degree left and this a 20 degree right.

The three roads at Stratton St Margaret are to be deviated as shewn in a tracing Mr Clarke will send you and the bridge is preparing here.

You must prepare the specifications and have them ready by the end of the week that we may have time to examine.

You will see to this yourself that you may thoroughly understand the whole

No. 2 S

By a slight alteration in the line of rails and the cross section of the Baulking cutting the contract will extend beyond the Uffington Road as far as about 60,000 (cubic) yards will go – and from that point begin No. 3S

Between 3 and 4S is a space not included in either – this we will arrange for with one of the contractors or let to local people.

The canal bridge at the Swindon summit and the bridges beyond this need not be got out at present.

You will take care and shape all your brickwork to correct dimensions of 9 inch bricks.4

Gandell eventually found Brunel’s lectures too much and he resigned early in February 1840. On the 11th, Brunel wrote to him in the most friendly way:

I have informed the directors of your resignation. I have great pleasure in assuring you that I have been perfectly satisfied with your conduct as my Assistant and that I regret that circumstances should have rendered it necessary that you should leave the works – which you do with perfect credit to yourself.

That part of your district comprising Contracts Nos. 1 & 2S which is now nearly completed and upon which the laying of the permanent rails and preparations of the stations is the principal work remaining to be done will be placed under the charge of Mr Hammond. As to the part beyond the Faringdon Road and in the Bristol Division it is not settled what will be done and I wish to have some further conversation with you. I shall be at Steventon on Thursday next at about 2 o’clock when I should wish to meet you.5

Gandell continued his work for Brunel as the contractor for designing and erecting the Steventon domestic buildings he had largely designed: on 26 November 1840 Brunel wrote to Gandell, referring to the Steventon houses as ‘your houses’. Brunel wrote to Gandell twice on 23 April 1840:

[The first letter said:] I am sorry to have to complain very seriously of the delay at Steventon. We shall open that place on 1 June and there will evidently be neither cottages for our men or stables or any other of those accommodations which you have undertaken to supply. I can assure you this will seriously injure your position with the company. If you can make great exertions and retrieve lost time I would advise you to do so.

[The second letter said:] The business at Steventon will require a larger [illegible – A.V.] than I had provided and certainly the Superintendent, Mr Bell, with a wife and a dozen children cannot live in the house I had proposed.6

Gandell was told to enlarge the original plan for the superintendent’s house.

On 27 April 1840, a letter from Brunel to Gandell gives us a fine insight into the hours that Brunel worked:

Mr Saunders [the company Secretary] and myself will be at Steventon a little before 6am on Wednesday morn, at Wantage (Bear Hotel) for breakfast at 7 and at the Leather Bottle inn at 8. [This was half a mile north of the then-under-construction Faringdon Road station.] I wish particularly to meet you with your plans for the cottage etc.

To carry out that itinerary on horseback would have required some hard galloping and possibly they did that across the fields as a shorter route than following the roads.

Gandell produced the new plans for the super-intendent’s house on 12 May. Brunel was aghast when he received them and wrote at once:

The plans you have sent me for the Superintendent’s house have arrived late and have been printed in reverse. You must use the plans in reverse.7

In spite of the negligible progress noted by Brunel in April, the station cottages and stabling were ready on time for the advertised opening. The railway was extended from Reading to Steventon on Monday 1 June 1840. The day before that the Great Western directors had a private view. The Berkshire Chronicle of 6 June described the private view and public opening thus: