The GWR Handbook E-Book

David Wragg

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 519

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

For many the GWR was synonymous with holidays by the sea in the West Country, but it was built to serve as a fast railway line to London, especially for the merchants and financiers of Bristol. Its operations stretched as far as Merseyside, it provided most services in Wales, and it was the main line to Cardiff, Bristol, Cornwall and Birmingham. This book, a classic first published in 2006, reveals the equipment, stations, network, shipping and air services, bus operations including Western National, and overall reach and history of the GWR. Forming part of a series, along with The LMS Handbook, The LNER Handbook and The Southern Railway Handbook, this new edition provides an authoritative and highly detailed reference of information about the GWR.

Leseprobe

THEGWR HANDBOOK

THE GREAT WESTERN RAILWAY 1923–47

DAVID WRAGG

Cover illustrations. Front, top: HMRS/J. Tatchell ADC501; bottom: © HMRS/J. Minnis AAA822. Back: © Kevin Robertson.

First published by Sutton Publishing, 2006

This edition first published by Haynes Publishing, 2010

Re-issued by The History Press, 2016

The History Press

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This ebook edition first published 2017

© David Wragg, 2006, 2010, 2016

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Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction to the 2016 Edition – Britain’s Oldest Railway

Introduction – Railways in the West and Wales

1. The Ancestors and the Neighbours

2. Paddington – A Temple to Steam

3. Great Western Destinations

4. A New Great Western

5. The Managers

6. Steam on the Great Western

7. Diesels and Gas Turbines

8. Carrying the Goods

9. Travelling Great Western

10. Riviera and Flyer – The Named Expresses

11. Go Great Western

12. Shipping

13. Road Transport

14. Air Services

15. Accidents and the ‘Safety Movement’

16. Developing the Infrastructure

17. Railways at War

18. Railways under Attack

19. Peace and Nationalisation

20. What Might Have Been

Appendix I Locomotive Headcodes and Destination Codes

Appendix II Station Name Changes Post-Grouping

Appendix III Locomotive Shed Codes

Appendix IV GWR Locomotives

Appendix V Diesel Railcars and Shunters

Appendix VI Absorbed Locomotives at the Grouping

Great Western in Preservation

Bibliography

Unknown today is the concept of a farm removal by a special train, as in the case of this one headed by 4–6–0 class 40XX No. 4044 near Bletchington. The locomotive is followed by two horse-boxes and a number of cattle wagons. (HMRS/J. Tatchell ADC500)

Acknowledgements

In writing any book such as this an author is always indebted to those who help with such important matters as, for example, the quest for photographs. In this case I am especially grateful to the late Mr A.E.W ‘Bert’ Colbourn of the Historical Model Railway Society for the use of their considerable archive of material on the Great Western Railway and its predecessors. Thanks are also due to the staff of the National Railway Museum, especially Mr Phillip Atkins, Reading Room Manager, and his colleagues, and to Kevin Robertson for photographs from his books.

David Wragg Edinburgh

Introduction to the 2016 Edition

Britain’s Oldest Railway

Uniquely, in 1937 the Great Western Railway proudly celebrated its centenary. No other British railway could do this as only the Great Western had retained its identity in the massive shake-up and consolidation of Great Britain’s railways in 1923. Typical of the company’s professionalism, the celebration took the form of a new series of passenger carriages, the ‘Centenary Riviera’ rolling stock, for one of its prized express trains, the ‘Cornish Riviera Express’. These had wider bodies than usual, making the most of the space left from the late nineteenth-century change from the old broad gauge to what had become the standard gauge.

The old broad gauge had been controversial. It caused great inconvenience when passengers and goods from other parts of the railway system, then almost twice as extensive as today, had to change from one train to another. Perhaps part of the problem was that the old Great Western had never really used the broad gauge well enough to exploit its advantages, most especially the possibility of higher speed.

While many, including the Reverend Awdry of Tank Engine Thomas fame, were admirers of the Great Western, the old railway had not been without its faults. Awdry said that there were two ways of running a railway, ‘The Great Western way and the wrong way’, and others who maintained that it was ‘God’s Wonderful Railway’ would have agreed with him. Nevertheless, before the many new miles of track were laid in the early twentieth century to shorten some of the main routes, others maintained that the initials GWR meant ‘Great Way Round’. It was also the case that even the new, post-1923 Great Western balanced its increasingly higher speeds with overlong dwell times at stations, and so came the claim that GWR really stood for ‘Goes When Ready’. I remember in the 1970s boarding the ‘Cornish Riviera Express’ at Truro and, even in British Railways Western Region days, hearing a young porter say to another passenger, ‘We don’t leave our passengers behind.’ Perhaps that was why the GWR waited at stations.

There can be no doubt that the years between grouping in 1923 and nationalisation in 1948 were the Great Western’s finest. Sadly, it never reached its 125th anniversary, but it did much in those twenty-five all-too-short years. This was despite the fact that the period was far from propitious. In addition to the varied condition and profitability of the other railways pulled into the Great Western on 1 January 1923, the railways were still recovering from the neglect and overworking of the First World War, when for the first time they were controlled by the state. Skilled labour had been taken away for the front line, either serving in the armed forces or working military trains abroad. This was a period of industrial disputes, especially in the mines, and there was the prolonged miners’ strike of 1926 accompanied by a much shorter General Strike, and then the years of the Great Depression. Coal was important to the Great Western, serving, as it did, the South Wales coalfields, but many export markets were lost to British coal for good when the strike interrupted production.

Despite these difficulties, the Great Western provided new and more appealing passenger rolling stock, and not just for express trains pulled by the magnificent ‘Kings’ and ‘Castles’, which, on exchange with the London & North Eastern Railway, proved to be more economical than the LNER’s own locomotives. The branch lines were not neglected. New streamlined diesel railcars cut the costs of branch line services and increased their appeal. There was even the first British diesel multiple unit (DMU) put into operation between Cardiff and Birmingham, with an ordinary passenger carriage sandwiched between two power cars. It proved so successful that it had to be replaced by a steam-hauled express! For the longer haul, the GWR experimented with gas turbine-powered locomotives, but these really came too late and passed into the new British Railways.

Like the other railways, the Great Western also operated ships, in its case to Southern Ireland and the Channel Islands, with the latter operation co-ordinated with those of the Southern Railway after some over-enthusiastic competition between the masters of the ships of the two companies. The GWR was quick to make use of the freedom to invest in bus services across its area, using its existing fleet-operating feeder services to secure shares in many operators such as Bristol Tramways and Devon General, as well as what became Western National and Western Welsh. Like the other companies, it was slower to move into road haulage, and when the railways did act they acted in unison to buy Pickfords and Carter Paterson.

With the exception of the LNER, the main railway companies were also involved in air transport and did much to establish Britain’s internal air services. The GWR and Southern Railways were the most proactive, and once again collaboration was the key. The first Great Western Airways’ route was from Cardiff to Plymouth, direct by air but a very long way round by rail or, for that matter, road, but it cost the passenger the average weekly wage to fly at the time.

Even now, seven decades on, the name and reputation of the Great Western sounds through the ages. Perhaps GWR really means ‘Gone With Regret’.

David Wragg Edinburgh November 2015

Automatic train control was perhaps the Great Western’s ‘great idea’, enhancing railway safety and no doubt playing its part in giving the company an excellent safety record. This is No. 5063 Earl Baldwin, with the ATC ramp, which when raised sounded a warning, and if not cancelled could stop the train. (Kevin Robertson)

Introduction

Railways in the West and Wales

There are two ways of running a railway; the Great Western Way and the Wrong Way.

Revd W. Awdry

‘If God had been a railwayman,’ the Brigadier said to me, with a gleam in his eye, ‘he would have been a Great Western Railwayman!’ Gleam in the eye or not, one couldn’t doubt that he meant it and that it was said not completely in jest. No railway has become so ingrained in the public consciousness as the Great Western. This remains true even though some six decades have passed since the Great Western was taken over by the state, along with the other three of the so-called ‘Big Four’ railway companies that were created by the grouping that came into being on 1 January 1923. Of course, the Great Western was different. For a start, there was a Great Western Railway on 31 December 1922 and there was still a Great Western Railway on 1 January 1923. Legally and politically, it was a different company, or was it? After all, grouping added less than a further 25 per cent of route mileage to the Great Western, so it dominated the other companies completely. It was the only one of the so-called ‘Western Group’ of companies that ran to London, as well as being more than four times larger than the rest combined. By celebrating its centenary in 1935, the Great Western really drove the point home, for as far as its management was concerned, it really was still the same railway. A cartoon in the first post-grouping issue of The Great Western Railway Magazine was entitled ‘A Survival of Title’.

By contrast, the London, Midland & Scottish had to suffer years of rivalry between those who supported the London & North Western way of doing things and those who supported the Midland Railway way of doing things, and even a few who took the Lancashire & Yorkshire approach. The Southern at times still seemed to be three different railways, something emphasised by its divisional structure. The London & North Eastern also seemed to regionalise itself, perhaps because life at King’s Cross was so different from that at Liverpool Street, and indeed the Great Northern and the Great Eastern do seem to have been two self-contained railways that should never have been merged.

But there was more to it than that. A quick glance at the titles of some of the books on the Great Western will give you more than a clue. They shout out how people felt about the company, playing on the initials ‘GWR’ with titles such as Gone With Regret, while many will say that it stood for ‘God’s Wonderful Railway’ or ‘Great Way Round’. The latter was not always a compliment, as until it started its programme of building more direct routes in the early years of the twentieth century, many did suggest that GWR meant taking the great way round, and even the rival London & South Western’s route between London and Plymouth was competitive.

Those who had worked for one of the other railways that had been ordered to become part of the Great Western must have found it difficult at first. Those from the Cambrian must have felt that they were looked down upon as coming from a markedly inferior railway. At the Taff Vale and the Cardiff, the desire of the politicians to merge railway companies after the First World War must have had more than a hint of irony as both had planned their own merger in about 1908, and been refused permission by the very same politicians.

Perhaps the truth is that the Great Western was the one grouping that worked and made sense. One could argue over the Southern, and really the Great Northern and Great Eastern should and could have been kept separate, while the same could be said about the Midland and the London & North Western. Nowhere was the creation of the post-grouping GWR more necessary and more beneficial than in South Wales, where an integrated railway network materialised for the first time.

It would be grossly unfair to say that the great times began with grouping. Rather, it had all started earlier. The GWR’s greatest years were those that followed the abandonment of the broad gauge and effectively ended with the outbreak of the Second World War, despite the difficulties caused by recession. Great Western railwaymen did their best to ensure that they got through the even more difficult war years that followed, despite the threat of state ownership.

The irony was that it was the Great Western and the derailment at Sonning on Christmas Eve 1841 that forced Parliament to take an interest in the railways. Parliament found that third-class passengers were being conveyed on flat trucks without sides, those with sides being reserved for second-class passengers, while only first-class travellers had a roof over their heads. Parliament took a hand, insisting on cheap ‘Parliamentary trains’ with covered rolling stock, but the rolling stock was bleak and the trains slow, as they had to call at every station.

It was not legislation that really improved the lot of the third-class passenger, but an ambitious and daring railway management with a strong competitive instinct. Yet that was not the Great Western. The big step forward came when the Midland Railway abolished second-class fares and scrapped its, admittedly small, stock of third-class carriages. Gradually, other railway companies were forced to fall in line because of competitive pressures. They couldn’t abolish third-class travel as that was effectively protected by the ‘Parliamentary train’ legislation, but they could, and did, start to treat the third-class passenger as an increasingly valuable and valued customer during the fourth quarter of the nineteenth century.

Like the Southern Railway, the Great Western Railway worked hard at improving services on its branch lines between the wars, and showed the way towards a more efficient railway with its espousal of diesel railcars not just for the branches but also for what might today be described as ‘secondary main lines’. Both railway companies were quick to see the potential of air transport, but this postwar opportunity was denied them, with air transport being nationalised even earlier than the railways themselves.

Work on improving speeds during the 1930s helped to ensure that railway travel remained not merely competitive, but also became fashionable. All the time the GWR was looking ahead, and its management was always abreast of developments elsewhere. It created strong integrated bus companies by merging its own extensive bus network into the emerging local bus companies, creating Western National and Western Welsh and laying the foundations for Crosville, for example. It also started what would today be known as ‘bustitution’, with bus services replacing the less viable and less attractive branch lines.

Passenger comfort was enhanced by new rolling stock, but even the Great Western could only move forward as quickly as passengers would allow it, and corridor coaches with end doors had to wait some time as there was customer resistance at first. Nevertheless, the extra width of the 1935 rolling stock for the ‘Cornish Riviera’ definitely put the passenger first, while the experiments with buffet cars brought refreshment aboard trains within reach of many more passengers.

This is the story of a railway for which the highest standards were the only standard. It had self-belief and confidence, and while conservative on some issues, was open-minded and interested in change when it could be convinced that this was the way forward. It had a clear identity that went beyond colour schemes, typefaces and branding and extended into the very style of its stations, locomotives and carriages. No wonder it was missed by so many.

Alas! The curtain falls, the lights are low:

Pride of Brunel, now it is time to go;

But when old days are dim, when we have gone.

May all thy grand traditions still live on.

Final verse of a poem by N. Ross Murray in the final edition of The Great Western Railway Magazine, December, 1947.

There was an inevitable sense of triumph in this cartoon in the first post-grouping issue of The Great Western Railway Magazine in January 1923, reproduced from the South Wales News. The ‘old’ GWR accounted for more than 80 per cent of the new company’s route mileage, and more than three-quarters of its personnel.

That this was no ordinary railway company can be judged from this souvenir menu cover for a dinner given to GWR employees at Weston-super-Mare by the local season ticket holders in March 1924. Clearly the season ticket holders arrived home just as the day-trippers were thinking of leaving! (The Great Western Railway Magazine)

Chapter One

The Ancestors and the Neighbours

Although the Great Western has been widely acclaimed as the railway company with the longest history and the only one to survive the grouping of 1923, the railway company that emerged on 1 January 1923 was a different company from that which had been formed in the 1830s. The famous grouping imposed by the Railways Act 1921 did not create new railway companies by name, but instead described them as ‘groups’, of which the Great Western re-emerged from the ‘Western Group’. In each case, the new groups consisted of larger companies, known as constituent companies, and smaller companies that were described simply as subsidiary companies, as indeed some already were. It is important to bear in mind that the original Great Western Railway was just one of the constituent companies, but through being by far the largest and the only one with a true main-line network and access to London, it was the one that prevailed.

Under the terms of the Act, the Western Group constituent companies numbered seven. These were the original Great Western Railway; Barry Railway; Cambrian Railway; Cardiff Railway; Rhymney Railway; Taff Vale Railway; and the Alexandra (Newport & South Wales) Docks & Railway. One important difference between these and the subsidiary companies was that all were entitled to have a representative on the board of the merged entity. This stipulation was not always well received by the Great Western Railway directors. The Taff Vale they could accept, as there had been close links between the two companies, but the Cambrian, with the largest route mileage, was something of a disaster financially and operationally, while the Cardiff was a financial liability.

Subsidiary companies within the Western Group, of which there were twenty-seven, included the Brecon & Merthyr Tydfil Junction Railway; Burry Port & Gwendraeth Valley Railway; Cleobury Mortimer & Ditton Priors Light Railway; Didcot, Newbury & Southampton Railway; Exeter Railway; Forest of Dean Central Railway; Gwendraeth Valleys Railway; Lampeter, Aberaeron & New Quay Light Railway; Liskeard & Looe Railway; Llanelly & Mynydd Mawr Railway; Mawddwy Railway; Midland & South Western Junction Railway; Neath & Brecon Railway; Penarth Extension Railway; Penarth Harbour Dock & Railway; Port Talbot Railway & Docks; Princetown Railway; Rhondda & Swansea Bay Railway; Ross & Monmouth Railway; South Wales Mineral Railway; Teign Valley Railway; Vale of Glamorgan Railway; Van Railway; Welshpool & Llanfair Light Railway; West Somerset Railway; and Wrexham & Ellesmere Railway. Of these, all but one were absorbed on 1 January 1923, with the sole exception being the Midland & South Western Junction Railway because of prolonged negotiations over the terms of its transfer to the GWR. Eventually, agreement was reached and the MSWJ was taken into GWR ownership in September 1923. Some of these companies were effectively within the Great Western fold already, being operated by it, while others were part of other railways, with the Van Railway being operated by the Cambrian.

Most of the constituent subsidiary companies had their own history but the Great Western dominated the group, and therefore managed to avoid the infighting between the London & North Western and the Midland Railway that so afflicted the London, Midland & Scottish, or what became almost effectively a continuance of the pre-grouping situation on the Southern. However, each company deserves some consideration here, starting with the constituent companies and then the subsidiary companies.

The ‘old’ GWR was to be represented for many years after the grouping by its locomotives and carriages, with the former including this 0–6–0 Dean goods locomotive, seen in Swindon shed in 1930. (HMRS AAC029)

Apart from prolonged negotiations ensuring that the Midland & South Western Junction Railway did not become part of the ‘new’ Great Western until September 1923, other companies not mentioned in the legislation later passed to the Great Western Railway. These included the Weston, Clevedon & Portishead Light Railway and the Corris Railway, while the Hammersmith & City Railway, the underground line that was the joint property of the Great Western Railway and the Metropolitan Railway, did not need to be covered in the legislation.

In this chapter the constituent companies of the grouped Great Western Railway are all covered along with the significant subsidiaries, while to give a complete picture the Hammersmith & City Railway and the many independent railways that survived alongside the Great Western are also covered.

Constituent Companies

The Great Western Railway

By the early nineteenth century Bristol had long been one of the most important cities in the United Kingdom, and it was not surprising that a number of proposals for a railway between London and Bristol were promoted from 1824 onwards. The first of these to have any impact was that of the Great Western Railway in 1832, which originated in a desire among the merchants and financiers of Bristol for a fast railway line to London. Their first attempt to gain parliamentary sanction in 1834 failed, but in 1835 authorisation was obtained and the GWR was able to raise capital of £2.5 million, equal to about £140 million today, and a further £830,000 (£45 million today) in loans. The new company had as its engineer the young Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who convinced the directors of the merits of his scheme for a broad gauge railway, which he judged, rightly, to offer the prospect of higher speeds. To the objection that this would result in difficulties in through operation with other companies, he suggested that in areas where company boundaries met, the issue could be resolved through laying mixed gauge track, something that did not work easily or effectively in practice.

Managed by the company secretary, Charles Saunders, the GWR and Brunel wasted little time, and in 1838 operations began between London and a station close to Maidenhead in Berkshire. Brunel ordered locomotives true to his vision of a high-speed railway, but the first locomotives had, of course, to operate what was in effect an outer-suburban service, although it would not have been recognised as such at the time. The locomotives became the responsibility of the first locomotive superintendent, Daniel Gooch.

The entire 116-mile line from London to Bristol via Bath was opened in 1841, but costs had risen from a projected £3.3 million to more than £6 million. Many shareholders blamed Brunel for the slow completion and the high price, regarding his broad gauge as a mistake, and had even tried to get rid of him in 1839. Undoubtedly, broad gauge was more expensive to build than standard gauge, but given the fact that civil engineering technology was in its infancy, the trustworthiness of any estimate of completion costs at the time would seem to have been doubtful.

From what might be regarded as its trunk route, the GWR soon expanded, with branches to Basingstoke, Gloucester, Hungerford, Oxford and Windsor opened by 1849, while other companies supported by the GWR had also extended the line from Bristol to Plymouth using the same broad gauge. Gloucester had been reached in 1845, and the worst nightmares of the sceptics came true as the GWR met the standard gauge Birmingham & Gloucester Railway. The confusion only became worse when the Midland Railway leased the broad gauge Bristol & Gloucester, intending to link it into the standard gauge, so that in 1854 standard gauge trains were able to reach Bristol using mixed gauge track.

The considerable amount of space at track level that was the legacy of the broad gauge can be seen clearly in this splendid photograph of 4-6-0 60XX No. 6003 King Henry IV heading an express while still in ‘as new’ condition. (HMRS/J. Tatchell ADG035)

Meanwhile, the GWR was racing ahead of its competitors, almost literally, with the introduction of express trains between London and Exeter in 1845 that covered the 194 miles of the route via Bristol at 43mph, including three stops, making these the world’s fastest expresses at the time. Expansion included the opening of a mixed gauge line from London to Birmingham in 1852, bringing the GWR into direct competition with the London & North Western Railway. Two years later, the GWR purchased the Shrewsbury & Birmingham and Shrewsbury & Chester companies, and with running powers to Birkenhead found itself with a route network that extended as far north as Merseyside. When the Cornwall Railway opened in 1859, this proved to be a satellite of the GWR and its allies, who had subscribed a fifth of its capital, and by 1867 through trains were running from London to Penzance.

Not content with the West, the Great Western had already ventured into Wales well before this time. In 1845 the GWR’s satellite South Wales Railway obtained parliamentary approval for a broad gauge line from the GWR near Gloucester through to the coast at Fishguard. It opened to Carmarthen in 1852, but never reached Fishguard, being diverted instead to Milford Haven, which it reached in 1856, and from which steamers plied to Waterford in Ireland. The broad gauge of the SWR meant that through trains could run from South Wales to London and the Midlands, but all of the valley lines bringing coal to the SWR were built to standard gauge, and so costly transshipment was necessary. The SWR and the West Midland Railway were both absorbed into the Great Western in 1865, giving it a total route mileage of 1,105 miles. By this time the mixed gauge had been extended from Oxford to London, the work being carried out between 1856 and 1861.

The broad gauge was especially unpopular in South Wales, as it inhibited efficient movement of coal and iron ore. It took strong pressure from industrialists and mine owners to persuade the GWR to convert the SWR to standard gauge, but when the argument was won and the decision taken, the entire 300 miles was switched, with completion taking just one weekend in 1872. By 1876, the only substantial remaining broad-gauge operation was that from Penzance to London.

The railway insolvency crisis of 1866 had forced considerable economies on the company, by this time under the chairmanship of its one-time locomotive superintendent Daniel Gooch. Nevertheless, investors had great confidence in the GWR, which was just as well since the average dividend between 1841 and 1879 amounted to just 3.8 per cent. There were also heavy investments still to be made, of which the most significant by far was the Severn Tunnel, built between 1873 and 1886, at which time it was the longest underwater tunnel in the world. The need for economy and the demands of the Severn Tunnel may have been behind the lack of further significant route extensions during the years up to 1900, although the system did in fact grow owing to the absorption of other companies, so that by 1900 the GWR had 2,526 route miles, the longest of any of Britain’s railways. Financial difficulty certainly lay behind the limitations on investment in rolling stock, although innovation was not completely lacking, with the first insulated vans for frozen meat being introduced during the 1870s. To its credit, the company also operated safely, having just one fatal accident between 1874 and 1936.

Daniel Gooch died in office in 1889 at the age of seventy-three, being given the credit for saving the company, but blamed by many for economies that were excessive and in the end counter-productive. His successors returned to developing the company, with successive superintendents of the line reshaping the passenger services, while first William Dean and then later, after 1902, George Churchward, started to produce a line of worthy locomotives.

Progress was aided by the abolition of the broad gauge by 1892, so that through carriages could be offered between Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds to the fast-growing resort of Torquay. Restaurant cars were introduced in 1896, the company having freed itself of the compulsory refreshment stop at Swindon the previous year by offering the owners of the refreshment rooms £100,000 (£8,450,000 at today’s prices) in compensation. By 1899 there were quadruple tracks over the entire 53 miles between London and Didcot.

A pre-grouping photograph of the first King George, this time 4–6–0 40XX No. 4014, in 1910. It is interesting to note the different forms of putting the company’s name on locomotive tenders over the years. (HMRS/J. Tatchell ADB403)

The early years of the twentieth century saw a renewed vigour in the GWR. The last three decades of the previous century had seen limited attention paid to development of its own route network, and much traffic had passed to competitors offering more direct services – so much so that many wags described the GWR as the ‘Great Way Round’. Competition alone did not inspire all of the ‘cut-off’ routes built in the period between 1903 and 1910, however, as the most significant was the new direct route from London to Cardiff, on which the company had a monopoly, bypassing Bath and Bristol, and at a distance of 145 miles saving 10 miles over the route via Bath and 35 miles compared with that via Gloucester. London to Exeter received a new direct route of 174 miles, instead of the previous 194 miles that had compared so badly with the London & South Western’s 172 miles. In conjunction with the Great Central, a more direct route was opened between London and Birmingham, cutting the distance from 129 miles to 111 miles, making it more competitive with the London & North Western’s 113 miles. These routes required considerable new construction, with 30 miles of new track for the Cardiff line, 33 for Exeter and no fewer than 58 for the Birmingham route.

The new routes were accompanied by new carriages hauled by Churchward’s excellent new locomotives, so that journey times started to fall considerably, while from 1906 onwards the company became pioneer of automatic train protection. That same year the company built a large new harbour at Fishguard and introduced three turbine-powered packet steamers for the Irish market, while between 1909 and 1914 it provided boat trains for passengers off Cunard transatlantic liners, taking them to London from Fishguard (261 miles) in 4½ hours, after building a line into the harbour.

The GWR had a relatively quiet First World War, but afterwards tried first to fight off the proposed grouping, and then fought to have the six other constituent companies regarded as subsidiary companies so as not to have to provide a seat for a representative of each on the parent board. In both confrontations it was unsuccessful.

Alexandra (Newport & South Wales) Docks & Railway

As the name implies, this was originally a dock company, formed in 1865 to build a new dock at Newport. It took ten years to complete the work because of the company’s financial weakness, but once it was finished local business interests argued that a railway connection with the Rhondda would enable it to attract a share of the booming South Wales coal traffic. In 1878 the Pontypridd, Caerphilly & Newport Railway was established, with running powers over the lines of five other railways to bring coal to Newport docks, and this opened in 1884. In preparation for the opening of the new railways, the Alexandra changed from being a ‘docks’ company to a ‘docks and railway’ in 1882, and in 1887 it purchased the Pontypridd, Caerphilly & Newport Railway. While freight, and especially coal, was the predominant traffic, a passenger service between Pontypridd and Newport was introduced, but this passed to the Great Western in 1899, leaving the Alexandra’s passenger services confined to a service between Pontypridd and Caerphilly. Meanwhile, the docks prospered and grew, with further expansion in the years leading up to the outbreak of the First World War, when the company managed to pay a dividend of 5 per cent. The actual railway route mileage owned by the company amounted to just 9.5 miles, making it the smallest of any of the constituent companies covered by the Railways Act 1921.

Barry Railway

As demand for coal grew during the second half of the nineteenth century the docks at Cardiff soon proved to be completely inadequate to meet the demand, and the pressure increased to use other ports for the export of the coal. A group of mine owners pressed to build a new dock at Barry, to the west of Cardiff, in 1883, but faced opposition from the Taff Vale and Rhymney railway companies. However, in 1884 they were successful and obtained parliamentary approval. The company was allowed to build a 19-mile-long line from Trehafod, to the north of Pontypridd, where it had a junction with the Taff Vale, and three short branches. The line opened in February 1889, followed in July by the new port, with a dock area of 73 acres, which was increased to 120 acres in 1898. Later, there were also connections with the Great Western at Bridgend, established in 1900, and with the Brecon & Merthyr Railway near Caerphilly in 1905.

The new port was an immediate success, so that by 1892 its traffic equalled a third of that of Cardiff, and by the outbreak of the First World War it handled as much coal as Cardiff and Penarth combined. It was the only truly railway-owned port, but depended on its connection with other railways for most of its traffic. The commercial success was reflected in the dividends paid, which during the period 1894–1920 averaged 9.5–10 per cent. On the debit side, much of this economic success was the result of overzealous cost-cutting, with as many as a third of its locomotives out of service awaiting repairs.

Cambrian Railway

The Cambrian Railway was by far the largest of the constituent companies absorbed into the Great Western in 1923. Despite its title, a significant part of its overall route mileage of 295 miles lay over the border in England, including Oswestry, its headquarters and main works. Home territory for the Cambrian was the unlikely and sparsely populated area of mid-Wales, so underdeveloped that the first locomotives for one of its predecessors, the Llanidloes & Newtown Railway opened in 1859, were delivered by horse teams

The Cambrian Railway was formed in 1864 from four small companies, the Llanidloes & Newtown Railway, Oswestry & Newtown Railway, Newtown & Machynlleth Railway and the Oswestry, Ellesmere and Whitchurch Railway, as a defensive measure to keep the English railway companies away from mid-Wales. The new company was joined the following year by the Aberystwyth & Welsh Coast Railway, almost doubling its track mileage. A further major expansion came in 1888, when it took over the working of the Mid Wales Railway, which operated between Moat Lane and Talyllyn Junction, but had running powers through to Brecon. The largest town on the Cambrian network was Wrexham, served by the Wrexham & Ellesmere Railway which became part of the Cambrian in 1895. The Cambrian also absorbed or worked several other railways, including the 6½-mile Van Railway, completed in 1871, the Mawddwy Railway, also of around 6½ miles, running through the Upper Dovey Valley, and the 19½-mile Tanat Valley Light Railway, dating from 1904. There were also two narrow gauge lines, the 1ft 11½in Vale of Rheidol Railway, opened in 1902, and the 2ft 6in-gauge Welshpool & Llanfair Light Railway opened the following year.

In terms of route miles, but not numbers of locomotives, the Cambrian Railway was the largest company absorbed at the grouping, but relatively few of its locomotives were retained by the Great Western post-grouping. This is one ex-Cambrian locomotive, 0–6–0 CAM15, renumbered 844, still in pre-grouping condition as this was still only 1923, believed to be in the station at Harlech. (HMRS/J.P. Richards ACC507)

Serving such a difficult area, the Cambrian, despite the nationalist leanings of its founders, soon became heavily dependent upon several of the major English companies for through traffic, and inevitably these included the Great Western at Oswestry as well as the Midland at Three Cocks Junction and, its closest associate, the London & North Western at Whitchurch and Welshpool. The two main lines for the Cambrian, both of which handled considerable holiday traffic, were the 96 miles between Whitchurch and Aberystwyth and the 54 miles from Dovey Junction to Pwllheli.

Given the unpromising traffic of its territory, the Cambrian remained impoverished for its entire existence, with much single track. It went bankrupt twice, and was often accused of being badly run. Nevertheless, in 1913 it carried 3 million passengers and a million tons of goods traffic. It suffered a major accident at Abermule in January 1921, when an express hit a stopping train head-on, killing seventeen people and injuring many more, giving rise to much debate over the safety of single-line railways.

The longest route and track mileage inherited at grouping by the Great Western was that of the Cambrian Railway, an impoverished company mainly serving rural mid-Wales and the borders, so that no doubt the arrival of a curved-frame ‘Duke’ class locomotive on its main line was seen as an improvement. (Kevin Robertson)

The GWR was disappointed that the Cambrian became a constituent company, no doubt to the delight of the latter railway’s shareholders who received a guaranteed income for the first time.

Cardiff Railway

The Cardiff Railway had its origins in the Cardiff Docks. The growing port had originally depended on a canal to bring coal to the docks for transshipment, but this proved inadequate as the demand for coal rose, and the situation was not resolved until the Taff Vale Railway opened from Merthyr Tydfil in 1841. The TVR was later joined by the Rhymney Railway in 1858, while the docks at Cardiff continued to expand. Additional port facilities were opened 2 miles away at Penarth from 1859 to 1865, with a railway connection leased to the TVR. While the Great Western Railway had reached Cardiff as early as 1850, its broad gauge was ill-suited to the conditions in the valleys, where standard gauge ruled completely, and so it carried little coal traffic until after the coal and iron masters succeeded in securing a conversion to standard gauge in 1872.

Nevertheless, the docks and the TVR and Rhymney lines to Cardiff had themselves become so congested by 1882 that the mine owners secured powers to build the Rhondda & Swansea Bay Railway, determined to move their traffic away from Cardiff. In 1884 other coal-mining interests obtained authority to build a new port at Barry, 8 miles from Cardiff, with its own Barry Railway operating down the Rhondda. The new port and railway opened in 1889, and with the support of the mine owners started to take traffic away from Cardiff, although the port survived as coal output doubled between 1889 and 1913, so that there was sufficient business to keep all of the port facilities busy. It was not until 1897 that the Cardiff Docks obtained parliamentary approval to change its name to the Cardiff Railway and build new lines northwards to connect with the Taff Vale at Treforest and at Pontypridd, creating a further 11½ route miles in addition to the existing 120 track miles within the Bute Docks (named after the local landowner, the Marquis of Bute). The Cardiff Railway had its own locomotives and two steam railcars for passenger traffic. Yet even so, given the heavy concentration of competing and connecting lines and inter-port rivalry, the company soon found itself in protracted disputes with other railways and costly litigation. This must have been a factor in the poor financial performance of the Cardiff Railway, with its shareholders getting a dividend of just 1 per cent in 1921 compared with 9 per cent at the Rhymney.

A proposal to merge with the Taff Vale and the Rhymney in the years before the First World War was vetoed by Parliament, which a little more than a decade later was to force these two companies and others to combine into the new GWR. Nevertheless, even before the grouping the three companies came under a single general manager.

Rhymney Railway

The Rhymney Railway was preceded by an old tramway connecting the Rhymney Ironworks with Newport, known locally as the ‘Old Rumney Railway’. In 1851 the Marquis of Bute encouraged the company to replace the tramway with a railway to serve the new dock being built at Cardiff. The Rhymney Railway obtained the necessary consent in 1854/5, running down the right bank of the Rhymney Valley, and opened in 1858 thanks to running powers over part of the Taff Vale Railway. Finding itself hosting a competitor, the Taff Vale raised its charges, and in one case it took litigation by the Rhymney to force the Taff Vale to reduce its charges by 80 per cent. Seeking a solution by leasing itself to the Bute Trustees, the Rhymney was refused parliamentary consent, a measure that had it been allowed may well have forestalled the creation of the Cardiff Railway. Growing coal traffic solved the problem, with the Rhymney becoming profitable during the 1860s, and in 1864 it obtained approval to build its own line into Cardiff, which opened in 1871. That same year also saw an extension opened between Rhymney and Nantybwch to connect with the London & North Western Railway, and another extension into the Aberdare Valley, largely with the help of running powers over the Great Western Railway. The heavily graded Taff Bargoed line was built jointly with the GWR and reached Dowlais in 1876 and Merthyr Tydfil in 1886. Meanwhile, most of the original lines that had been laid as single track were doubled.

The cost of this expansion was that the company could not afford a dividend as late as 1875, yet tight managerial control saw this rise to 10.5 per cent before the end of the century, despite competition after 1889 from the Barry and Brecon & Merthyr railways. The Rhymney eventually found itself with two major traffic-generating points, Cardiff and Caerphilly, with locomotive repair works opened in the latter town in 1902, while the station was rebuilt in 1913 to cater for the growing passenger traffic. In 1909/10, the Taff Vale also tried to include the Rhymney in its takeover of the Cardiff Railway, but as mentioned above, Parliament refused to authorise this move. Nevertheless, the Rhymney’s manager, E.A. Prosser, became manager of the other two companies and worked all three as one, doubtless obtaining many of the benefits of a merger, possibly without some of the short-term costs.

Taff Vale Railway

At first, coal was moved from the valleys in South Wales to the Bute Docks at Cardiff by the Glamorganshire Canal, opened in 1798, which moved coal and iron from Merthyr Tydfil. As production rose, the canal proved inadequate, and in 1836 the Taff Vale Railway received parliamentary approval to build a line over the 24 miles between Merthyr and Cardiff. Although Brunel was appointed as the engineer, the standard gauge was adopted, doubtless to aid construction in the narrow valleys, although the line presented no significant engineering challenges. In 1839 the new Bute West Dock opened in Cardiff, and the Taff Vale opened in 1841. Two branches were soon added, and a further branch followed in 1845, between Abercynon and Aberdare, which had been the source of much of the coal from South Wales, although this was soon overtaken by the Rhondda.

The GWR took over some of the passenger services of its constituent companies, such as the Taff Vale Railway, even before the grouping took effect, as this 1922 timetable (upper) for services between Cardiff and Treherbert shows. By 1938 (lower) services had not only become more frequent, but they were also quicker. (Bradshaw)

The TVR was quick to enjoy considerable prosperity, paying an average dividend of 5 per cent during the 1850s, but by the 1880s it achieved a record of 14.9 per cent between 1880 and 1888, the highest dividend paid by any UK company over such a long period. This performance was all the more notable because of growing competition, most significantly from the Rhymney Railway after 1858, while the Bute Trustees, originally supporters of the TVR, soon switched to the Rhymney. The TVR responded by building a new port 2 miles down the River Taff at Penarth, leasing the operating company from 1862. As the congestion in the Cardiff docks continued to worsen, mine owners supported the building of yet another new port at Barry, with its own railway, which was another competitor for the TVR after 1889.

Not everything the TVR built turned to gold, and the 7-mile line built in 1892 to the small port of Aberthaw never succeeded in challenging the operations at Barry. Passenger traffic began to be encouraged during the 1890s, when services were increased by 40 per cent. Incredibly, in 1916 the TVR was able to obtain a court ruling to prevent the Cardiff Railway from opening a competing line near Taff’s Well. Earlier, in 1909/10, plans to merge with the Cardiff and Rhymney railways were rejected by Parliament, but the three companies were then run by the same general manager until merged into the GWR in 1923.

Subsidiary Companies and Later Acquisitions

Many of the so-called subsidiary companies were small, often worked by larger neighbouring companies, and some simply filled gaps in the network, having been built under separate parliamentary sanction.

Brecon & Merthyr Tydfil Junction Railway

Given the size of some of the companies that became constituents of the new Great Western, and the financial problems besetting the Cambrian, it must have seemed strange that the Brecon & Merthyr Tydfil Junction Railway did not become a constituent company of the so-called ‘Western Group’ of companies. Nevertheless, the BMTJR was a complex operation, basically being divided into two by a 2½-mile section of the Rhymney Railway between Deri Junction and Bargoed South Junction, and although it possessed running powers, this must have been viewed as a structural weakness.

The northern section of the BMTJR was authorised in 1858 and opened in 1867, running between Brecon and Merthyr Tydfil. South of the Rhymney Railway, the southern section ran to Basseleg and over 3 miles of the Great Western Railway to Newport. This was also achieved by buying the ‘Old Rumney Railway’ in 1861, and using its route down the left bank of the River Rhymney to build a new railway that opened in 1865. The Old ‘Rumney’s’ upper portion was also pressed into use and in 1905 was linked to the Barry Railway so that coal and ore could be brought down for shipment at Barry. This complicated system led to many problems with its neighbouring lines and made profitability difficult to achieve, while much of the 60 route miles was troublesome to operate.

Burry Port & Gwendraeth Valley Railway

Burry Port, to the west of Llanelli and south of Carmarthen, was one of the ports developed by the owners of the coal mines in response to the growing congestion at the older ports, despite the opening of new port facilities. The Burry Port & Gwendraeth Valley Railway linked the port, which never became sizeable, with the mines in the Gwendraeth Valley, and was very much a minor player. The line was 21 miles long and officially not supposed to carry passengers, who arrived on the line as ‘trespassers’, but were tolerated so long as they paid 6d for the carriage of their shopping basket!

Cleobury Mortimer & Ditton Priors Light Railway

Built under a light railway order of 1901, this railway retained its independence until taken over by the Great Western Railway in 1922. It ran for 12 miles from Cleobury Mortimer, to the west of Kidderminster in Shropshire, to serve quarries at Ditton Priors, but it also carried agricultural traffic. It opened to goods traffic in July 1908 and to passengers the following November, with halts at Cleobury Town, Stottesdon and Burwarton. Over its short length, there were no fewer than thirteen level crossings and many gradients. In common with many light railways, there were no signals and it was usually worked on the basis of ‘a single engine in steam’.

There were only a few four-wheeled passenger carriages, and the GWR withdrew the passenger service on 26 September 1938, although the line remained open for goods traffic.

Liskeard & Looe Railway

This company emerged as an extension of the Liskeard & Caradon Railway opened from Moorswater, where it joined the Liskeard & Looe Union Canal, to South Caradon in November 1844, and extended to Cheesewring Quarries in 1846. Gravity working was used for the loaded wagons carrying tin ore and granite, which were returned to the head of the line using horses. The extension to Looe running alongside the banks of the canal opened at the end of 1860, and from 1862 the line throughout was worked by the Caradon Railway, which shortly afterwards introduced locomotives. Initially passengers on the Caradon could travel on mineral wagons by the expedient of paying for the transport of a parcel, and receiving a ‘free’ pass. Passenger carriages were introduced on the Caradon line from 1860, and on the line to Looe from 1879.

The connection with the main line using a steeply graded and tight loop from Coombe Junction was opened in May 1901, and passenger traffic trebled almost immediately, but the ore and stone traffic was in sharp decline by this time. The Great Western Railway took over working of the Looe and Caradon lines in 1909, but the latter system was abandoned in 1916. The Liskeard & Looe Railway survived to be absorbed into the GWR in 1923. As late as 1935 a scheme was mooted for a new direct line from St Germans, which would have been easier to work, but this was not built.

Llanelly & Mynydd Mawr Railway

This was a small privately owned railway built by an Edinburgh railway contractor on the route of an old tramway, which dated from 1806, in return for a share of the receipts. He also provided the rolling stock. Although authorised in 1875, the line was not opened until 1883. It ran for 12 miles from Llanelly. Unusually, the locomotives all carried names without numbers.

Midland & South Western Junction Railway

Last to be absorbed into the Great Western, gaining almost nine months’ extra independence, the Midland & South Western Junction provided an important link between the Midlands and the growing port of Southampton, but had a difficult early life.

Owing largely to the efforts of the London & South Western Railway, Southampton’s importance as a port grew throughout the nineteenth century, so that it became a significant centre and worthy of consideration for a through line from the Midlands rather than having all traffic directed through London. As early as 1845 the initial plan was for a line from Cheltenham to Southampton, but in fact the line eventually had to be built in two stages, first as the Swindon, Marlborough & Andover Railway, authorised in 1873 and completed in 1881, and then as the Swindon & Cheltenham Extension Railway which opened in 1891, and reached Cheltenham over the Great Western Railway, by which time the two lines had merged to form the Midland & South Western Junction Railway. The 62 route miles proved costly to build, and the original Swindon, Marlborough & Andover received financial assistance from its contractors. Although not strictly speaking a contractor’s line, once opened it passed into receivership, where it stayed until 1897.

The MSWJR was rescued by Sam Fay, who was seconded to the company in 1892 from the LSWR as receiver and general manager. Fortunately, Fay felt that the line held considerable potential and upgraded the system, including a new line to avoid the GWR at Savernake. Fay remained until after the company returned to solvency in 1897 and did not return to the LSWR for another two years, by which time one contemporary railway commentator credited him with having ‘made an empty sack stand upright’. The MSWJR had branches connecting it to the GWR at Swindon and to the military base at Tidworth, the station on the line with the highest receipts. The value of the line lay in the potential for through carriages to run to and from Southampton, with Sheffield and Birmingham served in this way from 1893, followed later by Bradford, Leeds, Liverpool and Manchester, while for a period carriages ran from Whitehaven to Southampton carrying emigrants.

Disputes over the value of the Midland & South Western led to a delay in it being absorbed into the Great Western in 1923.

Neath & Brecon Railway

One of the least hopeful projects, the Neath & Brecon Railway acquired the powers of two predecessor companies, both unsuccessful, and opened its 72 route miles between 1867 and 1873. The line ran through sparsely populated country, with no towns of any significance, and even the coal traffic was relatively meagre. The N&BR passed into receivership in 1873, despite which by 1877 costs exceeded revenue by no less than 238 per cent. The line was only saved by the Midland Railway’s ambitions, in this case to grow traffic from Birmingham and Hereford to Swansea by taking running powers over the N&BR, while at the southern end of the line, coal traffic was sufficient to be profitable.

The Midland & South Western Junction Railway resisted grouping for as long as possible, largely to obtain better terms from the GWR. This was that company’s No. 24, renumbered 1008 by the GWR. It is seen here at Swindon in 1927, and was later rebuilt to conform to GWR specifications in 1930. (HMRS/J. Minnis AAA820)

Port Talbot Railway & Docks

Pressure for port space in South Wales during the nineteenth century saw the development of new dock facilities at a number of locations, including Port Talbot, where docks were built from 1835 to serve the copper industry at nearby Cwmavon. Coal traffic did not become significant until 1870. In 1894, to protect and encourage this traffic, the Port Talbot Railway was authorised and opened in 1897–8, with two lines from Maesteg and Tonmawr, to the north of Cwmavon. The railway also acquired the docks. The total route was just 48 miles, but the dock and railway company was profitable, and the Great Western took over operation of the railway in 1908, although the docks operated separately.

Princetown Railway

The standard gauge Princetown Railway took over the abandoned Plymouth & Dartmoor Railway above Yelverton in 1883, as the latter company was having difficulty in finishing the work. The Plymouth & Dartmoor had been promoted primarily for quarry traffic and used the unusual gauge of 4ft 6in. The route of the Princetown Railway, a subsidiary of the GWR, was over the 10½ miles from Yelverton to Horridge, much of it over former Plymouth & Dartmoor infrastructure, and while some traffic from the King Tor Quarry was carried, in practice the main business was transporting prison officers and convicts, and supplies, to Dartmoor Prison. It also attracted some excursion traffic.

Rhondda & Swansea Bay Railway

Yet another of the coal lines built to bypass the pressure on the docks at Cardiff, the Rhondda & Swansea Bay Railway ran from Treherbert to Briton Ferry with a 2-mile-long tunnel. Opened in 1890, the line developed into a small system of 29 route miles. The line passed into the control of the Great Western in 1906, but was not taken over completely until 1922.

The South Wales Mineral Railway

The South Wales Mineral Railway operated a short line just 13 miles in length, running from Briton Ferry to Glyncorrwg Colliery by way of Cymmer. Although nominally independent until 1923, it was taken over by the Great Western in 1908, and was operated using GWR locomotives.

Swansea Harbour Trust

Strictly speaking, this was not one of the railways covered by the Act. Nevertheless, its fleet of shunting locomotives passed into Great Western ownership in 1923. The trust itself was brought into existence by Act of Parliament in 1854 to develop the port of Swansea, and initially used contractors to operate the port. After several contractors had been experienced, or perhaps suffered since the relationships seem to have been unsatisfactory, the trust decided to operate the port itself, and acquired a stud of steam locomotives.

Teign Valley Railway

A number of plans emerged for an inland railway between Exeter and Newton Abbot, but it took two railway companies to provide this line, with one of them, the Teign Valley Railway, needing no fewer than nine Acts of Parliament to bring it to life, and another three afterwards, all for 7¾ route miles. While an alliance with the London & South Western Railway was considered, the bankrupt company was eventually brought into the GWR fold. Once opened between Heathfield and Ashton in October 1882, it was worked by the GWR. Heathfield was on the broad gauge Moretonhampstead line and the Teign Valley was standard gauge, so until the former was converted, the Teign Valley had an isolated existence with a single side tank locomotive and a handful of six-wheeled carriages. It was not until 1903 that the Exeter Railway, authorised in 1883, opened, giving a through route from Exeter to Heathfield. The line’s full potential as a diversionary route when the Dawlish sea wall was closed because of bad weather was never realised as it suffered from severe gradients, and while the GWR persisted with this, the nationalised railway preferred taking the longer LSWR route via Okehampton.

Van Railway

Opened in 1871, the Van Railway was just 6½ miles in length and was worked from the outset by the Cambrian Railway. Opened to goods, mainly traffic from a lead mine, in 1871, and to passengers in 1873, it was closed on 4 November 1940 during the period of Railway Executive Committee control.

West Somerset Railway

Built to broad gauge, the West Somerset Railway was authorised in 1857, although work did not start until 1859. The company had difficulty in raising the £160,000 needed, so the line was not opened from Norton Fitzwarren to the small port of Watchet until 1862. A further extension, the Minehead Railway, had an even longer gestation period, being authorised in 1865, dissolved in 1870, revived in 1871 and finally opened in 1874. From the start, both lines were worked by the Great Western Railway, and the two railways were converted to standard gauge in 1882. The GWR took over the Minehead Railway in 1897, but the West Somerset remained independent until 1922.

Traffic on the line was always light, partly as there was no connection with the West Somerset Mineral Railway at Watchet, and little onward railway movement of cargo arriving at the docks. It was not until the early years of the twentieth century that passenger traffic began to grow as Minehead developed as a resort. In 1933 the number of passing loops was increased from four to six, and in 1934 and 1936 stretches of the line were doubled.

Weston, Clevedon & Portishead Light Railway