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The Great Western Railway (GWR), colloquially known as God's Wonderful Railway) was a British railway company and a marvel of civil engineering, linking South West England, the West Country and South Wales with London. It was founded in 1833, kept its identity through the 1923 grouping, and became part of British Railways at nationalisation in 1948.
Known admiringly to some as "God's Wonderful Railway", jocularly to others as the "Great Way Round" (some of its earliest routes were not the most direct), and by some as the "Goes When Ready" due to the casual way in which some of its branch lines were run, it gained great fame as the "Holiday Railway", taking huge numbers of people to resorts in the southwest. The company's best-known livery was quite distinctive: locomotives were Middle Chrome Green (similar to Brunswick green), above Indian Red (later, plain black) frames; while the carriages were two-tone "chocolate and cream".
In 1999, in recognition of the railway's historical importance, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport added parts of the GWR to UNESCO's tentative World Heritage Sites list.[1] As of 2006, following the Brunel 200 celebrations, the nomination is being supported by English Heritage, and is due to be considered by UNESCO in 2007.[2]
The Great Western Railway originated from the desire of Bristol merchants to maintain the position of their port as the second port in the country and the chief one for American trade. The increase in the size of ships and the gradual silting of the River Avon made Liverpool an increasingly attractive port, and with its rail connection with London developing in the 1830s it threatened Bristol's status. The answer for Bristol was, with the co-operation of London interests, to build a line of their own, a railway built to unprecedented standards of excellence to outperform the other lines being constructed to the north-west.
The Company was founded at a public meeting in Bristol in 1833, and was incorporated by Act of Parliament in 1835. Isambard Kingdom Brunel was appointed as engineer at the age of 27, and made two controversial decisions: to use a broad gauge of seven feet (actually 7 ft 0.25 in or 2140 mm) for the track, to allow large wheels, providing smoother running at high speeds; and to take a route which passed north of the Marlborough Downs, an area with no significant towns, though it did offer potential connections to Oxford and Gloucester and then to follow the Thames Valley into London. He surveyed the entire length of the route between London and Bristol himself.
The initial group of locomotives ordered by Brunel to his own specifications proved unsatisfactory, apart from the North Star locomotive, and 20-year-old Daniel Gooch (later Sir) was appointed as Superintendent of Locomotives. Brunel and Gooch chose to locate their locomotive works at the village of Swindon, at the point where the gradual ascent from London turned into the steeper descent to the Avon valley at Bath.
The first stretch of line, from London Paddington to Taplow near Maidenhead, opened in 1838. The full line to Bristol Temple Meads opened on completion of Box Tunnel in 1841.
From then onwards, by amalgamations and new construction, the railway took shape, as can be seen from the following list (dates are when opened/absorbed):
See also - List of early British railway companies
The Bristol and Exeter Railway reached Exeter by 1844, and the Bristol and Gloucester Railway brought the broad gauge to Gloucester in the same year. Gloucester was already served by the standard-gauge Birmingham and Gloucester Railway (opened throughout in 1841), resulting in a break of gauge, and the need for all passengers and goods travelling through Gloucester to change trains.
The GWR commissioned the world's first commercial telegraph line. This ran for 13 miles (21 km) from Paddington station to West Drayton and came into operation on 9 April 1839.
In 1846, the Great Western Railway took over the running of the Kennet and Avon Canal.
This was the beginning of the "gauge war", and resulted in the appointment by Parliament of a Gauge Commission, which duly moved in favour of standard gauge.
The undaunted GWR pressed ahead into the West Midlands, in hard-fought competition with the London and North Western Railway. Birmingham was reached in 1852, at Snow Hill (although the GWR had initially considered building to Rugby instead of Birmingham), Wolverhampton Low Level (the furthest-north broad-gauge station) and Birkenhead (on standard-gauge track) in 1854. The Bristol and Gloucester had been bought by the Midland Railway in 1846 and converted to standard gauge in 1854, bringing mixed gauge track (with three rails, so that both broad and standard gauge trains could run on it) to Bristol. By the 1860s the gauge war was lost; with the merger of the standard-gauge West Midlands Railway into the GWR in 1861 mixed gauge came to Paddington, and by 1869 there was no broad-gauge track north of Oxford.
Meanwhile, further developments were made in the GWR's heartland: the South Devon Railway (which for a time experimented with the “atmospheric” system of propulsion) was opened in 1849, extending the broad gauge to Plymouth, and the Cornwall Railway took it over the Royal Albert Bridge and into Cornwall, reaching Penzance by 1867. The South Wales Railway, terminating at Neyland, opened in 1850 and was connected to the GWR via Brunel's ungainly Wye bridge in 1852. The route from Wales to London via Gloucester was a roundabout one, so work on the Severn Tunnel began in 1873, but unexpected underwater springs slowed the work down and prevented its opening until 1886.
Through this period the conversion to standard gauge continued, with mixed-gauge track reaching Exeter in 1876. By this time most conversions were bypassing mixed gauge and going directly from broad to standard. The final stretch of broad gauge was converted to standard in a single weekend in May 1892.
The 1890s also saw improvements in service of the generally conservative GWR - restaurant cars, much improved conditions for third class passengers, and steam heating of trains. The company also built new track to shorten its previously circuitous routes.
After 1902 G. J. Churchward developed nine standard locomotive types, with flat-topped Belpaire fireboxes, tapered boilers, long smokeboxes, boiler top feeds, long lap, long travel valve gear and many standard parts between locomotive types. Most of these were developed from five experimental locomotives, No's 40, 97, 98, 99 and 115. From these were developed the famous Star class locomotives, the Saint class locomotives and the 2800 class locomotives. Such was the success of these locomotives that they influenced locomotive design in the United Kingdom until the demise of steam traction. Two notable locomotives were 111 The Great Bear, the first 4-6-2 locomotive in the United Kingdom and 3440 City of Truro, the first locomotive to be recorded at a speed of 100 mph (160 km/h) in 1904 (although this speed has never been formally confirmed).
Churchward also remodelled Swindon works, building the one-and-a-half-acre (6,000 m²) boiler-erecting shops and the first static locomotive-testing plant in the United Kingdom.
At the outbreak of World War I the GWR, along with the other major railways, was taken into government control. After the war the government considered permanent nationalisation, but preferred a compulsory amalgamation of the railways into four large groups. The GWR alone preserved its identity through the grouping, which took effect on 1 January 1923.
The new Great Western Railway comprised the following constituent companies:
The details of all railways within the new Great Western Railway are given in the List of constituents of the Great Western Railway.
One final company was absorbed, in 1930 - the narrow gauge Corris Railway.
Much of the infrastructure had come into being for handling the South Wales coal traffic. Though this appeared to be a great coup for the GWR, the coal traffic declined significantly as the use of coal as a naval fuel declined, and within a decade the GWR was itself the largest single user of Welsh coal.
The 1920s also saw the introduction of the GWR's most famous locomotives - the Castle and King classes developed by Churchward's successor, C. B. Collett. The 1930s brought hard times, and the records set by the Castles and Kings were surpassed by other companies, but the company remained in relatively good financial health despite the Depression.
World War II brought a further period of direct government control, and by its end a Labour government was in power and planning to nationalise the railways. The war damaged GWR became part of British Railways on January 1, 1948. One of the last Directors of the GWR, Harold Macmillan, was instrumental in the defeat of the Labour Government by the Conservatives, led then by Winston Churchill, in the 1951 General Election and later himself became Prime Minister in 1957.
The traditions of the GWR are kept alive by many heritage railways including at Didcot Railway Centre, the South Devon Railway, the Severn Valley Railway, the Paignton and Dartmouth Steam Railway, the Gloucestershire and Warwickshire Railway, the Dean Forest Railway, Telford Steam Railway and at Tyseley Locomotive Works. The STEAM museum, Swindon, is dedicated to the history and life of the GWR.
On privatisation of the railways in the early 1990's, the "Great Western" name was revived for the train operating company providing passenger services to the West. Services are now run under the franchise name First Great Western.