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Brunel’s Didcot Great Western Railway To Great Western Society By Jack Gardner
Brunels Didcot Great Western Railway To Great Western Society By Jack Gardner
Hardbound With Dustjacket
128 Pages
Published 1996
Contents
Chapters
OneIntroduction To Didcot
TwoThe Better Years
Three Dudcote And The Railway
Four Building The Railway
Five The Junction Station
SixChanging Needs
Seven Signalling
Eight The Provender Stores
Nine Development
TenDecline And Modernisation
Eleven Memories
Twelve Great Western Preservation
Appendices Signalling Plans And Timetables
Acknowledgements And Bibliography
CHAPTER ONE
Introduction to Didcot
AI sat in a compartment of the 8.55am ex Worcester on 11 October 1939, being whisked across the Cotswolds by a 'Castle' class loco, there was ample time to reflect and to absorb the scenery speeding by and to imagine what was happening on the footplate of the loco, which, for the past four years, I had polished with care and pride.
I had plenty of time to muse over the new life which was before me. My thoughts were constantly focused on one particular aspect, and one question remained in my mind. What will Didcot be like? This query had pervaded ever since my chargeman cleaner gave me orders to report to Didcot for promotion as fireman. Dick, the chargeman, was apologetic for giving me the orders to go away on my own. Three of my cleaning colleagues were all reporting to Banbury together. Dick thought that seemed unfair; so did I but, in retrospect, it was I who was the lucky one.
'Where's Didcot?' I asked him.
'I'm not sure where it is, somewhere up by London I think.'
After muttering something in his nasal tones he said: 'Let's go down to the office and find out.'
Fortunately, a driver who worked to London came along to explain; it was then that I remembered changing trains there on my way back home after a medical exam, over four years previously. Try as I may, I was quite unable to recall anything of what I might have seen, almost as if Didcot had been banished from my mind.
Having changed at Oxford into a slow train and stopping at small wayside stations I had the impression of going deeper into the country and away from home at Worcester, with its old Victorian station, the brick buildings inlaid with glazed tiles, ornate canopies over the platforms and unusually large disc signals suspended from the canopy girders giving it a singular appearance.
Worcester loco shed was odd in the extreme, in fact there were two sheds, one for passenger engines, the other for goods with a shunting yard in between. The sheds were dirty and very sooty, dark and dingy, lit by gas lamps which failed to light the sheds with the yellow light they gave. The sheds were crowded in on two sides by very high embankments, elsewhere all around were wagons, filling the sidings. Factory buildings belonging to the railway were scattered about and the tall goods shed stood in the middle of it all. Then there was the office of the divisional
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