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Great Western Railway Service Time Tables No 6 October 1886 REPRINT
Great Western Railway Service Time Tables No 6 October 1886
Service time tables of the use of the company's servants Bristol to Exeter
Soft Cover
82 pages
Copyright 1999
CONTENTS
Alteration of Trains 3-4
Times of Closing Signal Boxes 5
List of Stations, Junctions, Sidings and Intermediate Signal Posts6-7
Train Staff Regulations8
General Notices 8-10
Speed of Trains through Junctions7
Catch Points 7
Whistles7
Marshalling Instructions 10--11
Bristol to Exeter-Week Days 12-36
Sundays 60-63
Exeter to Bristol-Week Days 37-59
Sundays 64-67
Portishead and Bristol68
Clevedon and Yatton69
Wells Yatton70
Yeovil and Durston 72-73
Chard and Taunton71
Minehead and Taunton 74-75
Barnstaple and Taunton 76-77
Tiverton Junction and Tiverton 78
Crediton and Exeter78
Hemyock and Tiverton Junction79
Exeter and Dulverton 80-81
Transfer Trains82
INTRODUCTION
At the time this Great Western time table of 1886 was published, it was evident that the Broad Gauge of 7 ft. I in. had lost all hope of survival.
Isambard Kingdom Brunel, whose ideal gauge had progressed so long from introduction in 1838, had by this time (1886) been dead some 27 years, and his courageous battle fought so tenaciously from the period he surveyed the Great Western Railway from Bristol to London was lost. For many years the gradual decline of the broad gauge was obvious, the G.W.R. being compelled by a continuing process to mix the gauges, interspersing the broad with that of the narrow 4 ft. 84 in., and by 1892 the entire system was converted.
For many years the inconvenience at interchange points where traffic was destined for Great Western stations, particularly broad gauge wagons, the extra work entailed was colossal, and delays inevitable. The Bristol and Exeter Railway, and the early Devon and Cornwall companies, influenced by Brunel, had constructed their lines to the wide dimension. In 1886 the principal expresses from Paddington to Penzance were still the broad gauge, running on the original route via Bristol. Not until 1906 were services able to operate over the new cut-off from Castle Cary to Cogload Junction, on the outskirts of Taunton, saving twenty miles.
The time table is of interest because of its combination of both broad and narrow gauge schedules, its notes and appendages, attended by the imagined " clip-clop " of horses, and the forever clatter of milk churns, often resulting in slow passenger trains being indeed Slow.
The majesty of the broad gauge, and the potentialities it held for wide corridors, and more capacious `' diners " was not appreciated in those early days of railway construction. Brunel fought hard for its retention but the Stephensons and others planning vast railway routes between industrial areas and London were too well established by the middle 1800's to widen their 4 ft. 84 in. gauge and the Great Western Railway was perforce to concede defeat. Isolation was impossible if it was to survive and enjoy increased traffic originating from other companies lines.
I am obliged to my old friend Mr. H. Horn, who was instrumental in recovering from seclusion and passing to me an original copy of this relic, discovered in a disused building along the Minehead branch, and also British Railways, Western Region for permission to reproduce it.
ARTHUR B. GRANDFIELD, TAUNTON.
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