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Grime & Glory Tales of the Great Western 1892-1947 by Adrian Vaughan
Grime & Glory Tales of the Great Western 1892-1947 by Adrian Vaughan
Hard Cover w/ dust jacket
191 pages
Copyright 1985
CONTENTS
1 Jim Street joins the Broad Gauge1
2 Improvements by Accident17
3 Breaking Records33
4 Emergencies and Riots49
5 Railwaymen in the Great War65
6 Long Shifts on the Home Tracks81
7 Strikes and a Smoking-Out97
8 Tricksters of the Twenties110
9 The Royal Railway124
10 The Great Western at Dunkirk139
11 End of an Era153
Epilogue167
Appendices
1 Bristol Divisional Superintendent's Report on the Great Storm, 1916 170
2 Severn Tunnel Bank Engines, 1929175
3 Electrification costs and locomotive profile, 1938 176
4 Great Western ships at Dunkirk, 1940180
5 Resignation letter of Sir James Milne, 1947183
Index185
ILLUSTRATIONS Between pages 84 and 85
1 Great Western and Swallow at Didcot, c. 1890 (Science Museum, London)
2 Platelayers changing the gauge, 1892 (Bristol City Museum & Art Gallery)
3 16 Brunel at Paddington, c. 1895 (BR/OPC A2089)
4 3297 Earl Cawdor, dressed up for the Diamond Jubilee train of 1897, at Swindon (GWR Museum, Swindon/ Author's Collection)
5 Inspector G.H. Flewellyn and 1873 at Exeter St David's station, 1903 (GWR Museum, Swindon/Author's Collection)
6 Marlborough-Calne motor bus c. 1910 (BR/OPC C224)
7 Women working at Paddington, 1916 (W.L. Kenning! Author's Collection)
8 Driver Jim Honey in France, 1918 (Mrs Pamela Cummings! Author's Collection)
9 Ben Davies and Dean `Standard Goods', 1919 (Ben Davies! Author's Collection)
10 2915 Saint Bartholomew at Paddington, 1923 (BBC Hulton Picture Library)
11 Paddington during the General Strike, 1926 (BBC Hulton Picture Library)
12 `Cornish Riviera Express' at Paddington, 1929 (BBC Hulton Picture Library)
13 Weymouth terminus in 1931 (BR/OPC B54465)
14 Streamlined diesel rail-car, Taplow, 1935 (C.R.L. Coles)
15 GWR pannier tank, LNWR signals, Addison Road, 1935 (C.R.L. Coles)
16 2568 stopping passenger train near Flax Bourton, 1939 (C.R.L. Coles)
17 Children being evacuated from London, 1940 (BR/OPC E363)
18 Temporary hospital ship St Julien at anchor (BR/OPC E584)
19 Wartime travel, Paddington, 1942 (BBC Hulton Picture Library)
20 Women oiling points at Reading, 1942 (BR/OPC B14265)
21 1729 bomb-damaged by Luftwaffe at Castle Cary, 1942 (BR/OPC B.Box 385/13)
22 Bomb damage at Paddington, 1944 (BR/OPC B.Box 403/20)
23 Snow clearance by jet engines, Dowlais Top, 1947 (BR/ OPC B.Box 435/39)
24 GWR's Indian summer: 5079 Lysander at Whiteball (BR/ OPC C6788)
FRONT ENDPAPER: Replacing one of Brunel's viaducts on the main line in Cornwall, c. 1900 (Royal Institution of Cornwall)
REAR ENDPAPER: Driver Wilkins (r) and Fireman Williams with a `Bulldog' class engine at Radley, c. 1917 (W. L. Kenning/ Author's Collection)
DUST JACKET INTRODUCTION
In the second volume of his lively and informative chronicle of the Great Western Railway Adrian Vaughan continues to trace its ups and downs through the experiences of men who worked the line; from Jim Street, who began as an engine-cleaner at Paddington in 1891 at the high noon of the GWR's Victorian heyday, to the resignation of its last General Manager, Sir James Milne, at the midnight demise of the Company in midwinter 1947.
At the outbreak of the war against the Kaiser's Germany, Great Western men had to be restrained from volunteering for the armed forces. Jim Honey did volunteer, however, and worked as an engine driver under shellfire in France. Others, such as Jack Kinch, stayed at home to work the munition trains and endure exhausting work schedules.
The First World War was a watershed in the history of the GWR. When the Armistice came the men were in a state of shock and in no mood to return to working under the pre-war paternalism of the management. They grew restive and through the tale of Sid Tyler the reader shares the sense of dissatisfaction culminating in the General Strike of 1926. In the 1930s the Great Western provided faster expresses, air travel and diesel rail-cars to ward off the threat from road transport, though Great Western branch trains with their vintage rolling stock provoked the Heath Robinson cartoons.
The Second World War saw the Great Western in action, its fleet of ships taking part in the evacuation at Dunkirk and in operations as far away as Italy. We follow the daring Captain Pitman, DSC, and his gallant crew in St Helierto the beaches of Dunkirk and sit with Driver Jack Ody, watching as Coventry is bombed. With peace came a General Election followed by nationalisation. At midnight on 31 December 1947 the honoured and evocative title GREAT WESTERN RAILWAY was replaced by the mundane designation: BRITISH RAILWAYS - WESTERN REGION. It was the end of an era.
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