A pretty big bit of railway history, the Great Western and a new book by Andrew Roden

Now if you are of a certain age then the romance of the old steam railway will be a powerful pull.

I suppose it is the infinite variety of locomotives from the old “seen it all done it all” shunting engines which worked pushing and pulling freight wagons to the powerful and sleek express locomotives which thundered past carrying people to faraway places.

And in my case it all comes piling back whenever I encounter that mix of warm oil, steam and smoke or the rhythmic noise of a passenger loco as it pulls out of a station.

For my father’s generation there was also that fierce loyalty to a particular railway company which for him was the LMS and for his friends an equally passionate adherence to the LNER or the GWR.*

It was something I couldn’t quite understand.  But then I was born a year after the railways had been nationalized and so all I ever knew were green and black locomotives with their British Railways logo of a lion holding a wheel astride a crown.

Looking back this fierce loyalty shown by dad was even odder given that most of these great railway companies were a pretty short lived bunch.  The LMS, LNER and Southern Railways were all formed in 1923 in a unromantic bid to merge smaller companies into profitable businesses.

At Tiverton Junction on August 8 1962

Only the Great Western Railway could be said to have a long pedigree which I have to confess I knew little of.

It was founded in 1833, and began running services from London to the south west and west of the country from 1838.

It wasn’t the oldest but its GWR name spanned the great age of steam right up to nationalization in 1948.

So it is perhaps timely that I have in my hands a new history of the GWR, which for its friends was “God’s Wonderful Railway” and for those less sympathetic, just the “Great Way Round”  

Great Western Railway by Andrew Roden covers the 175 years of the railway's history from Small Beginnings to the Great War and the Last Few Years.

At Reading in March 1943, with women oiling the track

It is a book I will come back to as the blog moves out of the homelands of the old Liverpool and Manchester Railway and the LMS into the heart of the west with the GWR.

Along the way I hope there will be stories drawn from Mr Roden's book of the great GWR railway stations, the love affair with the broad gauge, and the “Night Riviera” to Cornwall, and of course Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

And judging by the opening sections any one wanting to by pass me and go straight to the book will not be disappointed.

There is a lightness of touch in the writing which still delivers a fine amount of detail about the GWR.  My own favourite is the account of  the journey on the overnight sleeper to Penzance in 1902.

Passengers boarding the Cornish Riviera at Paddington Station in 1914

Starting with  the preparations for departure, the assortment of travellers and  the long journey to the south west.

But this isn't a descent into a bout of romantic tosh for here back on Paddington Station waiting to depart is a place which "is not the pristine station of 2010 complete with polished floors.  The Paddington of 1902 is a much grimier affair despite the best efforts of an army of cleaners - there are simply too many steam locomotives emitting too much smoke to keep pace, and London's dirty air doesn't help either."

This is how I like my history so there it is, a snip at £8.99 it is one to read.

Pictures; courtesy of Aurum Press, www.aurumpress.co.uk

*London Midland Scottish, London North Eastern Railway, Great Western Railway,

** Great Western Railway, Andrew Roden, Aurum Press, 2010