The stocking filler …. 1924

So …. I couldn’t resist this one.

I have no date for the 12 picture postcards that made up the series, but given that one of them was for the London, Midland and Scottish Railway which was formed in 1924, we must be sometime in the 1920s, through to the nationalization of the railways in 1948.

So far only six of the original twelve have turned up, but they include examples of railway locomotives from the LMS, the Great Western, The London & North Eastern Railway and the Southern Railway.

Each carries the flat layout on one side and instructions on the reverse for making the model.

Of the six I have chosen only two of which the first is an LMS loco and the second a Southern Railway.

And the logic behind the choice is simple, dad always had a sneaking admiration for the LMS, although given he was from the north east I would have thought that he might have settled on the LNER. card.

But his parents were Scottish and had only crossed the border at the turn of the last century, so I see where his sympathies may have laid.

So, having opted for the LMS. card, I then fell on the Southern Railway loco, simply because I grew up in south east London which had been served by the S.R  which became the Southern Region of British Railways.

But when it came to it, I couldn't ignore the GWR or the LNER and threw those into , with, and here I accept I am being nerdy, two more from the  LMS which because one ran on the London & North Western Section, and the other the Caledonian section, they carried a different livery.

And that is it. 

 For those who have forgotten a present, it should be possible to download the image, enlarge and print.

Merry Christmas

Pictures; Model Railway Engines, marketed by Tuck and Sons, circa 1924, courtesy of Tuck DB, https://tuckdbpostcards.org/

Car park ………

The one hidden away

Location; Deansgate

Picture; the car park in the Great Western Warehouse, 2022, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

The magic of an empty railway station ............. somewhere in the west country

Now, if you are of that generation who grew up with Muffin the Mule, and thought that the light had gone out of the world on hearing of the death of Ottis Reading, then this picture of this railway station will be as familiar as spangles, and Blue Peter.

This is the stop at Bishops Lydeard, on the railway line to Minehead, and if you were to take the trip courtesy of the West Somerset Railway, you would pass the equally picturesque stations of Crowcombe, Heathfield, Stogumber and Doriford Halt.

Between them, they conjure up that lost world before and just after the nationalization of the railway companies, when even the smallest hamlet had it own branch line.

They are the stuff of romance and nostalgia, and it takes little in the way of imagination to think yourself on to that platform on a hot summer’s day, waiting for the 12.20 to somewhere.

The chances are you would be alone, with the railway staff away busying themselves on routine tasks, leaving you with the feint noise of insects, the smell of warm oil from the wooden sleepers, and the tick of the station clock.

At a little before midday the peace would be broken by the express train thundering past on its way to some place full of people doing purposeful things, and just possibly one of the passengers on that speeding train might give a glance across to the solitary figure before the scene vanished, replaced by hedgerows and open fields.

And the noise it had made only contrasted all the more with the tick of the clock and the buzz of the insects.

All of which will doubtless be dismissed as pure nostalgic tosh, although it chimes in with many of my cherished memories.

That said, when Lois took the pictures of Bishops Lydeard, the station was full of expectant passengers intent on getting aboard the train to Minehead, pulled by loco no.6960 which goes by the name of Raveningham Hall which I guess is named after the same house and estate situated south of Norwich.

It might be a tad unfair to describe the rush to catch the train as a stampede and I wasn’t there, so I will just let the picture say it all, leaving me to include the other images Lois chose from the photographs she took on the day along with a favourite poem by Edward Thomas, who wrote "Adlestrop", after a train journey on June 24th 1914, during which his train briefly stopped at the now-defunct station in the Gloucestershire village of Adlestrop.

Yes. I remember Adlestrop

The name, because one afternoon

Of heat, the express-train drew up there

Unwontedly. It was late June.


The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.

No one left and no one came

On the bare platform. What I saw

Was Adlestrop—only the name


And willows, willow-herb, and grass,

And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,

No whit less still and lonely fair

Than the high cloudlets in the sky.


And for that minute a blackbird sang

Close by, and round him, mistier,

Farther and farther, all the birds

Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire


Location; on the West Somerset Railway

Pictures; catching the train at Bishops Lydeard, 2018 from the collection of Lois Elsden

*The West Somerset Railway; https://www.west-somerset-railway.co.uk/the-railway

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