The Great Western Railway was incorporated in 1835 and engineered by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, whose broad gauge and grand Paddington terminus set the company apart from the start. Alone among the Big Four created at the 1923 Grouping, the Great Western kept its name and its identity, because the Grouping enlarged the existing company rather than merging it into something new. That continuity, from Brunel’s 1830s survey through to nationalisation, is why the Great Western character carried so strongly into British Railways days.
Brunel and the broad gauge
Brunel built the Great Western to his own 7 foot 0.25 inch broad gauge, wider than the standard gauge adopted by every other main-line company. The broad gauge gave a steady, spacious ride and shaped the engineering of the London to Bristol main line, but it left the Great Western isolated as the rest of the country settled on standard gauge. Through-running and interchange grew steadily more awkward, and the company converted its lines over several decades, the last broad gauge being taken out of use in 1892. The main line from Paddington to Bristol, and on to the West of England and South Wales, remained the spine of the system.
The 1923 Grouping
At the 1923 Grouping the Great Western absorbed the independent Welsh companies: the Cambrian Railways of mid-Wales, and the South Wales concerns including the Barry Railway, the Taff Vale Railway and the Rhymney Railway, together with numerous smaller lines. Because the Grouping enlarged the existing Great Western rather than dissolving it into a new amalgamation, the company kept its title, its board and its working practices. It is the one case among the Big Four where a pre-Grouping name survived unchanged into the 1930s and beyond. The Welsh coal traffic, in particular, became a defining part of the enlarged system.
Swindon and the locomotive character
Locomotive design and construction were concentrated at Swindon works, and the Great Western engine was among the most recognisable in Britain: the tapered boiler, the brass safety-valve bonnet and the copper-capped chimney marked it out at a glance. The front-line express classes were four-cylinder 4-6-0s, the Kings on the heaviest trains and the Castles on the wider express network. Mixed-traffic work fell to the two-cylinder Hall, Grange and Manor 4-6-0s, heavy goods to the 2-8-0 freight engines, and a great fleet of pannier tanks handled shunting and local duties across the system. Class histories are set out in the RCTS Locomotives of the Great Western Railway series. The wider grouping of the four post-1923 companies is covered in the Big Four locomotives feature.
Nationalisation and after
On 1 January 1948 the Great Western passed into British Railways as the Western Region. Of all the regions it kept its predecessor’s identity most visibly: Paddington remained the headquarters, Swindon continued to build and repair locomotives, and the Great Western classes worked the principal expresses well into the 1960s. Chocolate-and-cream carriage livery returned to the named trains from 1956, the subject of the chocolate-and-cream livery feature. For the wider family of pre-nationalisation companies, see the constituents index.
The Great Western is often described as the most conservative of the Big Four, but that continuity was as much administrative as sentimental. Because the company was enlarged rather than replaced in 1923, there was no new organisation to impose a fresh identity, so Swindon practice simply carried on. The result is that a Great Western engine of 1960 differed less from one of 1935 than the equivalent on any other region.
- Awdry, C. (1990) Encyclopaedia of British Railway Companies, PSL, Great Western section.
- RCTS Locomotives of the Great Western Railway series, for class histories.
- Ian Allan ABC of British Railways Locomotives, Combined Volume, for the 1960 allocation snapshot.