Category:Great Western Railway

The "Big Four" railway companies

Great Western Railway (GWR)
London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS)
London and North Eastern Railway (LNER)
Southern Railway (SR)

Isambard Kingdom Brunel [image info]

1840 2-2-2- locomotive "Fire Fly" [image info]

1903: GWR's Cornwall "Helton and Lizard" bus service [image info]

The Cornish Riviera Express, started by the GWR in 1904 [image info]

1925 advert for holidaying in Cornwall [image info]

GWR road transport - lorry and horse and cart [image info]

Housing built by the GWR in Acton, London [image info]

Railway Air Services, instigated by Imperial Airways and the GWR, and then launched as a joint project with the rest of the Big Four [image info]

1935 100-year Anniversary publication, "Great Western Progress: 1835-1935" [image info]

1940s: Mini-submarine body manufactured by the GWR during World War Two [image info]

GWR Train Running Day, 2014 [image info]

A Hornby No.2 Special loco, showing GWR colour, styling, and brass steam valvework "cone" [image info]

GWR "Titley Court" (Bing for Bassett-Lowke), gauge 1 [image info]

The Great Western Railway (GWR) (known to enthusiasts as "God's Wonderful Railway") was founded in 1833, set up by Bristol as a reaction to Liverpool's emergence as a more popular port. In order to stay relevant, Bristol decided to create their own railway network for the West of England, and hired a young Isambard Kingdom Brunel to survey routes and design the infrastructure.

The GWR prided themselves on their engineering prowess, and Brunel designed the GWR track to use broad gauge to provide a superior ride. Even though the railway later moved to standard gauge, the fact that much of the railway had originally been designed to take wider trains meant that the 1935 Cornish Riviera Express could use wider and more luxurious coaches.

The GWR preserved its name during the 1922/23 railway grouping and became one of the Big Four railway companies, acquiring more routes in Wales and Western England, and was finally absorbed into the new British Railways network in 1948, becoming BR's "Western Region".

Networks

Although the GWR spread over Wales and Southwest England, its key nodes were the London terminus at Paddington and the port at Bristol. The company also embraced air travel and bus routes, and part of Brunel's vision was for the network to extend to New York via the SS Great Western (1838) transatlantic steamship built by Brunel, for the Bristol-New York route.

Notable engineering

The GWR achieved a number of engineering records and "firsts". Broad-gauge track was technically superior to standard gauge, and some of the GWR tunnels (the Box Tunnel, and then the Severn Tunnel) were the longest railway tunnels in the world when they were built. The SS Great Western was initially the world's largest passenger ship, and revolutionised transatlantic travel by proving the concept that larger ships were more fuel-efficient, and the Maidenhead Railway Bridge was the longest span-for-height brick bridge in the world. Disbelief at the proportions of the Maidenhead bridge was so strong that the GWR management were reluctant to have the bridge's temporary wooden former "scaffolding" removed, and a crowd assembled at the first crossing by a steam locomotive in 1839, to see if it fell down.

Livery and styling

The GWR's steam locomotives were green, although the exact shade (and the lining) changed a couple of times.

One of the more distinctive features of the GWR locos was their use of shiny brass valvework instead of a steam dome - this feature was so distinctive that Meccano Ltd. implemented it as a physical feature on the GWR versions of their early Hornby gauge 0 locos - initially, Hornby's loco versions for the other railway companies were physically identical and only differentiated by their paintwork and markings, so their decision to make an exception for GWR was notable.