England – Railways

Or – What I Did on My Holidays, by Dyk Jewell, age 65 and a half.

For as long as I can remember I have been fascinated by railways. Some of my earliest memories are of travelling by train (always steam in those days) to visit relatives. My grandmother’s house in Kingswear was right above the terminus of the Great Western line from Paddington (and connecting by ferry to Dartmouth). My other grandmother lived in Southern Railway territory in Salisbury. The locomotives there seemed very strange and smelt different. When I was a teenager I would visit the nearest depot at Laira and avidly collect the numbers of locomotives. My journey to school involved a short ride from Devonport to Saltash over Brunel’s magnificent Royal Albert Bridge. Occasionally we would venture further afield. Depots in Devon and Somerset were within easy reach. With judicious use of a day return ticket (for some reason they were much cheaper and we could get a train just after midnight from Plymouth and the rules were the return journey had to start before midnight the same day – so we would get back to Plymouth in the small hours of the morning and have to walk to the ferry to take us back to Torpoint) we could go quite long distances. In this way we went up to London and into South Wales – travelling through the Severn Tunnel.

Which is a long preamble to an account of two places I visited on the last day of our trip. Noreen and Jenny were doing important mother-daughter bonding (i.e. shopping) in Reading. I took myself off on a fairly short trip to institutions that I belonged to when we lived in England.

Pendon is a museum of transport and rural life in the 30s. It was started by an Australian called Roye England who arrived in 1925. It takes the form of models of the countryside, buildings and people. The detail is amazing – Roye’s maxim was – if you can see it you can model it. There are flowers in the gardens and even a robin on a spade.

The model railway side of it is impressive. They have developed motors and controllers that make the models operate in a very realistic manner.

The Great Western Society has its headquarters at Didcot. They have an wonderful collection of ex GWR locomotives and rolling stock, including some reconstructed broad gauge artifacts. Brunel designed the initial Great Western line, from London to Bristol, to use broad gauge (7 feet or 2.14 metres between the rails). Although it gave a superior ride and faster travel most other railways went with the cheaper standard gauge (4 foot 8½ inches, 1.44m). Where lines met a complicated system of mixed gauge was necessary.

This is Fire Fly, a reconstruction of an original broad gauge locomotive.

There were two operating trains (I went on both!). This is a typical mixed goods loco running a passenger service through a leafy setting.

And here is a pannier tank loco is working a local branch service with an auto-coach.

Finally, two of my favourite locomotives. I love these 0-4-2 tank engines.

 

The pinnacle of GWR technology was the King class. This 6023 King Edward II.

Right - enough train spotting. Next time I expect we will be back to walks or plants. (Today was Tulip Sunday but I have saved you from more photos of the displays there!)