[Stoat]

My apologies for the severe editing of this article....this was done in order to remain in compliance with Free Republic posting rules pertaining to articles from The Daily Mail.  Please be sure to click on the main article link and read the rest of the text, as I was forced to excise over half of the article and it's really quite worthwhile in my view.

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A waiter serves serves tea in a dining car in the Thirties when being a GWR employee was considered a prestigious job

 

A Class 4 locomotive suspended from the ceiling in preparation for a valve fitting at Swindon Works in 1951

 

Holiday crowds waiting to board The Torbay Limted Express in 1926

 

This publicity shot from the Thirties emphasises the style and cool sophistication of train travel at the time

 

GWR prided itself on being on the cutting edge of innovation with its vending machines

 

Restaurant cars were introduced for first class passengers in 1896 and four years later for second class travellers. Here a chef prepares a meal in 1946

 

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More related images available here:

 

STEAM Museum of the GWR holds thousands of images relating to the Great Western Railway and British Railways (Western Region).  These images cover a wide range of subjects including industrial engineering and social history, country views and people, as well as locomotives, trains and rolling stock.

 

STEAM Picture Library

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Here are scenes inside the STEAM museum in the centre of Swindon Works, used as the GWR's main railway works were they built and ran many locos designed by famous engineers: Sir Daniel Gooch, G.J. Churchward and C.B Collett who kept the GWR tradition alive in its heyday!

YouTube - STEAM Museum of the Great Western Railway

(Amateur video runs 9 minutes, twelve seconds)

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steam2007-visiting-times-2

STEAM is open from 10.00am to 5.00pm every day of the week throughout the year. Last admission to STEAM is at 4.30pm.

The Museum is closed on 25 and 26 December, and 1 January. Please note that STEAM closes at 3.00pm on 24 December.

If you would like to visit the Library and Archive please click here.

Contact Details

STEAM – Museum of the Great Western Railway
Kemble Drive
Swindon
SN2 2TA

Tel: 01793 466 646
Fax: 01793 466 615
Textphone: 01793 466 618

[Stoat]

[Bob J]

Look out the windows of that first pic. That train must have been traveling at 5000 feet...heheh.

[DustyMoment]

Rail Britannia: Newly found pix reveal train travel was once glorious experience, not shabby ordeal

Proving yet again, that those who don't know their history . . . . .



(In this case, repeating THIS history wouldn't be a bad thing. The old passenger rail service in Europe, Britain and the US endeared me to train travel as a kid. I loved it then and would STILL travel by train if there were any trains going where I am going and the service wasn't Amtrak.)

[VOA]

“
Rail Britannia: Newly found pix reveal train travel was once
glorious experience, not shabby ordeal Great Western Railway
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Western_Railway
“

For reference on The Great Western Railway.
And a famed engineer that participated in its’ creation.

And a short article on one of the ships he helped design...
and can even now be seen at Bristol.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isambard_Kingdom_Brunel

SS Great Britain
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Great_Britain

[Clemenza]

Actually, the first class cars on the Penn were quite nice back in the day as well. Nevertheless, I still prefer the Acela to any of the airlines when I need to go to DC.

[BluH2o]

As a youngster I grew up in Canada. I’m old enough to remember coal fired steam trains & cabooses. As a kid I was always fascinated when watching station masters stand on the train platform, hold up a pole with a loop on the end, the train engineer would catch it as the train passed the platform by hooking his arm through it. There was a message attached to the hook pole, this was back when the telegraph (dit daa dit daa dit dit) was still being used to communicate between RR stations. No radio communication with the train engineer.

[SkyDancer]

Heading to Chicago on AMTRAK over Christmas .... roomette and all ..!!!

[dalereed]

Just an improvement on the stage coach waiting for aircraft to put them out of business!

rail travel sucks!

[JRios1968]

One of the better known engines from the GWR

Can you tell I have kids?

[nd76]

I’m a railroad enthusiast too.

This year, I was lucky enough to spend 9 glorious days in Japan, and rode on three of the shinkansen (bullet train) lines—I did Niigata on the Joetsu line, Utsunomiya (on the way to Nikko) on the Tohoku line, and Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe on the Tokaido & Sanyo line. I had an unlimited ride pass for green car (first class) travel. It was remarkable.

I also was in France, and took the TGV from Charles de Gaulle airport to Lyon, 336 miles in 2 hours 6 minutes with one stop. I took a small local train up the Rhone valley to Geneva (2 hour ride), then took the Elipsos Trenhotel which left Geneva around 2330 and arrived the next morning in Barcelona at 1000. That was a fantastic experience.

I also rode on the new Spanish AVE trains; the Barcelona-Madrid run, which covers something like 420 miles, stops five times and starts at maybe 100 feet above sea level and ends at about 2,100 feet above sea level, took just 3 hours 17 minutes—there was even a digital speed readout at the end of the car in which I was riding, and the speed got as high as 301 kmph (187 mph). The Madrid-Cordoba-Sevilla run is also amazing.

I’ve done the Eurostar also in the past. That is really worth doing—the new London terminal (at St. Pancras International Station, next to Kings Cross) is beautiful, and they still haven’t finished all the work on it.

There is one really good train line in the UK to ride on, and that is the London Kings Cross-York-Newcastle-Edinburgh line served by National Express Kings Cross (the former operator, GNER, went broke). Virgin Trains out of Euston Station have good service to places like Manchester (they used to have a great breakfast in first class). Most trains in the UK are commuter class—they may or may not have small first class sections, where the seating is no different than standard class, but are “exclusive” and glassed off. Next month I’m going to London and have bought a four day standard class rail pass, since on the routes I’m traveling there’s not much difference between first and standard classes.

I take Amtrak’s Capitol Limited once or twice a year on the 16 hour run between Washington and northern Indiana; I ususally take my own picnic and adult beverages, get into my roomette, and stay there until Indiana. Wonderful.