Steam firing and driving courses, update
posted 25th April 2007

All of the firing and driving courses up to and including 20th July are now sold out. If you are still interested in the other dates 3rd August, 7th & 21st September and 19th October follow this link for full details.

All Great Western this weekend!
posted 19th April 2007

There’s a feast of green paintwork and shining brass this weekend (21st and 22nd April) on the Gloucestershire ‘Warwickshire Railway, as all three locomotives operating are examples spanning half a century of development at the Great Western Railway’s Swindon ‘factory’.

The oldest is City class 4-4-0* no 3440 City of Truro, built in 1903.  The engine went on the following year to claim a speed in excess of 100mph, the first man-made machine to do so.  It is now owned by the National Railway Museum.  Next comes small Prairie* 2-6-2 tank locomotive no. 5542, built for light passenger and freight work in 1928.  This engine is on familiar ground as it was delivered new to Gloucester and also spent time at Cheltenham during its early years.  And the youngest – built in 1949 after the Great Western was nationalised and became the Western Region of British Railways – is Modified Hall class 4-6-0*, no. 7903 Foremarke Hall.

Although City of Truro is only working on Sunday, in charge of the now fully-booked Elegant Excursion Sunday Luncheon train, 5542 and Foremarke Hall are working service trains on both days.  For all the details, you can check our locomotive roster here.  Next week, City of Truro departs for Didcot Railway Centre where the engine will star in celebrations to mark the 75th anniversary of the Didcot locomotive depot and the 40th anniversary of the Great Western Society, which now owns it.

*Prairie? 4-4-0? 4-6-0?  What do they mean? Check out our Jargon Buster and look for Wheel Arrangement

You can also find out more about the Hall class locomotives by clicking here.  And you can also read about City of Truro and small Prairie no 5542.

You can find links to the owning groups of these locomotives, and other useful affiliated links, here.

Yard development update
posted 19th April 2007

More progress has taken place in the yard at Toddington. Click here to visit our Development site to find out more!

Sun shines on Truro
posted 18th April 2007

The National Railway Museum's centenarian locomotive, no. 3440 City of Truro, emerged from the gloom of the David Page shed at Toddington this week after extensive maintenance work. The last refurbished equipment to be re-fitted was the reversing gear and the completed locomotive was moved to the pit for
steaming. After static testing the engine is expected to undertake a test run on Friday and should be in service on Sunday, hauling an Elegant Excursions Sunday Lunch dining train (which is fully booked).

If you wish to see the 1903-built engine - which was recorded running in excess of 100mph back in 1904 - working on the GWR, Sunday 22nd April will be your last chance before mid-August. City of Truro departs from Toddington next week for Milton in Oxfordshire, from where it will be hauled by rail the short distance to the Didcot Railway Centre. It remains there for a few weeks before moving on to the East Lancashire Railway.

The photograph by Danny Scroggins shows City of Truro in the Toddington sunshine on Tuesday 17th April.

Tampers for tip-top track
posted 18th April 2007

Two tamping machines have arrived at Toddington – which will help our Permanent Way department, faced with maintaining an ever-lengthening railway, keep the line in top condition.

The tampers* are highly complex machines that level, slew and compact the ballast under the track using laser and computer technology. Some readers may recall that a tamping machine was used to finish the Cheltenham extension as a training exercise with rail contractor Balfour Beatty.

The machines just arrived are both Plasser Class 07, one ‘points, crossing and plain line’ and a similar ‘plain line’ tamper, both manufactured in Austria in the mid-1970s.  They are of a type still widely used on the national network and spare parts are readily available. Both machines have recently been overhauled but, because of changes in the way Network Rail is organising its track maintenance programmes, became surplus to requirements.

Says Andrew Goodman, engineering and projects director: “These machines will make a real difference to our own maintenance programmes.  It used to be relatively easy to hire in such equipment to be used for our benefit as part of contractor training programmes but Network Rail is increasingly bringing in such work in-house.  Also, new, faster equipment is being introduced, which meant these excellent machines became available.”

Training will be provided for GWR staff to operate the equipment.  They are among four recently sold; the other two were exported to Saudi Arabian Railways.

Photo caption: Class 07 tampers have arrived on the GWR. In the foreground is DR 73303, a points and crossings machine and beyond it is DR 73315, a plain track machine (Photo: Ian Crowder)

*Tamper: check out our Jargon Buster which explains this and other railway and track terms!

4270 Update
posted 17th April 2007

Apologies for the silence on this project. However, after complete dismantling of the engine to its component parts, work is progressing on the frames, while the boiler is, as reported elsewhere, at Crewe where it has also been stripped ready for remedial work. A further update will follow soon, together with photographs.

Additional fish and chip train announced
posted 17th April 2007

Following the announcement that all this year’s fish and chip specials were sold out we are pleased to announce that an additional train has been arranged. The train will run on Saturday 18th August, click here for full details and booking information. These trains have sold out very quickly this year so book early to avoid disappointment.

King George off the throne
posted 17th April 2007

Work has started on overhaul of 0-6-0 saddle tank locomotive King George: the only steam locomotive owned by Gloucestershire Warwickshire Steam Railway Plc.  Click here for an update and photographs showing progress so far. We'll update the page from time to time so you can track the progress of the engine's overhaul.

Fish and chips, all sold
posted 9th April 2007

All of this year’s fish and chip specials are sold out. Thank you for making these trains such a success. Please keep an eye on the website later in the year for details of the 2008 specials.

Steam firing and driving course update
posted 6th April 2007

The GWR’s excellent (the webmaster can speak from experience) firing and driving courses are filling up. The courses on 13th April, 4th and 18th May and 8th June are now fully booked and there is only one place available on each of the 6th and 20th July courses.

Due to the popularity additional dates are now available:

3rd August
7th and 21st September
19th October

For full details and to download a booking form click here

2007 off to a flying start
posted 3rd April 2007

Passenger figures are now in for March and, thanks to the ‘Kids go Free’ promotion, the GWR enjoyed a bonanza month. In all, to 25th March (excluding the first day of the diesel gala) a total of 2,165 tickets were issued, compared with 1,555 over the same period last year.

The breakdown is interesting: perhaps not surprisingly the special promotion accounted for a massive jump of 80 per cent in child tickets issued – in fact, 294 children were carried compared with 164 last year. Of course, each free child had to be accompanied by an adult and adult ticket sales were 40 per cent higher than last year. No family tickets were issued this year.

In addition, of the total, 213 traveled as part of a party booking, compared with 137 last year. The success of this venture is likely to lead to a repeat next year.

08 arrives
posted 3rd April 2007, updated 11th April 2007 (with thanks to Phil Scott for additional information)

What is likely to become an exceptionally useful machine arrived on the GWR last week: it is class 08 diesel-electric shunter no. 08927.  Purchased by Andrew Goodman off English Welsh & Scottish Railways at Motherwell in Scotland where is was withdrawn in 2005. The locomotive is notable in that it is the last member of the most numerous class of diesel locomotives to be delivered to British railways. It was also the very last locomotive to be completed at Horwich works.

Completed in 1962, it is one of almost 1,000 examples that were inspired by 350hp diesel electric shunters developed in pre-war days by the English Electric Company for the LMS. Comprising six-coupled wheels driven by a diesel-powered generator set through electric traction motors, this was a formula that proved highly successful. Ten were in use by the time war broke out, and the first example of these is currently being restored at Toddington by the Churchill 8F locomotive group – so Toddington can boast the extremes of development of a class of locomotive that could be found anywhere in the UK. The British Railways version started production in 1952 and were turned out from Derby, Darlington, Doncaster, Horwich and Crewe works – although English Electric continued to supply the power components.

Large numbers remain in national railway service while many others have found their way into preservation, where they continue to perform their heroic, if unsung, duties: shunting and moving heavy loads over short distances.

With a top speed of about 20mph they were reliable, powerful workhorses that moved the nation’s freight. Over the years they appeared in a variety of liveries, this example still carrying faded BR blue, tastefully adorned with some graffiti. It will be repainted in British Railways green, its first livery, and will carry its original number – D4157.

Thanks to Jack Boskett for the photo.

Last chance for fish and chips
posted 3rd April 2007

The GWR’s fish and chip specials are proving as popular as ever. In fact the train on Saturday 4th August is the only one with available spaces. Click here for details of the fish and chip specials and the booking form.

Water troughs for GWR
posted 1st April 2007

The wraps today come off a closely-guarded project that represents the culmination of two year’s behind-the-scenes work by the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway, the STEAM museum at Swindon and a new EC department that aims to develop railway heritage in Europe by offering grants for projects that ‘contribute towards railway heritage and education’.* This is to install a three-quarter-mile long water trough on the straight, level stretch of track at Gretton, between the tunnel and Gotherington. The troughs will be installed on track to be laid on the vacant formation alongside the present running line, so train services won’t be disturbed.  Water will be supplied from a nearby spring via a water treatment facility. This stretch of line will then be doubled.

Although water troughs were never installed on our line, they were a vital feature of the main Great Western routes and were used by all four regions except the Southern.  They allowed the tenders of steam locomotives to be replenished while on the move – a scoop being lowered by the fireman into the trough between the rails, the momentum of the locomotive forcing water up a pipe and into the tender. Water troughs allowed long non-stop runs to be undertaken, for example London to Bristol or London to Edinburgh. At the demise of steam, all water troughs in the UK were removed.

New troughs are being manufactured using patterns supplied by STEAM at Swindon.  They will be installed by contractors in a major heritage project funded by the new European commission.  Professor Dipl. Ing. Hans Down, Heritage Union Railway Transport (HURT) minister, said: “We applaud the forward thinking of the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway in embracing this vital project that will be a live recreation of lost railway technology.”

Garry Owen, Chairman of GWSR says: “This is an exciting project that will give our railway great impetus as a contributor to railway heritage in Europe.  Some have said this is a foolish project, given the 25mph speed limit imposed on heritage lines but this speed is sufficient for a locomotive to lift water from the trough.”

Look also for the water trough lever on our virtual footplate which provides an explanation of how the equipment works and has a photograph of water troughs.

*The new European department responsible for these projects is known as the Transport for heritage Railways, International Preservation and Education directorate, otherwise known as TRIPE, and April 1st marks the start of the directorate’s first major project.