016/018 - Great Western Railway Contract No.1B

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016/018 - Great Western Railway Contract No.1B

The Great Western Railway built the main line which still operates today between London and Bristol. In appointing Isambard Kingdom Brunel as its chief engineer, together they pushed the boundaries of railway engineering which can still be seen in today’s infrastructure. The construction of a railway between London and Bristol had been debated as early as 1824, but it took the formation of the Bristol Railway Committee in the autumn of 1832 to give the idea more impetus. At the first meeting of the committee in January 1833, they appointed Isambard Kingdom Brunel to undertake a survey of a railway route between the two cities. It took Brunel just three months to complete his survey and recommend a route. The first Great Western Railway bill encountered strong opposition, most notably from Eton College who were horrified that building the line may encourage the boys to “seek the doubtful dissipations of London town”. After some reworking of the proposed route, including clauses insisted upon by Eton College, Parliamentary approval was finally obtained and the Great Western Railway Act was passed on 31 August 1835. Brunel’s vision Brunel’s great vision was that the Great Western would link London with New York via Bristol, by train and steamship. The route he surveyed for the Company was designed to be as straight and as level as possible, enabling locomotives to achieve maximum speeds. To achieve this, pioneering civil engineering was required; at the time of construction, Box Tunnel and Maidenhead Bridge were unequalled anywhere in the world. However by 1839 progress had been slow and the costs of construction were escalating, not least because of the amount of land that needed to be purchased to implement the broad gauge. By 1841 the line from London to Chippenham and Bristol to Bath had been completed, but the work on Box Tunnel was holding up the completion of the railway. Extra men and equipment were brought in for a final push so that the main line through from London to Bristol opened on 30 June 1841. Expansion and the ‘gauge wars’ Brunel recognised that the 4ft 8 1/2in gauge used on railways in the north of England by the Stephensons was based simply on the ‘wagon ways’ that had been used in the coal mines. To promote speed and comfort as well as greater passenger and freight capacity, he recommended a 7ft 01/4in (2,140 mm) broad gauge instead. The Great Western Railway was convinced and adopted the broad gauge measurements for their new railway. During the mid nineteenth century, the Company expanded its interests by absorbing rival companies and establishing capital interests in many more. Where it was able, they promoted the use of the broad gauge by these railway companies, particularly where they proposed to join with their main line. However adopting the broad gauge did present practical problems for the company, particularly where it met with a standard gauge railway. Brunel introduced the concept of the ‘mixed gauge’ to cope with the running of trains into a standard gauge area but these tracks were difficult and expensive to build and operate. At locations served by both gauges, most notably Gloucester, there were major problems. During the ‘railway mania’ of the 1840s when many hundreds of new lines were being promoted, establishing a national standard for track gauge was becoming a pressing issue. Despite Brunel’s evidence in support of his broad gauge, the Gauge Act of 1846 established the national standard of 4ft 8 1/2in. From 1860 the GWR began to convert its broad gauge tracks to standard. The final elimination of the broad gauge came in May 1892 when the entire line between London and Penzance was converted to standard gauge during a single weekend. The GWR reported it had taken 4,700 men 31 hours to undertake the task. The twentieth century The twentieth century saw the Great Western Railway expand and consolidate their position in the South West and Midlands. By the start of the twentieth century the their network expanded as far west as Penzance, and as far north as Chester. Between 1914 and 1921 all railway companies came under the jurisdiction of the Government and administered by The Railway Executive. During this time the Great Western Railway became heavily involved in the movement of munitions from the midlands and coal from South Wales to the major ports. In January 1923, as a result of the Railways Act passed by the Government after the First World War, the Great Western Railway was amalgamated along with 29 other companies into one. In reality there was relatively little effect on the company, which still retained its original name. In World War Two the Great Western Railway played an important role in evacuating children from cities to the West Country and many of the GWR stations, docks and works were bombed. After the war the railways were nationalised under the 1947 Transport Act. The Great Western Railway effectively became the Western Region of British Railways which operated between 1948 and 1992.