Why GWR ?

[The Great Bear]

Brunel might play a part - does for me, although hailing from West Country and a childhood Albert Hall got me there first.

 

In the context of model railways, before my time, but Cryril Freezer espousing the virtues of the GWR BLT might also have contributed.

[RJS1977]

In my case, my first loco was a Hornby 101 tank - along with 3x GWR 4-wheelers - (later followed by a Lima Pannier - I wanted a "Thomas" but my father bought me "Duck" instead!). From then on it was largely a case of finding other rolling stock that matched (not quite sure how the 33 and the 08 came into it!). I daresay if I'd started out as my father did with a Princess and a Jinty I'd have modelled 1950s LMR (especially since I grew up in Stockport!).

 

As I now live in Reading and my parents in West Wales there is now much more of a family link to the GWR area!

 

 

Why are more GWR locos preserved? Mainly because many of the locos sent to Woodham's scrapyard - and not cut up - were GWR types (though by no means exclusively so). Had Woodhams been in Newcastle we'd probably have loads of LNER locos preserved and few GWR...

 

 

Why BLTs? Yes, CJF probably did have something to do with it, but from his writings it would appear he mostly extolled their virtues as an easy starter layout - stock was readily available (though nothing to stop anyone kit/scratchbuilding more exotic stock once the basics were in place) and not much track was required, rather than any personal preference on his part - in some of CJF's later writings he expresses regret that so many GWR BLTs have been built!

 

Why rural? Probably because it's easier to model fields than buildings!

[buffalo]

I think there are all sorts of reasons, including all the ones that have been mentioned so far. The association with holidays and an idyllic, romanticised railway past probably contributes a lot to it. The fact that the GWR was the only pre-grouping company to not only retain its name at the grouping but also remain essentially unchanged is also possibly a key factor to the way that the GWR "brand" became more deeply embedded than others. I also suspect that the GWR's use of pannier tanks had a lot to do with it - they're probably the most obviously distinctive (to a layman) small loco design. The same goes for the GWR's use of autocoaches, which were not unknown elsewhere but were far more common in the West country...

I entirely agree, though let's not forget that before and during most of the pannier tank era, the GWR was predominantly a saddle tank railway.

 

...A lot of it, though, is almost certainly just fashion. Modellers are inspired by other modellers, and the manufacturers in turn produce products to suit that demand. And the reality is that you can, as others have already said, do a very good GWR BLT using nothing other than RTR products, something which is harder for the other companies.

Maybe so if you are prepared to overlook rather too many details. With the exception about three rtr models that are now very long in the tooth and do not bear comparison with current offerings, just about everything that the manufacturers offer dates from about 1938 or later and is quite wrong for all those 'bucolic' BLTs set in earlier years.

 

Nick

[Torn-on-the-platform]

I'm not the typical WR modeller as I'm really a SR boy at heart, and my main interest is in preservation.

 

My interest was sparked by my holidays becoming centred around Moretonhampstead from about 3 years ago. It took a while for me to really appreciate it, dismissing it as a line that only had boring push-pulls and B sets, but frequent visits to fantastic time capsule that is the South Devon Railway quickly changed that view. On my first visit, I spent much time admiring their 57xx, a class of which I have always been fond, presumably thanks to the Rev. Awdry. This lead onto an interest in the other GW branch line engines as I became more familiar with them, particularly the prairie tanks and other varieties of pannier. I now have a dilapidated B set that I hope to brush up to standard and am eagerly awaiting the arrival of Bachmann's new auto coaches!

 

As I drive through what used to be Bovey station, past railway embankments and bridges in differing states of repair and into the outskirts of Moreton, I can't help but wish that I would be greeted to the town by the sight of a sparkling 57xx sat with a couple of auto-coaches awaiting their next trip to Heathfield. As I am instead greeted with the sight of Thompson's lorries, this illusion is incredibly unlikely to become reality, so I better model it! Most of the required stock is collected, though space and time required for the layout is not available.

 

My visits to the town are the only time I've ever truly been able to relax for the last 3 years, and I suppose that therein lies a major factor for my affection for the area. The only thing that could enhance the beautiful valley even further would be the occasional echo of a steam engine's whistle, followed by the beat of its exhaust as it draws nearer.

 

As you can probably tell, Swindon's standardisation has little to do with my interest. My project requires one or two medium sized engines that weren't native to Moretonhampstead, and whether they be a Hall, a Grange or County etc, I'm really not that bothered!

 

The history doesn't do that much for me either, though I fully appreciate why it would for someone else. This whole interest was sparked by a BR Black pannier tank and has been further fuelled by photos taken in BR days. These were the engines that were available to preservationists, and these are the engines that I have seen with my own eyes.

[Pacific231G]

The Great Bear, on 28 Jul 2013 - 22:33, said:

 

Brunel might play a part - does for me, although hailing from West Country and a childhood Albert Hall got me there first. In the context of model railways, before my time, but Cryril Freezer espousing the virtues of the GWR BLT might also have contributed.

 

 

I believe that CJF and others (Maurice Deane?) set out deliberatly to fill the early 50s model press with matters GW

No but it's a belief that has become commonly held through frequent repetition. I've just been through a random selection of four bound volumes of Railway Modeller from the 1950s and, looking at Layouts of the Month, the most popular subject was the LMS/LMR and its constituents (MR. LNWR, M&GN) featured in 17 layouts. That compared with 14 for the GW, three each for the Southern and the LNER and four for the Highland Railway. Five were freelance (including the Craig and Mertonford) and thirteen were generic following no particular prototype.

 

The other myth is that CJF "pushed" branch line termini. In fact the 12 Standard Gauge branch line layouts that featured in the years I looked at were vastly outnumbered by 29 layouts following main line themes and there were also three narrow gauge layouts (Craig and Mertonford, County Donegal and Rye and Camber)

 

I also looked at the prototype lines and stations suggested as modelling subjects and could see no GWR bias at all. Subjects were drawn from all over the country.

 

The truth is that, like any editor, CJF could only draw from the articles submitted to him solicited or unsolicited but he seemed to always maintain a good balance between different types of modelling. He was very diligent in getting to know and visiting the larger clubs around th country. It is actually ironic that two of the best known layouts representing the West Country, Ken Northwood's North Devonshire (GW) and John Charman's Charford (SR) were built by members of the Edinburgh and Lothians Club who also included Philip Hancock of Craig and Mertonford fame.

 

If you think of modellers who became known through Cyril Freezer's RM, Peter Denny modelled the GCR, P.D. Hancock a mythical Scottish NG railway, Mac Pyrke the Somerset and Dorset, John Charman the Southern and David Jenkinson the Settle and Carlisle.

 

One of the best early models of a branch line WAS Maurice Deane's Culm Valley which was GW. Deane was from the Bristol area and a well known railway photographer but I think it was that line in particular that interested him rather than the GW in general. His other layouts that I know of included the Rye and Camber, Welshpool and Llanfair, Wantage Tramway and the Jersey Railway.

 

I think that this myth became so oft repeated that CJF himself actually came to believe that he had pushed the idea of the, preferably GW, branch line layout idea. He sought to change that with plans such as Minories but in reality I can't find any sign that he ever did favour the GW or the idyllic rural branch line over other types of layout.

[stovepipe]

I find it interesting that much of the GWR-centric modelling I've seen, almost completely avoids the industrial parts of its geographical area. The more idyllic areas are disproportionately modelled and I must admit, I spend very little time now looking at these fairly repetitive GWR layouts at exhibitions. The standardisation the GWR was famous for, feeds into this feeling of seeing nothing new, I think. That said if a diesel-hydraulic makes an appearance, I may well stick around a while, but it isn't long before I get the urge to find something more gritty and real.

[coachmann]

The GWR in a country setting is idyllic. The GWR in a suburban setting is something else.  Somehow Large Prairie's and other blue and red spot engines suffering from lack of cleaning due to alternative employment gave the GW no advantages.  Midlands grot does not settle well on the GW and so we ended up with Planet Great Western wrapped in nostalgia and perpetuated by preservationists like plastic tits. The closest I saw to GW-perfection was on the Cambrian section between Afon Wen and Towyn.....Very clean lightweight engines and carriages, well kept choc & cream stations, and an air of unhurried sleepiness assisted by station staff looking for customers. Even my wife liked the GW!  It was fragile and it evoporated like the dew in the early 1960s.

[Rugd1022]

The GWR in a country setting is idyllic. The GWR in a suburban setting is something else.  Somehow Large Prairie's and other blue and red spot engines suffering from lack of cleaning due to alternative employment gave the GW no advantages.  

 

A good point Larry well put - this for me is the other side of the GWR coin, even in it's WR heyday Paddington was a dark dank grotty hole of a place, Westbourne Park was hemmed in by smokey Victorian tenaments until the Westway came along, and the vast sprawl of Old Oak Common was the complete opposite to the likes of Fairford, Ashburton or St.Ives. Everything in between did vary quite a bit in character, but there was (and still is to some extent) a definite 'family' feel to it as a whole.

[The Stationmaster]

The GWR in a country setting is idyllic. The GWR in a suburban setting is something else.  Somehow Large Prairie's and other blue and red spot engines suffering from lack of cleaning due to alternative employment gave the GW no advantages.  Midlands grot does not settle well on the GW and so we ended up with Planet Great Western wrapped in nostalgia and perpetuated by preservationists like plastic tits. The closest I saw to GW-perfection was on the Cambrian section between Afon Wen and Towyn.....Very clean lightweight engines and carriages, well kept choc & cream stations, and an air of unhurried sleepiness assisted by station staff looking for customers. Even my wife liked the GW!  It was fragile and it evoporated like the dew in the early 1960s.

Very true Larry - I hardly knew the Birmingham area in the steam age, it was just something you passed through enroute to the Cambrian Coast.  Similarly the South wales area, especially the Valleys had a 'something' all of their own and it has fascinated me ever since my first visit there in the early 1960s when there were some dmus about but everything else, apart from some trains on the SWML, was still very much the steam railway.

[bike2steam]

- I hardly knew the Birmingham area in the steam age, it was just something you passed through enroute to the Cambrian Coast.

Due to family members living in handy locations, sheds like Banbury, and Oxley, which were friendly, easy to get round, and never got thrown out of, became regular haunts, and were something else - great places, great memories, plenty of 'copper caps' - sorry getting carried away in nostalgia again!!!

[A Murphy]

I think timing has quite a lot to do with this. In the late fifties and early sixties, as railway modelling started to become a much more accessible hobby, the remains of run or runninng down industrial society were everywhere to be seen - there were still pockets of indescribably awful slums, dilapidated, doomed Victorian buildings, environment etc to be seen in many UK cities. Why would you want to model that? The idea of recreating something contemporary and new, or gentle, rural, clean, nostalgic, remeniscent of holidays etc would have appealed to many.

 

Times change. Some people regret the fact that in getting rid of that industrial base, babies and bath water may have been chucked indiscriminately and seek to recreate it. These days there is nostalgia for work-a-day grime and grit just as back then there was nostalgia for the rapidly disappearing rural branch line, which in many people's minds the GWR epitomised - the Titfield Thunderbolt lived on in model form.

 

Interesting debate,

 

Best wishes,

 

Alastair M

[station cat]

I think you're probably right Alastair. I also wonder if there might have been an element of war veterans using railway modelling as a form of therapy - and they certainly might have been drawn to rural idylls or childhood memories.

[Pacific231G]

No its not a belief...CJF himself wrote along those lines,,

Where? Apart from his choice of Railways of the Month, the majority of which were main line layouts, his editorials in RM from1951 simply don't show a bias towards Great Western  branch lines. In his own monthly plans there was a definite balance between branch and main line and this comment from July 1954 was fairly typical. "In recent years there has been a reaction against the over-complex layout popular in the mid 1930s, culminating in the single line branch meandering through exquisite scenery. Yet, now that ready made scale track is so cheap, and so many scale models are available there is no reason why a fairly ambitious layout should not be attempted" This introduced a plan for a spiral main line terminus to terminus layout in 7ft x 8ft 6ins. It would though have been rather silly if examples of fine modelling such as Ken Payne's EM Tyling Branch (Railway of the Month in April 1957)had been turned down simply for being GW branch lines

 

Though he mentioned the obvious virtues of a BLT, especially for a beginner intending to build his own stock, Cyril Freezer was also very clear about its limitations and tended to see it as a first step towards a main line layout which could of course also use the stock built for the branch. In 1957 he went a step further "For years we have assumed that where space is restricted the country branch offers the greatest approach to prototype practice, an assumption which is all very well if you like small tank locos and two coach trains"  That was the opening to his 1957 article introducing Minories, a decidedly non GWR City terminus, as a sensible alternative for a limited space.  

[Forester]

What modellers who didn't experience the full age of steam rarely grasp is the utter chaos which ruled in the regions outside the GWR, in terms of the variety of the rolling stock design, style, size, condition, age, colours etc.

 

I see modellers going to great lengths to ensure all their locos have the same crests, the same degree of weathering or pristineness, rakes of matching coaches or trucks, the "correct" everything. This is all complete folly.

 

The reality was a great jumble in which you never knew what loco would turn up and as you stepped into a coach it could be new or Victorian or anything in between. And if by some remote chance it was built within the same decade and painted the same basic colour as the next one down, it still wouldn't appear to match as they would last have seen a lick of paint years apart.

 

The GWR was different. It was organised, relatively predictable, there was a Swindon "style", things often matched fom a visual as well as a user point of view and there was a consistent replacement policy.

 

All this appeals to many modellers. it appealed to those who invented model railways and produced the early models, which in turn influenced the the next generation, and lead to the GWR being well over-represented in model availability until relatively recently.

To some this is boring. I will admit as a spotter I quickly got tired of the sameness of the GWR and liked to return to the unpredictability of my home Southern (which in turn was more standardised than some other regions).

 

But if anyone is going to model regions other than the GWR then please do it properly  --   and revel in the jumble and mis-match !

[buffalo]

What modellers who didn't experience the full age of steam rarely grasp is the utter chaos which ruled in the regions outside the GWR, in terms of the variety of the rolling stock design, style, size, condition, age, colours etc...

 

I don't think any of us are old enough to have experienced the "full age of steam" It's not clear whether you are talking about the GWR or BR Western Region, or whether your point is the variety of stock on other railways or the sameness of the GWR. If the latter, then that sounds like more of the old myth that all GWR locos look the same. At any time from the late 19th century until well into the fifties a wide variety of stock and liveries could be seen on many parts of the GWR/WR. In the decade before WW1 there would have been examples of at least three wagon liveries, three coach liveries and possibly up to five loco liveries, most of which could be seen together. I doubt if there was a time when there were not at least two liveries that could be seen on the same day. Local services were often composed of mismatched stock of widely varying ages. Don't take my word for it, though, the evidence is there in photos in almost any book on the GWR.

 

Nick

[TheQ]

If you model GWR it's often a BLT,

If you model LMS it's often ICE,

If you model LNER it's often, CAF,

If you Model SR it's often, CAT,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BLT Branch line terminus,

ICE , Industrial City Environment,

CAF, Coal and freight,

CAT, Commuters and Tourists

 

and yes I know they are all sweeping generailisations, but it's often the case of you model what the relevant region is famous for, and you can squeeze in, Hence any region its  often a small BLT,ICE,CAF, CAT, not  LAME,  

 

 

Large and Mainline Environment

 

 

The Q

 Oh and I'm modelling a GWR through line with SR from one end and LMS from the other.

[Pacific231G]

I don't think any of us are old enough to have experienced the "full age of steam"

 

I experienced it as a smallish child in the mid to late 50s and my earliest remembered memories were of the S&D where my grandfather was a signalman which got me my first footplate ride, of the Isle of Wight when all four platforms at Pier Head were busy with trains, of seeing one of the last slip coaches at Didcot and an odd memory of crossing a bridge in our car en route to the Slimbridge wild fowl centre and seeing an autotrain with a loco that was probably a 14XX. I can also remember steam trains being slow, dirty and not particularly comfortable though a bit later as a teenager during the last years of steam that certainly didn't stop me from spending my pocket money on day returns (and more often on Oxford platform tickets) to experience what I knew would soon be gone forever. By then I think most long distance trains were made up from fairly uniform Mk 1s so a typical heritage railway train does actually match my own experience of the steam railways.

 

I've been thinking why the popularity of the GWR and, apart from its very successful publicity department, I think it really is all about continuity. Affection for the GCR, the Highland Railway or the Midland didn't necessarily transfer to the successor grouping companies any more than that for Austin did to BMC or BOAC for BA. The GWR though was always the GWR and though there may have been people who really loved the Cambrian or the Brecon and Merthyr (but maybe not many up in the coalfields) they were simply less significant as constituents than the GER or the North British.

 

The one exception to this seems to be the Southern as far more modellers seem to favour it than the companies that made it up. Maybe it was more successful than the LMS and the LNER in creating its own new identity maybe a result of its electrification programme. Did any of its constituents tend to lend their identity to the Southern?

[Cyberspice]

When I was young it was the LMS. Its now Modern(ish) Image on Midland or NER rails. Deltics just don't look right in sleepy west country stations!

[Unknown Warrior]

The big advantage of the dominance of the GWR in early 1960's modeling was the formation of The LMS Society. The rest of course is history through the work of Bob Essery, David Jenkinson, David Hunt et al. There is now a massive body of literature about the LMS and it's constituents to help modelers and the manufacturers who make use of it.

[coachmann]

A Pannier was a Pannier and folk used whatever they could buy in the early 1960s. A Hawksworth Pannier tank (red spot) and a GWR Condensing Pannier?  You'de better believe it. 

[Ozexpatriate]

I've only been modelling model railways for just over a year and I'm intrigued to know as to what the huge attraction for the Great Western is

 

.... a childhood Albert Hall got me there first.

Truthfully my Albert Hall acquired as a teenager is what brought me to the GWR.

 

But once there, why not?

Where do you begin?

 

Perhaps with its corporate continuity as one of the oldest large railways and then survived grouping with it's culture and name intact and lasting as a corporate entity for 113 years and extending that with the uniqueness of the Western Region lasting well into nationalization.

 

With that much continuity you have lots of traditions and history. In engineering, pioneered by I.K. Brunel, and the transformative locomotive design by G.J. Churchward and self-promotion (due in no small measure to the career of Sir Felix Pole).

 

It wasn't the biggest railway, but I think it is fair to say that it might have had the strongest sense of identity.

 

The fact that in the 1980s you could purchase kits for everything you needed for a complete GWR layout didn't hurt its desirability in modelling circles.

[Happy Hippo]

One Railway! One gauge! One CME! (Please select from Gooch/Armstrong/Dean/Churchward/Collet/Hawksworth)

 

I'll get my leiderhosen

 

Regards

 

Richard

[The Great Bear]

One Railway! One gauge! One CME! (Please select from Gooch/Armstrong/Dean/Churchward/Collet/Hawksworth)

 

I'll get my leiderhosen

 

Regards

 

Richard

One of those is plainly wrong. Two gauges are better than one.

[RJS1977]

One of those is plainly wrong. Two gauges are better than one.

 

By my reckoning the GWR operated at least five different gauges during their history (though not all at the same place or the same time):

 

1'11 1/2" (VoR), 2'3" (Corris), 2'6" (Welshpool), 4' 8 1/2" & 7'0 1/4"

 

I think they may have had shares in at least one Irish line as well (5'3").

[BG John]

One Railway! One gauge!

Until it got corrupted by other lesser railways, and had to start using their inferior gauge!