Gloucester on the rails
by Russell Grant
The coming of the railways was part and parcel of the industrial revolution which began in the United Kingdom and responsible for putting another Great into Britain . Railway fever arrived in the city on November 4 th 1840 with the Birmingham & Gloucester Railway, which, in time, became famous as the London Midland Scottish Railway.
Queen Victoria was an avid user and stopped to swap trains at Gloucester when travelling from Balmoral (Aberdeenshire) to Osborne House ( Isle of Wight ) in 1849. She had no choice because the two different rail companies used different gauges! This altered in the 1870s when a national gauge was agreed and made rail travel so much easier.
Apart from the obvious, rails and trains, rolling stock was in great demand and so in 1860 Gloucester added to its incredible transport heritage the launch of the Gloucester Wagon Co Ltd which was based alongside another of its travel triumphs, the Sharpness canal. Many local jobs were created and the first order came from up the road with 1000 coal wagons for the West Midlands Railway Company; the first home order for carriages was contracted by the London, Chatham and Dover railway; oh for those halcyon days of steam!
Come 1867 the world came a calling with 500 wagons ordered by India , this was followed with Russia and Argentina waving their order books. By 1887 the company became the Gloucester Railway Carriage and Wagon Company Ltd., The most luxurious coach, people say that was ever built was for the Maharajah Holkar of Indore in 1936. But the world was in a state of upheaval and he was given the order of the boot and fled to the Punjab before he could enjoy it.
In 1868 a profitable relationship began with Tsarist Russia. Railways were the lifeblood of this vast kingdom stretching from Europe to China and Japan . A Gloucester Wagon Company-supervised works was opened in Riga (now Latvia ), the stock was sent out in kit form although it soon closed due to the sub standard labour. The first Russian customer was the Orel and Vitebsk Railway; a quarter of a million pounds of special axle-grease had to be delivered with the finished rolling stock as the regular grease was poisonous when eaten by the starving Latvian peasants!
Now if you thought James Bond drove the original land-to-sea vehicle not so! In1894 the "Gantry Car" built for the Brighton and Rottingdean Seashore Railway Company stood 40 feet tall on metal legs allowing it to run through the sea. The coach body featured a ship's bell and lifeboat and needed a sea captain to drive it, sail it – whatever!
The great little railways of Wales are a legend and a massive tourist attraction for the principality. A classy directors' saloon was built for the narrow gauge Padarn Railway which closed in 1961 but was reincarnated in the 1970s as the Llanberis Lake Railway in English but in Welsh/Cymraeg Rheilffordd Llyn Padarn. It runs in the most stunning scenery around the base of Mount Snowdon . Also in 1896 alongside the GWR Gloucester Central station, the new Gloucester Eastgate station was opened; it ran south to Bristol via Tuffley it closed in 1975.
Another landmark for Gloucester came in 1897 when it built a futuristic Monorail carriage built for "Behrs Lightning Express Railway.' To run at the Brussels Exhibition, so impressed was the King of the Belgians that he ordered a saloon body on a Daimler motor car chassis from the Gloucester Wagon Works!
And if that wasn't prophetic enough hows about this in 1898 when the company produced an electric taxi for London Electric Cab Company? Over a century ahead of its time now green eco electric prototypes cars are all the rage to help slow down climate change.
As Victoria 's reign came to a close Britain was fighting the Boers and many horse-drawn ambulances amongst other things, were built for the British Army in South Africa , including the HQ wagon of the Commander in Chief, Field Marshall Lord Roberts which was converted from an ambulance. This was displayed in Gloucester after the war was over but Lord Roberts was so attached to it he kept it.
As war in South Africa subsided so in 1903 it was back to business for GRCW who were now asked to construct a real weirdo: a one wheeled carette (similar to an open topped sedan chair) for the use of the Crown Agent for the British Colonies. Stanley Baldwin the Conservative Prime Minister of the 1920s and 30s joined the board of directors in 1906. Another sign of the times in 1908 put Gloucester at the forefront of public transport to come when double-decker buses the first built for Chelmsford , Essex .
In 1914 war was declared, one month after in September the company struggled to finish an order for Argentine grain wagons as workers responded to the nation and signed on for the Great War. Key men in reserved occupations couldn't be held onto as in WW2. The western front was filled with Gloucester built stretchers, ambulances, shells and wagons for the French Railways. By the Treaty of Versailles, 821GRCW workers had been killed. After the war the Government let the company keep some of its profits to build a sports ground in Tuffley Avenue . Later known as the Winget Ground and nowadays as Tuffley Park it is where Gloucester Cricket Festival was held for many years.
Back to biz again in 1919 when London Transport ordered underground trains for its District Line which runs from the city of London out into the Middlesex suburbs to the west and Essex in the east. LT must have been happy as in 1931 the Piccadilly Line were to receive Gloucester built tube trains.
World War II was declared in 1939 and Gloucester produced important armaments such as wooden shoe soles, tank carrying railway wagons, antiaircraft projectiles, copper bands, bomb lifting cradles, stampings for tanks and aircraft, Bailey Bridges and spitfire propellers for airscrew experts ROTOL in nearby Cheltenham. GRCW had the finest stock of timber at their disposal during the war and Queen Mary paid two official visits to the Wagon Works during this time. Hopefully she didn't ask to take one home which was her usual habit when she visited people! July 1941 the first of 764 Churchill tanks rolled off the platform, weighing 45 tons and powered by a Vauxhall flat-12 engine, the Churchill began with a two-pounder gun but was later capable of firing 251b shells. "Whale" pivoting sections for Mulberry Harbour used on D-Day were also built at Gloucester .
1955 May 3. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II was shown around the Wagon Works with Prince Philip. By the 1950s/60s orders were on the wane and the last wagon to be completed was in 1968, after such an illustrious history. In 1986 the company was taken over and in 1989 some buildings were pulled down to make way for a giant Toy Shop and the rest of the works was the terra firma for the Peel Centre. Thankfully the impressive main entrance building remains as a go-kart centre; well at least it carries on the tradition of wheels!
As well as the GRCW Archives held in Alvin Street and two Gloucester built wagons on show at the National Waterways Museum, a 1950s diesel multiple unit is preserved at Pontypool and Blaenavon, Monmouthshire. The original wooden station based at Cinderford Gloucestershire built by Messrs Eassie later absorbed by GRCW in 1875 is now preserved on the Dean Forest Railway at Norchard - http://www.deanforestrailway.co.uk/station_norchard.html
And here endeth another tale of Gloucester .
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