Charles Richardson and Sapperton
Charles Richardson, Sapperton, and Charles Dickens A GWR Pilgrimage Brunel diary entry Boxing Day 1835 about the Cheltenham & Great Western Union Railway: ‘… it’s an awkward line and the estimate’s too low …’ Charles Richardson became Brunel’s resident...
A Tale of Two Water Towers
A Tale of Two Water Towers, A Tale of Two Stations, A Tale of Two Rivers It takes less than an hour to walk from Kemble station to the source of the River Thames: it’s usually dry at the spring-source, although I have seen bubbles surface from the depths below...
Steam Rail Motors and Chalford
Steam Rail Motors and Chalford I first visited Chalford on the train in the summer of 1960. The locomotive was a 1400 class tank engine; 1463 from memory. I thought that a quaint engine at the time but not as quaint as the Art Deco diesel railcars awaiting the...
200th Anniversary of the Railways
The 200th Anniversary of the Stockton & Darlington Railway But also, the 200th Anniversary of the proposed Stroud and Severn Railroad And the 190th Anniversary of the Prospectus for the C & GWUR The Cheltenham and Great Western Union Railway There are national...
Railway Life Part Four
Railway Life Part Four A spring time step in his walk to work, On past the gas works, the pub and the chip shop, A wriggle of his hips as he walks past the football pitch, With egg and bacon for a fry-up on the shovel; But back in the house, she sits fretting. Her...
Railway Life Part Three
Railway Life Part Three It’s full steam ahead – Until, freezing in the cab, paper in his boots, He gets stuck in a wind-whistling loop, Out here in some unsheltered, open landscape; Or, shovelling six tons of coal Choking in some seeming endless tunnel, On a...