Gloucester
‘On Monday, the Great Western line was opened throughout from London to Gloucester … 114 miles … four hours and a half distance reckoned by time … by ordinary trains; but there is an express train to and fro each day which performs the distance in five minutes under three hours. On Monday last, this train accomplished the 114 miles in two hours and forty minutes … The newly opened portion of the line passes through a most beautifully picturesque country, opening to travellers some of the choicest scenery in Gloucestershire.
Gloucester Journal 17th May 1845
Two gauges met at Gloucester: Brunel’s GWR broad gauge (only about 10% of the national railway) and the more usual gauge of four feet eight and a half inches, coming down from the north on its way to Bristol. The government had set up a committee to examine the gauge question with the power to make recommendations. Evidence (possibly contrived against the GWR broad gauge) was gathered at Gloucester and the observers from the Parliamentary Gauge Committee, according to this later comment, ‘were appalled by the clamour arising from the well-arranged confusion of shouting out addresses of consignments, the chucking of packages across from truck to truck, the enquiries for missing articles, the loading, unloading and reloading …’
Such notorious chaos was famously depicted in The London Illustrated News – and that journal’s illustrations did not always reflect a carefully observed reality. But these are its words: ‘It was found at Gloucester that to tranship the contents of one wagon full of miscellaneous merchandise to another, from one gauge to another, takes about an hour, with all the force of porters … bricks are miss-counted … slates chipped … cheeses cracked … ripe fruit and vegetables crushed … chairs, furniture, oil cakes, cast-iron pots, grates and ovens all more or less broken …’
The consequences of this confusion went way beyond freight, of course, with missed connections for passengers. But in the age before standardised time across the nation – ‘Railway Time’ (GMT) – when time was set according to the sun, three different railway companies met at Gloucester and used three different clocks: the Birmingham & Gloucester Railway used Birmingham time; the Bristol & Gloucester used Bristol time, and the GWR used London time …
No surprise that Parliament decided in favour of broad gauge in 1846; our line to Swindon was converted to ordinary gauge in 1872, whilst the GWR converted its overall system piecemeal, often putting in a third rail too, until the complete end of GWR broad gauge in 1892.