Company
DissolvedThe Great Western Railway
London · 1833 – 1948
Nationalized into British Railways in 1948. A later train operator reused the name. It is not the same company.
The Great Western Railway was incorporated in 1833, with Isambard Kingdom Brunel as engineer. He chose a broad gauge, seven feet, because he wanted speed and comfort more than he wanted to connect with other companies' tracks. The choice was a masterpiece and a commercial problem.
From Paddington to Bristol and then to the west, the GWR became a complete railway: hotels, docks, a steamship service, and its own workshops at Swindon. Swindon was a town the company built to house the people who built its engines.
Swindon and the company town
The works employed fitters, boilermakers, apprentices, and a medical fund the men paid into. A railway town is a workforce that cannot leave without leaving the trade, because the tools are the size of a locomotive. Clerks in Paddington ran the timetable and the shares. The GWR was famous for a culture of its own, including the nickname God's Wonderful Railway, which was pride and also a reminder that a large employer becomes a way of life.
1948, and a name reused
The broad gauge was converted to standard by 1892. The company itself ended on 1 January 1948, when the Transport Act nationalized Britain's railways into British Railways. In 2015 a train operating company, formerly First Great Western, took the old name. It runs trains on the old route. It is not the company Brunel engineered, and the page treats them as different things.
The work it organized
- Fitter
- Boilermaker
- Guard
- Works apprentice
On the timeline
Related
- The British railway companiesReorganized
- The Liverpool and Manchester RailwayAbsorbed