Grub, Water and Relief: Tales of the Great Western 1835-1892

The letters GWR have their peculiar romance, forming a magic cipher understood by most people now as meaning 'God's Wonderful Railway' or 'Gone with Regret'. But there was another meaning known only to the footplate crews, for whom GWR stood for the most desirable moment at the end of a shift - Grub, Water & Relief. In this book Adrian Vaughan brings vividly alive the early days of the Great Western from an unusual angle - through the experiences of the tough men who made the line a legend and who have, until now, remained anonymous. Drivers such as Jim Hurst and Michael Almond were proud, outspoken men on whom Brunei inflicted his 'freakish' locomotives and who later created the fame of Gooch's beautiful 8 ft Singles by driving them at 60 mph and more in the 1840s when brakes were, to quote Brunei, 'tolerably useless'. The development of the Victorian GWR from its rough-and-ready beginnings is traced through accounts of the daily life of such men as Charlie Weller, fifty-four years an engine-cleaner at Paddington; the experiences of the lineside policemen, sometimes drunk, who tried to maintain the trains' safety with the crudest of equipment; tales of the porters, who sometimes imprisoned their passengers for breaking the Company's strict 'No Smoking' laws; as well as the exploits of the imperturbable guards, many of them former footmen or butlers, much sought after for their courtly manners. The public often complained about their being organised so rigorously, bullied to travel 1st class and locked in - risking the terrors of fire from falling cinders and over-heated axle-bearings. The book ends with an account of the muscular effort of the men who changed the magnificent, Brunellian broad gauge into the cramped coal-cart gauge in a single weekend.