GWR railcar history
RAIL meets the team restoring a 78-year-old diesel railcar, and who need just a few thousand pounds more to fund the final push.
“Iknow this line very well, and it’s the biggest investment it’s had for 175 years. No one’s ever tried to change it this radically...” Great Western Railway Managing Director Mark Hopwood is justifiably proud of his new fleet of Hitachi units. But the Intercity Express Trains (IETs) are merely the latest in a long line of revolutionary motive power that dates all the way back to the days of Isambard Kingdom Brunel in the 1830s.
Engineers Sir Daniel Gooch, the Armstrongs and William Dean all laid the foundations for George Jackson Churchward to test his ground-breaking and far-reaching theories of locomotive design when he became Locomotive Superintendent in 1902.
These were heady days for the GWR. Thanks to Churchward, its locomotives were more powerful, more efficient and better built than any of its contemporaries. Not only that, Churchward also produced a whole range of locomotives from a pool of standardised components.
Students of steam locomotive development claim that Swindon stagnated in the 1930s, once Churchward’s successor Charles Collett had penned the mighty ‘Castles’ and ‘Kings’. But that’s not entirely true – the GWR was investigating different forms of propulsion, including diesel railcars…
IET is the epitome of modernity. Its bullet looks convey a sense of speed, but its interior is one of minimal functionalism, testament to 21st century rail travel where the railway is the fastest means of getting from A to B.
GWR’s diesel railcars couldn’t be more different. They were built the way the railway had always built coaches, with lots of exposed wood, lots of leg room, springy moquette- covered seating, and big windows through which you could watch the world go by. There were certainly no power sockets for your laptop or iPod.
It’s fair to say that all diesel multiple units have the GWR diesel railcars in their DNA, and their part in railway history should not be underestimated.
It’s getting easier to experience IET travel on the Great Western Main Line, as more and more units enter revenue-earning service. Sadly, spotting a GWR railcar is rare, and getting to ride on one is even rarer.
The National Railway Museum at York is home to No. 4, one of the original batch built by AEC/Park Royal, but it’s a static exhibit.
No. 22 is preserved at Didcot Railway Centre. This is one of the angular 1940s variants, built by Swindon using mechanicals supplied by AEC. It’s a runner, but you only get to experience a few hundred yards of ‘Big Four’ diesel power on Didcot’s short demonstration lines.
However, there will be a way to get to enjoy a time capsule of bygone rail travel… but only if a £ 51,000 funding shortfall is filled.
That’s a drop in the ocean compared with GWR’s multibillion-pound IET fleet, but to the six-man team of volunteers at the Kent & East Sussex Railway (KESR), it would make immeasurable difference.
GWR’s London-Bristol main line was pushed to completion by an engineer of extraordinary vision and ambition. But where Isambard Kingdom Brunel thought grand and expensive, Colonel Holman F Stephens thought cheap. His empire of cut-price, run-on-a-shoestring light railways was designed so that rail travel could benefit and financially rejuvenate deprived parts of the country - it’s the same argument being used to promote HS2!
The KESR was one of those lines. After several route proposals, it was opened between Robertsbridge, Tenterden and Headcorn from 1900 to 1905.
It struggled financially until it was nationalised in 1948, having remained independent during the ‘Big Four’ era. BR closed the line in 1961, but preservationists wanted to take it over almost immediately.
It took until 1974 before revenue-earning trains were allowed to run on the KESR again. The Tenterden-Bodiam section is now a thriving preserved railway, and work continues to reopen the line between Bodiam and the main line at Robertsbridge.
The hiatus between closure and reopening was not wasted, as the search was on to find locomotives and rolling stock to work the line. That search took the nascent preservationists to Worcester shed, where the last GWR railcars had been gathered before all were withdrawn in 1962.
Railcar No. 20, one of the final type, with angular Swindon bodywork and two AEC 9.25-litre six-cylinder diesel engines, was bought for the princely sum of £415. The sale was agreed in 1964, although No. 20 didn’t move to the South East until 1966.
It was given a spruce-up, repainted into GWR chocolate and cream colours, and made KESR preservation history when it worked the reopening train on February 3 1974.
But as the 1970s progressed, so No. 20’s poor condition became more and more of an
issue. Mechanical problems meant that it became an item of locomotive-hauled rolling stock, before being withdrawn from service at the end of 1979.
“It had spent four years dumped at Worcester, and was on borrowed time already before it arrived with us,” says Neil Edwards, one of the six-man restoration team.
If No. 20 was in a poor state in 1980, it was even worse by the time a concerted restoration effort started in 1989. This project was spearheaded by Andy Webb, and Chris Davis was an early recruit. He joined the restoration team in 1990, and nearly 30 years later he remains as committed as ever towards No. 20’s return to service.
Edwards and Davis give a run-down of just how bad things had become for No. 20. Substantial lengths of cantrail, waist rail and key vertical sections of timber had rotted; the steel panels were beyond repair; the lighting wiring was shot; and the heavy steel base plates under each cab were heavily corroded.
One of the biggest culprits to this deterioration were the steel screws that held the pieces of timber together. They’d corroded, and as they corroded they had split the surrounding wood.
You can see by the shade of the timber just how much the team has had to replace, but also just how much of the original woodwork has been saved.
Says Edwards: “The first job was to replace the damaged frame. The small saloon is largely original but the door posts have been replaced. The roof cantrail at the far [Headcorn] end has been replaced.”
GWR No. 20 has been out of the public eye for nearly 30 years, but as it sits inside the KESR’s carriage and wagon workshop at Tenterden Town, it looks more and more complete. The shed itself is a smart and
civilised workspace, and even on a blustery January afternoon it is a warm and pleasant place to be. It’s a far cry from the earliest days of the line’s restoration, when the team worked in the open.
“When it was outside, it was over a pit,” recalls Edwards. “We went underneath and completely cleaned the frame, taking it back to bare metal.”
Since then, the Robertsbridge-end cab end has been rebuilt, complete with the control equipment. At the time of writing, one AEC engine was ready for installation while the second was away for refurbishment. The gearboxes have been restored. “This one has a high-low ratio gearbox, which is different to No. 22,” Davis points out.
The heavy wiring (wiring for the control equipment) is three-quarters complete and is waiting for the Headcorn-end cab to be rebuilt. Aside from this, Davis says that the big jobs left to do are the “upholstery, glass and niceties”, plus the domestic wiring - the wiring for the internal lights.
“There’s less to take off than there is to put back on,” says Edwards. “We’re definitely over the hump.”
New steel panels have been made, and are gradually being fitted to ensure that they align to the standards of perfection that Swindon’s craftsmen achieved a generation before. The cost of the panels was met by a generous donation made back in the 1990s.
Donation is the key word here. Although there might not be (comparatively speaking) much left to do before No. 20 takes to the rails again, there remains the question of the £ 51,000 needed to complete the restoration… that and time.
The volunteers only spend one day a week working on No. 20, but have a rough deadline for completion.
KESR metals end just under a mile west of Bodiam station. At Robertsbridge, the Rother Valley Railway (RVR) continues to reopen the line eastwards, aiming to reach the KESR. There’s much work to do before the two lines join and the RVR is absorbed into the KESR, including negotiating the purchase of trackbed and land.
“No. 20 is owned by the [Kent & East Sussex Railway] Company,” Edwards explains. “The aspiration is to have it ready for when Robertsbridge opens, for operating shuttles to Northiam.”
Davis sums up life with No. 20: “You have a love/hate relationship with it. Some days, when you’re working with a never-ended basketcase, it’s really demoralising. But there are others where you look at what you’ve done and it’s satisfying.”
As your new IET whisks you west, spare a thought for the dedicated team restoring a 78-year-old pioneering piece of Great Western (indeed, railway) history. And why not dip your hand in your pocket to help speed that restoration along?
After all, you’ll be helping to create a way to relax and watch the beautiful landscape of the Rother Valley trundle past. It will be the world’s best diesel-powered time machine…