Stop & Examine
A special birthday present.
Great Western Railway driver Gordon Pritchard celebrated his 100th birthday with a cab ride onboard a Hitachi Intercity Express Train on September 11, from Swansea to Swindon.
The bi-mode electric was a far cry from his early railway days. He passed his various tests in Swindon in 1937, having left school aged 14 four years previously. After working in a local butchers, he moved to Birmingham for factory work before taking his tests for the GWR.
“I remember having to follow different signal sequences,” he recalls. “If you were colour blind, you’d had it!”
He worked in Swansea freight yards until signing up for military training in 1939. Just after his 20th birthday he was called up to the 190 Railway Operating Company, Royal Engineers.
Gordon’s first assignment was in Persia, shipping coal and troops from the Gulf of Tehran. Other postings included Baghdad, Beirut and Lebanon, before he developed ulcers on the cornea of his left eye and was sent to North Africa to recover. Later he served in Sicily, and finished his service in Venice.
Returning to the GWR he applied to work in Southall Yard. His career with the railway spanned freight and passenger trains, and he would regularly drive the Swansea-London Paddington route.
He later worked on the Port Tennant and Danygraig lines, and transported coal from the pits in the Merthyr Valley to Swansea Docks before retiring in May 1983.
He married Olive in 1947 and they had two children, Paula and Roger. Olive passed away six years ago, aged 88, and Gordon is now cared for by his daughter Paula, granddaughter Victoria and her partner Ben.
At Swindon Gordon was taken on a tour of STEAM museum, where GWR presented him with a cake and framed picture.
“I had a wonderful time in the cab of the new Intercity Express Train, although it was a very different experience to the trains I used to drive,” he said.
“I had a wonderful time on the railways. I remember receiving a telegram from my Dad telling me I had to go down to Swindon to take my tests. When I passed everyone was congratulating me and telling me I’d got myself a job for life. It was difficult to understand at the time, but as it turned out they were right.”
Ted Llewellyn, Driver Depot Manager, Bristol, said: “It was great to take him all the way to Swindon. Gordon’s a real railway character - a proper old railwayman with all that railway wit.”