Never my favourite
Two ex-GWR "Hall" class 4-6-0s at Woodhams Bros scrapyard, Barry, Glamorgan, on Tuesday 4th March 1975. Closest to the camera is "Modified Hall" no. 6989 WIGHTWICK HALL. The other locomotive is no. 4936 KINLET HALL. Few of the hundreds of redundant steam locomotives brought here during the mid-1960s were actually broken up, so I would guess that these two were eventually aquired by preservationists.
Notwithstanding that it was my "home" company, the GWR was, to me, the least attractive of the pre-Nationalisation "big four". I don't know. There was something rather "roast beef" and picture-postcardy about it ...bound up with jigsaw puzzle scenes of tank engines chuffing over level crossings next to timber-framed country pubs, watched by chaps in sports jackets with square jaws manfully clamped around briar pipes. I liked proper railways, built to serve industry. All right, I know the GW served the South Wales coalfield, but even that was embosomed in deep valleys, against a backdrop of sunlit hillsides. Somehow you associated the GW more with the the Cornish Riviera Express and seaside holidays than with heavy industry. The locomotives too, with their brass and copper trimmings and their "unsightly" valve gear tidied away inside the wheels, had an over-refined look. Not in this picture though.
Never my favourite
Two ex-GWR "Hall" class 4-6-0s at Woodhams Bros scrapyard, Barry, Glamorgan, on Tuesday 4th March 1975. Closest to the camera is "Modified Hall" no. 6989 WIGHTWICK HALL. The other locomotive is no. 4936 KINLET HALL. Few of the hundreds of redundant steam locomotives brought here during the mid-1960s were actually broken up, so I would guess that these two were eventually aquired by preservationists.
Notwithstanding that it was my "home" company, the GWR was, to me, the least attractive of the pre-Nationalisation "big four". I don't know. There was something rather "roast beef" and picture-postcardy about it ...bound up with jigsaw puzzle scenes of tank engines chuffing over level crossings next to timber-framed country pubs, watched by chaps in sports jackets with square jaws manfully clamped around briar pipes. I liked proper railways, built to serve industry. All right, I know the GW served the South Wales coalfield, but even that was embosomed in deep valleys, against a backdrop of sunlit hillsides. Somehow you associated the GW more with the the Cornish Riviera Express and seaside holidays than with heavy industry. The locomotives too, with their brass and copper trimmings and their "unsightly" valve gear tidied away inside the wheels, had an over-refined look. Not in this picture though.