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The Great Western Railway

The Great Western Railway (GWR) was a British railway company that linked London with the southwest, west and West Midlands of England and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, received its enabling act of Parliament in 1835 and ran its first trains in 1838 with the initial route completed between London and Bristol in 1841. It was first engineered with a broad gauge, but, from 1854, a series of amalgamations saw it also operate 1,435 mm standard-gauge trains; the last broad-gauge services were operated in 1892.  The GWR was the only company to keep its identity through the Railways Act 1921, which amalgamated it with the remaining independent railways within its territory, and it was finally merged at the end of 1947 when it was nationalised and became the Western Region of British Railways. The GWR  was famed as the "Holiday Line", taking many people to English and Bristol Channel resorts in the West Country as well as the far southwest of England such as Torquay in Devon, Minehead in Somerset, and Newquay and St Ives in Cornwall.


November 1st 2024

 

 
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