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WHISTLE BLOWS

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When broad gauge engines like this were first built in 1847,

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they were the largest, strongest and fastest in the world.

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The Iron Duke class pulled express trains on the Great Western Railway

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for the next 40 years at an average speed of over 50 miles per hour

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and a maximum of about 80,

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getting from London to Bristol, on a good day, in two and half hours.

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No other railway in the world could boast a mainline schedule like it.

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But the Victorian era is not really the golden age

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for which the GWR is most remembered. After their glittering dawn,

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there were terrible financial difficulties mid-century.

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Many of these were caused by their adherence to the broad gauge line,

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which didn't fit in with anybody else's.

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People's folk memories don't go back to the Iron Dukes,

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but to the Edwardian turn of the century days,

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when summers were always hot,

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people always went on their holidays to Devon and Cornwall,

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and the Great Western was the only way to get there.

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Indeed, it was the GWR who dreamt up the phrase "Cornish Riviera".

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The magic of that steam highway to the west is such

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that people are still celebrating the GWR

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40 years after it ceased trading.

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Today, at Bristol Temple Meads station,

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they're preparing a special excursion drawn by two veteran locos,

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Hagley Hall and Dryslwyn Castle.

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WHISTLE BLOWS

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The Great Western had a penchant

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for naming its engines after manors, halls and castles in its region

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and people sometimes said that the Great Western,

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aiming at a rich class of passenger,

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might be attracting them by putting their addresses on the engines.

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But the whole point of opening up the west

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was to get everyone down there on their holidays.

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And the GWR pretty soon started looking for a mass market.

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But there was no question of a mass market to begin with.

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The line to London was the brainchild of a wealthy businessman of Bristol

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and it was for the wealthy

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that Bristol Temple Meads station was built

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for passengers who arrived by horse and carriage.

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For those who wanted to take them with them,

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there were wagons you could load your carriage on to.

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The horse you had to leave behind.

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With all that Bristol money, it wasn't surprising

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that Temple Meads station looked like a palace,

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while Paddington was still a series of wooden huts.

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Brunel's old station is still there,

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now being restored by the Brunel Engineering Trust,

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whose Caroline Parsons let me have a look round.

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- When Brunel built this in...1840? - 1840 it was finished, yes.

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I bet it was the biggest terminus in Britain.

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That's right. Well, I'd imagine so.

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It was certainly the grandest one on the Great Western Railway.

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Brunel called the Great Western Railway the finest work in England,

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so it must have been the best.

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When the station first opened, the line was only open as far as Bath

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and they were only running about four trains in each direction a day.

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So, it wasn't exactly a great panic to get the timetable together.

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What's so amazing about it is it's such a grand building.

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He must've been looking to the future.

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They did think big in those days.

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Yes, I think Brunel particularly thought big -

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anything he did tended to be on a grand scale.

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This big grand open roof here, how was this built?

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A contemporary in the 1840s described this

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as a series of cranes, in fact.

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That's how Brunel managed to get a 72 foot span here.

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Very impressive, it was the widest roof in England.

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- Really? - In its day, yes.

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The long roof rafters are like the long arm of a crane

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and the short arm of the crane goes back

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from the line of the pillars to the outside walls

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and is struck down into masonry which provides the counterweight.

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And so the whole roof is balancing on the cast iron pillars.

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So, it's not through the pressure of meeting in the middle

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that it's being held up. Well done, Brunel.

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He wanted it to look like a Tudor great hall.

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Which it still does, actually, it looks grand.

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But what is it that brings everyone out today?

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Is it the music of steam that they remember from their youth,

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as if they were getting out their old 78s?

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Is it the Imperial trappings of deep green uniform

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and shiny metal that attracts them,

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like the cavalry riding past on parade?

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Or is it, even, as I think it is in my case,

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the feeling that these engines were great actors in a lost tradition,

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filling the stage with gestures and noise,

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making modern diesels look as if they are performing in their sleep.

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WHISTLE BLOWS

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TRAIN WHISTLE BLOWS

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The train comes out of Bristol on a peculiar S-bend

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because it's leaving the London Bristol line

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and swinging south onto the old Bristol Exeter railway

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which was renowned 100 years ago

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for having the highest fares in the country and the worst service.

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When it was finally taken over by the GWR in 1876,

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to the hearty relief of everyone, a poet wrote,

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"Here lies from malediction free the niggardly grasping B&E.

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"High fares and bad accommodation

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"Made it renowned throughout the nation."

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At least they had the sense to get the line engineered by Brunel,

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and he laid out a good fast line all the way down to Exeter.

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With a couple of steam engines in fine fettle,

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you can recapture the feeling of the days early this century

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when a fast express to the west was, for most people,

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the ultimate in holiday travel, the package flight of pre-war days,

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flying down to our very own British Riviera.

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The steepest part of the line before Exeter is the Wellington Bank.

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So, this is where most enthusiasts gather with their video cameras.

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Engines make the most steam and smoke going uphill, you see.

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And that always looks best in a home movie.

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WHISTLE BLOWS

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Railway people are still amazingly loyal to the line they grew up with,

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so when we enlisted railway historian Peter Simmons,

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we had to find out where he started life.

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Deep in GWR territory in Cornwall, thank goodness.

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You get the impression the Great Western Railway

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is different from other railways.

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I grew up by the side of it so I feel rather pro it,

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but some people feel anti it, as if it was the biggest and best,

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but no-one likes to admit it. Was it like this from the beginning?

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It was certainly one of the biggest in 1923.

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One of the top five when they formed the other four groups -

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LMS, LNER and Southern - and it got nicknamed.

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Sometimes it was called the Great Way Round, GWR,

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sometimes it was referred to as God's Wonderful Railway.

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Other times it was Gone With Regret, after nationalisation, of course.

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One thing I know, because you told me,

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is GWR were good at improving their lines, doing new lines.

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This used to be an old GWR line.

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That's right, this went out of use, oh, nearly 100 years ago,

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because they built a straighter line

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with less bridges, viaducts, but a tunnel about a mile up that way.

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This was part of the job of improving the railway down to Cornwall.

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They cut out the old way round via Bristol in 1906.

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To deal with the summer Saturdays

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they quadrupled through Taunton in the '30s,

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through Bristol, and many, many improvements.

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This was all to improve the great holiday trade.

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- Yes. - They were serving or creating,

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I still can't make out which.

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Steam trains now look part of the traditional British landscape,

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but many people once found them noisy,

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dirty, nasty and modern, in fact.

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Brunel tried to combat this by introducing beyond Exeter

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an atmospheric railway which had no locomotives, no noise, no dirt.

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The trains were driven by vacuum created in nearby pumping stations,

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red roofed cathedrals like this one on the River Exe

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that still casts its shadow over the line.

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People who travelled on it said it was wonderfully smooth and silent

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at over 60 miles per hour.

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Without modern technology and materials, however,

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even Brunel couldn't keep it working properly

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and they abandoned the railway before it fell to bits,

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with half a million pounds of investment lost in the sand.

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Beyond Exeter, the line down to Plymouth

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was the old South Devon railway, though again laid out by Brunel.

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WHISTLE BLOWS

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Round the corner the line runs for nearly five miles beside the sea.

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As near to the water as it can get without getting its feet wet.

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Indeed, in Victorian times, when carriages were less waterproof,

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waves often came over the sea wall and into the coaches,

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and it was quite common for passengers

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to have to stand on the seats just to keep dry.

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This steam special was due to finish in Plymouth

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where the South Devon railway was forced to finish,

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and for a very good reason. Its way beyond Plymouth at Saltash

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was blocked by an enormous obstacle, the River Tamar.

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I met up with Peter Simmons again down at the water's edge,

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waiting for another steam special.

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As we waited, I asked him about the problems

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of trying to join Cornwall to Paddington Station.

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We've come to the edge of Devon as the railways had done by 1840,

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and then they found this great watery mass barring their path to Cornwall.

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So, what do they do?

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Well, it was quite a problem because the river is wide, it's deep,

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80 feet, 90 feet in the centre,

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and the Admiralty insisted on having 100 feet height here

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to let their sailing ships get past.

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- Because of the huge masts? - Yes.

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There were already railways in Cornwall,

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but they wanted to link those with other English railways.

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And who did they send for?

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Brunel. He was the engineer for the Cornwall railway

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as he had been for the South Devon Railway

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and the other associated companies of the Great Western.

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What was the exact system he used to build the bridge,

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because it does look a strange shape?

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It is. He built a smaller version of this principle before at Chepstow,

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which is no longer with us,

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but this was much the biggest version of it

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and he had a combination of an arch and a suspension bridge.

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The arch tubes, those big ones on the top there,

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they're thrusting outwards because of the weight on them.

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And you normally need to have strong abutments to take that.

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The suspension bridge, as you can see on the road bridge behind,

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the cables are anchored in the land and they are pulling in.

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So, he combined them all up there

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and in this end where you see his name, IK Brunel, engineer, 1859,

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the chains and the arch come together

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and all the forces in and out disappear.

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So it's a self-contained unit

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and you could put it anywhere and support it on a pier?

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That's right, the problem is, its 100 feet up in the air

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and you can't lift it up there.

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Well, they were built out here,

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just where we're standing on the bank here,

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floated out, and they had 500 sailors from the naval dockyard

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and they walked this thing out, they floated it first of all,

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took it out across the river, the Cornish one that was put up first,

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it was floated out there and landed.

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It took about...from floating here to getting it landed on the piers

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was about two hours.

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40,000 people on these hills around were watching it

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and somebody - an entrepreneur -

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charged some of them 5p, a shilling in old money,

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for a grandstand view, just to watch.

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When they got them out there, they weren't that height, were they?

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Oh, no, they were just above water level,

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right at the bottom of those stone piers there.

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They then had 18 months or more to jack them up with hydraulic jacks.

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They weigh a thousand tonnes.

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Jack them up little by little, put new masonry in to support them

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while they repositioned the jacks and carry on again.

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- A very, very slow job. - An agonisingly slow business.

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It was. I think if the same construction were adopted nowadays,

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they'd have to do it the same way,

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which is perhaps why this bridge has never been duplicated.

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It's a slow construction job.

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The whole of the way down to Cornwall was eventually,

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in this century, turned into a double track.

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But not this bridge, they used to pick up a staff at this end

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and give it up at the other.

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It was sort of like getting a passport to go into Cornwall.

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They must have wanted to open up Cornwall sooner or later.

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Yes, it was a very important link in the Cornwall story,

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the economic story, particularly after the through trains to London.

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The seven hour service started in 1904,

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which eventually became the Cornish Riviera.

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That boosted traffic in one year at Penzance by 67%.

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Really? And was it mostly holiday traffic?

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It must have been, yes. This was the time the Great Western

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was pushing the Cornish Riviera,

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see your own country first and that sort of thing.

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They could see a tremendous potential there.

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The initial impact on Cornwall was to help its fishing and farming.

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For the first time ever,

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they could get Cornish fish to Billingsgate within 24 hours.

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But getting holidaymakers down to Cornwall proved more important.

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The GWR developed a knack for advertising and merchandising.

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In 1904, they even produced their very own cinema commercial.

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Nothing much seems to have changed in the holiday scene -

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visitors mucking around on the beach,

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the local fishermen staring at the visiting grockles,

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and the seagulls waiting for the fishermen to do some work.

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Someone might even go for a swim, if the right machinery can be found.

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There was one other way of getting to the West Country -

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by ocean liner from America.

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The railways cottoned on to the fact that

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if they landed passengers at Plymouth,

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they could get them up to London

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quicker than if they chugged up through the channel,

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even quicker, of course, if you were going to the Midlands or the North.

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"Land at Plymouth and save a day," they said. And people did,

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even though they had to get a special tender from ship to shore.

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It's odd to think these people were paying extra

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to get off their ship early.

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Nowadays, they'd be paying more for one extra day on their cruise liner.

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The big boats have all gone now,

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but it is still possible to go to the West Country

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and get a mini-luxury cruise

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if you are prepared to save up the necessary 90p

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and face 200 yards of the mighty River Dart.

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I'm going across the water from Dartmouth to Kings Weir,

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the difference is, Kings Weir was in touch with London.

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This was the end of the line from London.

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People poured down here because this was, not the poor man's,

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but rich man's Italy. It was the Italian part of England,

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and to this day you can still go from here right up to,

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well, actually, only to Paignton, but the same feeling is here,

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going over the water to get the train to go somewhere.

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The Great Western were not trying to satisfy some want

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on the part of Londoners to get to Kings Weir,

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they were trying to create that want, and then fulfil it.

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Torbay was made by the Great Western

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like many other places in the west and elsewhere.

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And, like any good manufacturer,

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the Great Western pushed their product for all they were worth.

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Along the line from Kings Weir is Goodrington Sands,

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one of the last places left where you can still descend

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straight from a steam train onto the beach,

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as the GWR decreed that mankind should.

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In 1929, the Great Western published a book by SPB Mais

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called Glorious Devon, in which, right from page one,

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the author was at pains to point out that rain in Italy is quite common

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and sunshine in Devon very common indeed.

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"Sometimes there's more likelihood of sun in Torquay

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"than there is in Genoa," he said.

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What the author doesn't mention is the peculiar capacity

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of the British just to ignore the weather.

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They will enjoy themselves on the beach in temperatures which,

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at home, would put them in the pub or in front of the telly.

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Who else would hire windshields, and then call them sun traps?

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Who else'd bring enough furniture and mod cons

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to turn their part of the beach into a living room?

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Oh, who'd want to be in Genoa when you could be at Goodrington Sands?

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Perhaps, it's not just that the British ignore the weather,

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they can persuade themselves it's twice as warm as it is

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and eat ice cream when they really need

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a St Bernard dog to bring them brandy.

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ENGINE

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Are you especially a steam enthusiast or...?

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No, train enthusiast generally, rail enthusiast.

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And that's why you're here today, is it?

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- Yeah. - I heard you were scouting really.

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No!

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He refused to come to scout camp with me

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unless I took him on the train.

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Are you scouting? I don't understand this.

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From the scout camp we go out and do different places

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and this is a nice day out for everybody, really.

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This preserved steam railway from Paignton to Kings Weir

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is one of the last relics of the steam holiday kingdom

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of the Great Western Railway.

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Within these seven miles there are enough viaducts and valleys,

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woods and hills, seaside scenes and river estuaries

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to make it seem a microcosm of the old Great Western

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and like the old Great Western in its golden days,

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it makes a profit as well.

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How stiff a climb is this then?

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Not too bad, it's about 1 in 60 on average both ways.

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ENGINE DROWNS DRIVER OUT

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Do you get much trouble with the wheels slipping?

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Sometimes. In conditions like today with a heavier train, yes.

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Just light drizzle, which makes the track slippy.

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What do you have to do then?

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Do you use the sand much?

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We have got sands, but they're not all that effective really.

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Just be more careful and drive according to the conditions.

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How do you take driving the same line

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backwards and forwards all the time? Don't you get tired of it?

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It's the same journey, but every trip is different.

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There's something different about it - conditions on the engine,

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conditions on the train, weather conditions, speed.

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There's always something different.

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Although it's the same job, it's continuously different.

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Seems pretty busy now.

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Well, yes, there's a lot more passengers than ever used it before.

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Steam is the attraction.

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And we provide a better service than BR did in those days anyway.

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Torbay being a leisure area, it's all in the right place.

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So, in this corner of Devon remains

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a small piece of the golden age of steam,

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a holiday scene preserved in sun tan oil and engine grease.

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Odd to think that the Great Western

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created the idea of holidays in the West Country.

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Now it's the holiday people who are keeping alive

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this memory of the Great Western Railway as it was.

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WHISTLE BLOWS

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Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd