HISTORIC STOPS
TRAIN TRAVEL Making tracks on the Great West Way can point you at endless amounts of history and fun facts to be discovered along its length from London to Bristol Words: Geoff Moore
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AKING TO THE TRACKS is certainly one way to explore locations and the history of the Great West Way. In one go the journey is just 1hr 40min, but stopping en route to explore the route in your own time is 'slow travel' at its best. One of England’s great long-distance railway lines, the Great Western Railway runs along the full distance of the Great West Way – from London’s Paddington station to Bristol Temple Meads. It’s chief engineer was Isambard Kingdom Brunel and you’ll travel the course he plotted back in the 1830s, including his Box Tunnel, infamously said to be impossible to build. Before he built it. Setting out west from Paddington, how about making the first stop at Windsor and Eton Central? It was here where a race to impress a real Royal took place just outside her castle in the town. Two opposing rail companies ‘The Great Western’ and ‘The London and South Western Railway’ set out to be the first to provide the monarch with a rail service. In 1840 Queen Victoria encouraged by Prince Albert took a trip from Slough - which was then the nearest
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station to the castle - to Paddington. And today parts of the original elegant façade can still be seen indicating its former short lived Royal connection. The GWR line extension was built to almost within touching distance of the castle walls. With the two companies frantically making progress to Windsor it was the Great Western that finally won the race. Although they had to build a massive curving brick arch viaduct over the ‘playing fields of Eton’, plus bridge the Thames in order to get into the centre. For the London and South Western Railway, a bridge failure disrupted their attempt to win and still the town has two stations within 600 metres of each other. Windsor and Eton Central and Windsor Eton Riverside. GWR’s central station has an expansive metal and glass roof that almost mimic’s Paddington’s. This was to allow the Queen’s mounted soldiers to wait undercover before escorting her back to the castle. Today, you can enjoy an alfresco cocktail in the stations All Bar One restaurant and bar, the exact location where in March 1882 the last (of eight) assassination attempts on Queen Victoria took place.
