RIDING THE RAILS
Travel the Great Western Railway line, designed and built by engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel from 1836, to visit the spectacular sights and landmarks along the Great West Way Words: Jeremy Forsyth
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NE OF ENGLAND’S GREAT long-distance railway lines, the Great Western Railway (or GWR), is perhaps Brunel’s most enduring legacy and many of the attractions described in this magazine are easily accessed from its stations. The railway west from the capital, sometimes nicknamed “Brunel’s billiard table”, provides a leisurely opportunity to enjoy the delightful sights along the route, via Taplow and Maidenhead to Reading. The ‘northern’ track goes to Bristol through bucolic Pangbourne and the railway town of Swindon while that to the south takes in Newbury, Bradford on Avon and Bath. Choose your destination and take your pick! Incidentally, the Malmaison hotel in Reading, also designed by Brunel, was one of a chain, originally built to accommodate the vast number of passengers taking advantage of the railway to explore places to the west of London. Isambard Kingdom Brunel has often been described as “the little man in the big hat”. However he was in fact a daring British engineer whose work is commemorated to this day throughout the nation, particularly on the Great Western Railway. In 1833, at the age of 27, he was appointed chief engineer of the newly formed GWR. Brunel personally surveyed the route from London to Bristol, and further on to Exeter, and planned a passenger-friendly line that involved few inclines and no sharp curves. Bridges over rivers, viaducts over valleys, and tunnels through hills were constructed. His two mile GWR Box Tunnel, near Chippenham, was the longest in the world when it was completed in 1841 and, when the two teams of tunnellers met in the middle, they were only 1¼“ out of line. The elegant entrances to the tunnel, built of Bath stone quarried at nearby Corsham, have both been listed as national monuments. Railway
enthusiasts, of all ages, will feel the lure of STEAM - Museum of the Great Western Railway, in Swindon, housed in one of the original engine ‘sheds’ telling the story of the men and women who built, operated and travelled on the GWR. You can see famous locomotives, drive a steam train simulator and even work the signals in the restored signal box. Brunel was a typically energetic Victorian, working up to 18 hours a day, often sleeping in his office. He believed that there was no challenge he couldn’t meet. His engineering solutions were often radical, and frequently graceful, even if not all of them came to fruition. His construction of the Great Western Railway, including the bridge over the Thames at Maidenhead, Bristol docks, and the three biggest steamships in the world were part of an integrated masterplan that would take passengers from London to Bristol by train and then straight over to the United States in transatlantic steamers. SS Great Britain was the first steam powered screw propeller ship to cross the Atlantic. Originally the largest passenger ship in the world on her completion in 1845, Brunel’s masterpiece is now restored and displayed in Bristol Docks. Brunel’s other less well-known ships are the Great Western and the Great Eastern. The former was the longest ship in the world at the time and proved the viability of commercial transoceanic steamship travel. The Great Eastern became a pioneering oceanic telegraph cable-laying ship. The newly-opened ‘Being Brunel’ exhibition, at Brunel’s SS Great Britain, explores the great engineer’s multifaceted character and is full of facts about his extraordinary life and legacy. Maybe he was compensating for only being five feet tall but no one in Victorian Britain thought as big as Isambard Kingdom Brunel. →
“Brunel’s engineering solutions were often radical, and frequently graceful”
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GreatWestWay.co.uk
