Swindon Works – The Final Years

The final chapter of the Swindon Works Story was the subject for Society President, Brian Arman on 16^th December. Brian started with some facts and figures. In its heyday in the 1930s, locomotives built and maintained at Swindon Works were covering 101 million miles a year, using 960,000 gallons of water. By the late 1960s the works started to decline due largely to not being assigned any new build work by British Railways. The management team managed to secure a couple of steam locomotive restoration jobs, namely Collett ‘Small Prairie’ 4588 and Adams Radial tank No. 488. In 1972 a new manager, Harry Roberts, was appointed with a remit to bring the works to a point of closure. However, he saw potential in the works and started bidding for rolling stock refurbishment work. Additionally, he brought in apprentice engineers to teach them the skills they needed for the future. Refurbishment contracts were awarded, for cl.08 shunting locomotives and the extensive fleet of Southern Region 4-BEP (cl.412) and 4-CEP (cl.411) 4-car electric multiple units. Overhauls of Scottish Region cl.27 diesel locomotives also came to Swindon and carriages for the Railway Technical Centre trains were refurbished at Swindon. Not content with railway work, Swindon started building boats, and refurbished heritage buses. All this work going on kept Swindon going until 1986 when the curtain finally fell.