‘Locomotives of the GWSR, Visitors and Resident’, by Dave Boot, 7th March 2023
7th March 2023 Meeting.
For our final Zoom meeting of the year we welcomed GWSR Senior Station Master Dave Boot, who has been with the GWSR since the start and has taken photos of all locomotives that have run at the railway.
There has been a wide variety of engines paying a visit from all corners of Great Britain with Kings, Castles, Manors, Halls, Prairies, Pannier & Saddle Tanks from the GWR alone. Smaller locos have been Pecketts, Avonsides, and Bagnalls of steam and diesel variety. ‘CITY of TRURO’, allegedly the first to reach 100mph and ‘FLYING SCOTSMAN’ the first to record this feat officially have both run here. ‘Iron Duke’, a broad gauge replica brought in for the GWR 175th anniversary, non-operational - It stayed for 12 months in the car park.
BR (S) rebuilt Bulleid 'Marchant Navy' Class 4-6-2 No. 35006 'Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Co.' runs light engine through Toddington Station on the GWSR at 13:30 on Saturday 8th August 2020. It was working a trial run prior to the line reopening after the Covid-19 lockdown.
We were shown most types of diesel classes, including Hymeks, and Warships.
David Shepherd’s 9F visited recently but was here for a while beforehand.
Most classes of loco have appeared with the smaller ones being used on freight shunting after bringing the first train from Toddington to Winchcombe each day.
It is surprising how many different engines have visited in the first 40 years of operations. Thank you to Dave for taking photos of them all in a show watched by 42 Zoomers.
Rob Davidson, Branch Secretary