| When the Great Western Railway was formed as part of the 'Big Four' under the 1921 Grouping of the Railways Act, it had a massive advantage over its neighbours, as the GWR was already an existing company, and thus quite unlike its three new contemporaries. The GWR therefore merely 'took-over' the railways it was grouped with, and the iron will of Paddington and Swindon was stamped upon these companies. Elsewhere, the in-fighting between the various constituent railways left their mark upon the LMS, LNER and Southern, and as a result standardisation was extremely slow to achieve. However, on the GWR, standardisation was seen as the key to success, and all departments of the company were subjected to the policy in a drive to return the railways to overall profitability. Nowhere was this policy more keenly seen than in the Road Motor Department, with its head office at Paddington and workshops in Slough. By the early-1920s, the GWR had foreseen that the railways were facing a terrible threat from the private road-hauliers, so they snapped into action to try and beat the interlopers at their own game. In his second book on the subject, Alan Earnshaw continues the pictorial examination of the fleet with hitherto unpublished pictures supplemented by a fleet list of the vehicles concerned. Contents:
- Introduction
- Express Cartage
- General Service Vehicles
- Tractors & Trailers
- Rail Head Services
- Post-War Acquisitions
- Fleet Lists
- Acknowledgements
Continent: Europe
Country: UK |
