In theory, the Nationalisation of Britain's railways should have hit the Great Western harder than any other member of the Big Four. That's because the GW had the most to lose. Whereas the other three companies had each accrued a mere 25 years of history, the roots of the Swindon-based institution had been growing for well over a century ... and as the preceding pages of this souvenir issue show, they went deep! But in practice, the Region was granted a large degree of autonomy by the new British Railways after January 1, 1948 and was to continue almost unchanged for several years - so much so that it could be described as the 'Great Western Region'. There had been some dismay at Swindon when it was learned that the Government's newly-formed Railway Executive had turned mainly to the LMS for its engineering officers. Hawksworth was to be CME of the new Western Region only, a post from which he resigned in 1949, but for the men on the shopfloor at Swindon Works, it was business as usual to begin with as the factory continued in full production under its new owners.
展开▼
