Opinion & Answer 23 Edition 45: Tracing the Path of Great Western Railway Company to the Big 4
Hi Folks,
Good Sunday Afternoon everyone, It's time for another edition of Opinion & Answer. In today's edition, I wanted to trace the path of Great Western Railway to the Big 4. So it will be covering the origin of the GWR and how it became part of the Big 4 Mergers in 1923.
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With the Great Western Railway, we traced the company back to the beginning of World War 1 in the year of 1914. In 19144 the Great Western Railways was put under the control of the British Government due to being one of the major railways. Then at the end of World War 1 in 1918, the government had the idea of nationalization but settled on a compulsory amalgamation of 120 railways into the four large groups (London, Midland and Scottish Railway,London and North Eastern Railway, Southern Railway and Great Western Railway. The Great Western Railway alone preserved its name through the "grouping" in which smaller companies were amalgamated into four main companies in 1922-1923.
As part of the Big 4's group, it dealt with World War 2 in 1939 which resulted in the Great Western Railway returned to direct government control, and by the end of the war in 1945 a Labor government was in power and again planning to nationalize the railways. After a couple of years trying to recover from the ravages of war, the GWR became the Western Region of British Railways on 1st of January 1948. The Great Western Railway Company continued to exist as a legal entity for nearly two more years, being formally wound up on 23rd December 1949 two days before Christmas. The GWR designs of locomotives and rolling stock continued to be built for a while and the region maintained its own distinctive character, even painting for a while its stations and express trains in a form of chocolate and cream.
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And that folks concludes another edition of Opinion and Answer. We'll be back with another edition next Sunday. Please click on the link for further reading.
