People Gallery

Bather, August 1931

GWR publicity image of a woman wearing a diamond patterned swimming costume and cap leaning over a wall at the seaside in August 1931

1930s, 1931, Bathe, Bather, Beach, Fashion, Lady, Leisure, Nostalgia, Publicity, Sea, Seaside, Swimmer, Swimming, Swimming Costume, Tourism, Woman, Women

Evacuees waiting outside the departure platform at Paddington in 1939

One of the very first war time roles that the GWR was engaged in was the evacuation of children from cities to the relative safety of the countryside. Even before war was declared, plans were drawn up for evacuation so the GWR and the other major railway companies were prepared and on standby to put these plans into action. On August 31st 1939, the day before Germany invaded Poland, the order to begin the evacuation was given. The very next day the mass movement of children began and continued until September 4th. The GWR was responsible for the majority of the children moved from North and East London and while most of the evacuation trains departed from Ealing Broadway, this image shows groups of children being off-loaded from a double decker bus outside the Departure Platform at Paddington Station during the four days of evacuation in September 1939

George Jackson Churchward (1857 - 1933)

George Jackson Churchward, pictured here in 1918, was the GWR's Chief Mechanical Engineer between 1902 and 1921. He oversaw the Swindon Works modernisation and introduced the 4-6-0 locomotives, the blueprint for some the GWR's most iconic express engines. He died in Swindon in 1933 after being struck by a train as he was crossing the railway tracks between his home and the Works

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