London Local Trains in the 1950s and 1960s

The picture below of a Castle class locomotive, since preserved, illustrates Kevin McCormack’s first love: the Great Western Railway and the Western Region of British Railways. Living almost all his childhood on the Western in Ealing, it was perhaps inevitable that this was his favorite region, and he came to admire the copper-capped chimneys, brass safety value covers and brass nameplates and cabside number plates of its larger locomotives as well as the tall chimneys and large domes of its characteristic smaller engines. He had a particular liking for the diminutive 14XX 0-4-2 tanks that used to work the Ealing Broadway-Greenford push and pull services and when a fund was set up to preserve one, Kevin was quick to add his support, joining what became the Great Western Society and becoming its secretary in the late 1960s/early 1970s.

In 1973, Kevin cemented his interest in the GWR by acquiring a Victorian family saloon railway carriage, which had been converted into a Thameside bungalow.

Remarkably, the coach was largely original inside and the exterior well preserved as it was virtually encased within the house. Restoration has therefore been a comparatively easy task and the vehicle is displayed at the Great Western Society’s base at the Didcot Railway Centre.