Personally, I was introduced to the GWR at the age of 3, when my grandfather, newly retired from the Post Office, took me up into the local Great Western signal box where he knew at least two of the signalment as they lived in the village.

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As I grew up, I developed that love and regularly visited Swindon as well as going on trips to other stations and sheds across the country. One advantage of growing up near oxford was that the station was visited regularly by Southern trains from Brighton and Bournemouth, Eastern trains across country from Cambridge, Midland and LNWR trains from the north and from Bletchley, with the majority being GWR trains from across the whole region.

We also got visits from BR Standards and increasingly, as time went on, the diesel hydraulics and other diesels.

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As a teenager, having got to know the local signalmen, I spent a lot of my time in the signalbox operating the levers, collecting the tokens from branchline trains and generally enjoying myself.

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Over the years, we have all read many railway magazines, preservation magazines and model railway magazines but, with all due respect, many of them were very similar month in and month out.

It is this that has caused up to launch Great Western Star, namely, to offer the GWR enthusiast something different. After all, the GWR fraternity is possibly one of the biggest, if not the biggest of its type around the world and so deserves the best.

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I look forward to hearing from you, to receiving your views, your suggestions for things that you would like to see in the magazine and, most importantly, offers of contributions!

 

Rodney Pitt

Editor & Publisher