Paddington to Birkenhead (Hardback)
The Great Western's North West Frontier
Imprint: Pen & Sword Transport
Pages: 136
ISBN: 9781399087865
Published: 31st January 2025
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One of the most diverse, complex and thus most interesting railway routes in the land. It set out as part of Brunel’s Great Western Railway plan to cover the country in Broad Gauge tracks but, faced with competition from its great rival, the London and North Western Railway, the Broad Gauge never got beyond Wolverhampton and eventually succumbed to the four feet, eight and a half inches proponents. However, by then the GWR had established itself as the principal provider of passenger and freight trains between London and Birkenhead, on the west bank of the Mersey, facing, and on occasions, snarling at, the LNWR opposite. Its most powerful locomotives, the Kings, powered its expresses from 1927 until the end of steam as far as Birmingham and Wolverhampton, whilst Stanier Pacifics worked those between Euston and Liverpool Lime Street. The route passes through the manicured fields and hunting country of the Chilterns, then plunges into that was once the deeply industrial, polluted but still productive Black Country, before emerging into Shropshire, now essentially rural but where the Industrial Revolution may be said to have originated. As the line approaches the important junction of picturesque Shrewsbury, possessor of a station built out over the River Severn and the largest traditionally worked signal box in the world, the Welsh mountains appear on the western horizon. The line then enters the Principality before returning to England at Chester, and the final stretch, along the banks of the Mersey, to journey’s end.
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About Michael H C Baker
Michael H C Baker has been travelling in and out of Paddington all of his life. For 31 years, he edited the Echo, the magazine of the Great Western Society, and today he edits North Star, the magazine of STEAM, the museum set in the old GWR works at Swindon. He has had over 50 books published on all sorts of subjects, mostly transport, on people and places, hundreds of articles, for the National Trust, the Times Educational Supplement and many other publications.