page_title: Great Western Railway
section_title: Geography
hierarchical_section_title: Great Western Railway / Geography
caption_attribution_description: English: A map of the Great Western Railway system in England and Wales.
context_page_description: The Great Western Railway was a British railway company that linked London with the southwest and west of England, the West Midlands, and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, received its enabling Act of Parliament on 31 August 1835 and ran its first trains in 1838. It was engineered by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who chose a broad gauge of 7 ft —later slightly widened to 7 ft ¹⁄₄ in —but, from 1854, a series of amalgamations saw it also operate 4 ft 8 ¹⁄₂ in standard-gauge trains; the last broad-gauge services were operated in 1892.
  The GWR was the only company to keep its identity through the Railways Act 1921, which amalgamated it with the remaining independent railways within its territory, and it was finally merged at the end of 1947 when it was nationalised and became the Western Region of British Railways.
  The GWR was called by some "God's Wonderful Railway" and by others the "Great Way Round" but it was famed as the "Holiday Line", taking many people to English and Bristol Channel resorts in the West Country as well as the far southwest of England such as Torquay in Devon, Minehead in Somerset, and Newquay and St Ives in Cornwall.
context_section_description: The original Great Western Main Line linked London Paddington station with Temple Meads station in Bristol by way of Reading, Didcot, Swindon, Chippenham and Bath. This line was extended westwards through Exeter and Plymouth to reach Truro and Penzance, the most westerly railway station in England. Brunel and Gooch placed the GWR's main locomotive workshops close to the village of Swindon and the locomotives of many trains were changed here in the early years. Up to this point the route had climbed very gradually westwards from London, but from here it changed into one with steeper gradients which, with the primitive locomotives available to Brunel, was better operated by types with smaller wheels better able to climb the hills. These gradients faced both directions, first dropping down through Wootton Bassett Junction to cross the River Avon, then climbing back up through Chippenham to the Box Tunnel before descending once more to regain the River Avon's valley which it followed to Bath and Bristol.
  Swindon was also the junction for a line that ran north-westwards to Gloucester then south-westwards on the far side of the River Severn to reach Cardiff, Swansea and west Wales. This route was later shortened by the opening of a more direct east–west route through the Severn Tunnel. Another route ran northwards from Didcot to Oxford from where two different routes continued to Wolverhampton, one through Birmingham and the other through Worcester. Beyond Wolverhampton the line continued via Shrewsbury to Chester and (via a joint line with the LNWR) onwards to Birkenhead and Warrington; another route via Market Drayton enabled the GWR to reach Crewe. Operating agreements with other companies also allowed GWR trains to run to Manchester. South of the London to Bristol main line were routes from Didcot to Southampton via Newbury, and from Chippenham to Weymouth via Westbury.
  A network of cross-country routes linked these main lines, and there were also many and varied branch lines. Some were short, such as the 3 ¹⁄₂-mile (5.6 km) Clevedon branch line; others were much longer such as the 23-mile (37 km) Minehead Branch. A few were promoted and built by the GWR to counter competition from other companies, such as the Reading to Basingstoke Line to keep the London and South Western Railway away from Newbury. However, many were built by local companies that then sold their railway to their larger neighbour; examples include the Launceston and Brixham branches. Further variety came from the traffic carried: holidaymakers (St Ives);. royalty (Windsor); or just goods traffic (Carbis Wharf).
  Brunel envisaged the GWR continuing across the Atlantic Ocean and built the SS Great Western to carry the railway's passengers from Bristol to New York. Most traffic for North America soon switched to the larger port of Liverpool (in other railways' territories) but some transatlantic passengers were landed at Plymouth and conveyed to London by special train. Great Western ships linked Great Britain with Ireland, the Channel Islands and France.
caption: Map of the system circa 1930
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