Great Western Coffee Shop

When looking at the power car with the silhouettes of all the various trains which have run on the GWML over the decades, all I can think of is....
British, British, British, British, British, British,........French,  Japanese
😕

Which do you lament: The fact that they're Japanese, or the fact that some people think that's a problem?

Actually IETs aren't very Japanese - aside from the fact that they're built in Newton Aycliffe, they have major components designed and manufactured in Germany, Britain, Sweden and Italy...

Brake systems from Melksham ... pantographs from Chard ...

Windscreen wipers from France

I think there may be a case of short memories here: the Warships and Westerns were German!

And going back even further Churchward imported the de Glehn compound La France to evaluate compounding in 1903/4. While he didn't take compounding any further, a number of features of the French locomotive were adopted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GWR_102_La_France

I thought many of the Warships were NBL Glasgow

Yes, the Class 43's (D833-8650, not to be confused with HST locos!) were built by North British and used completely different German engines and transmissions to their Swindon-built siblings...

Rather cleverly, the British engineers decided to use cheaper materials (e.g. mild steel in the exhaust manifolds) and introduced bigger tolerances when they rendered the drawings into pounds shillings and inches; consequently these locos were never as reliable as the DB class V 200 on which they were based.