Does this just come down to where you were brought up, or is there more to it than that?
People might be biased by where they were brought up - but how could anyone complete with the company that brought you ...
* Only international passenger trains
* The ultimate 0-6-0 (Q1 class)
* Schools class - most elegant and powerful 4-4-0
* Steam locomotive with thermic siphons, bogies and cabs at each end
* First heavily electrified mass transit railway
* First double decker train in the
UK▸ * and was the only company with separate network on an island
Edit to correct typos
For most of the area covered by this forum, the
GWR▸ shared its territory with other railways - the Southern all the way to the West Country, and the
LMS▸ into Bristol and South Wales. Our choices don't just come down to where we are brought up.
So what makes the GWR unique?
At the heart of the GWR is what we could refer to as HS0 - Britain's first High-Speed inter-city railway, from Bristol to London. It's Engineer's Line Reference says it all: MLN, or Main Line. Was anything better built before
HS1▸ ?
GWR's standard locos under Churchward led, through his protege Stanier, to the British Rail Standard locos. Evening Star was arguably the pinnacle of Great Western loco design. GWR locos didn't need lipstick or party frocks to make them look good or, more to the point, 'right'.
But perhaps the main thing the GWR had that set it aside from the other roads is that it alone survived the grouping:
It didn't have to contend with the upheavals or internal rivalries that beset the other three. It didn't just keep the name of a previous company - it survived, enlarged, with its culture and traditions intact.
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