BR History in Colour Vol 5B Gloucester to Swindon and Branches Part 2: Stroud to Swindon

This is the second and concluding part of our journey from Gloucester Central to Swindon, which opened as a broad gauge line from Swindon to Cirencester in May 1841 and then from Kemble to Standish in June 1845, from where it joined with the Bristol & Gloucester Railway to reach Gloucester. Having reached Stroud in Part 1, we first complete our study of that station before heading off up the valley towards Brimscombe and Chalford. These were two very different stations, opened over 50 years apart. Our period covers from the late 1950s to the mid 1970s, through the last years of steam on BR(WR) and the early diesel-hydraulic era. Again the locomotive variety is impressive: ‘Castles’, ‘Halls’ and ‘Granges’, ‘9Fs’ and ‘8Fs’, ‘Prairies’, pannier tanks and ‘14XX’ 0-4-2Ts, along with ‘Westerns’, ‘Hymeks’ and ‘Teddy Bears’. Once we reach Kemble we travel the branches to Tetbury and Cirencester. And then, we complete the last leg to Swindon, crossing into Wiltshire before arriving at our destination.