STAFF PERKS
SWINDON’S ANNUAL TRAIN TRIP
Dene Bebbington recalls how the annual works staff trips began and how popular they became – at their height, taking 29,000 people on a seaside trip.
A poster advertising the works excursion, taking staff on holiday for a week during annual shutdown.
Swindon staff keep a watchful eye as ‘Castle’ No. 5091 Cleeve Abbey is lowered and reunited with its front bogie. The loco was one five ‘Castle’ class locos converted in 1947 to burn oil, and the photograph is believed to date from that time. In the background is former Wantage Tramway 0-4-0T No. 5, now preserved at Didcot.
GWR PUBLICITY/COURTESY FRANK DUMBLETON
“Rules were strictly enforced. The penalty for trying to go on a Trip train using someone else’s ticket could be dismissal, as Timothy Hartley found out in 1856.”
THE old railway quarter in Swindon retains a few vestiges of its industrial past amid the shopping centre and apartments, notably in the STEAM Museum. What started as a repair works in 1843 went on to become one of the largest railway factories in the world, at its peak employing 14,000 people.
Life in the factory was hard, but one perk the workers could look forward to was the annual ‘Trip’.