Brunel’s sketch for Box Tunnel
  (University of Bristol)




  Contractor’s drawing of Twerton Tunel
  drawn to Brunel’s specifications
  (Adrian Vaughan Collection)




  Exterior of Brunel’s Temple Meads
  station at Bristol (National Trust)




  The last GWR broad gauge locomotive
  running from Paddington to Penzance,
  1892 (Private collection)




  Brunel sketch of pumping station
  for atmospheric railway
  (University of Bristol)




  Slade viaduct on the South Devon
  Railway (National Trust)






  Brunel sketches of lamp posts at Bath
  and Bristol (University of Bristol)






‘ Contractors’ tools designed to Brunel’s
  specifications (University of Bristol)




  Contractors' drawing of iron bridge
  at Sydney Gardens, Bath
  (Adrian Vaughan Collection)




  Wooden viaduct, as used on the
  Cornwall and West Cornwall Railways
  (Elton Collection: Ironbridge Gorge
  Museum Trust)

During Brunel’s years in office he became personally involved in every aspect of the enterprise and insisted on the highest standards of workmanship throughout. He negotiated with the clients, designed the track layout and rolling stock, devised radical solutions to civil engineering problems, secured finance, and recruited, motivated and managed staff. To complete the survey of the line, Brunel designed a black travelling carriage called a britzka to carry his drawing board, outline plans, engineering instruments, 50 of his favourite cigars and a pull-out bed.

A private bill was submitted to Parliament in 1834 to allow the
compulsory purchase of land along the chosen route. This was rejected but a new bill was submitted the following year, with Brunel presenting GWR’s case. Thanks to his eloquence and enthusiasm, the bill received Royal Assent on 31 August 1835. Over the next six years, Brunel’s technical ingenuity was tested by the terrain he crossed and among his lasting achievements are the bridge at Maidenhead, the viaducts at Hanwell and Chippenham, and the two-mile-long Box Tunnel. Between the Bath and Bristol section alone, there are three viaducts, four major bridges and seven tunnels. Writing of Brunel’s achievement, Kenneth Clark wrote:

Every bridge and every tunnel was a drama, demanding incredible feats of imagination, energy and persuasion, and producing works of great splendour.



Contractor’s drawing based on Brunel’s specification for Maidenhead bridge (Adrian Vaughan Collection)


On 30 June 1841 the GWR directors left London on their inaugural journey down the length of Brunel’s track and arrived in Bristol only four hours later. From the outset Brunel declared that his route would be the best but not necessarily the cheapest. The work had cost £6.5m: more than double the original estimate.



GWR running through Bath to Bristol (National Tust)




Brunel’s sketch for Sydney Gardens, Bath (University of Bristol)


Brunel was involved in all aspects of the design of the station at Bristol Temple Meads, one of the oldest surviving railway terminuses in the world, although it has not been used as such since 1965. At one time the building housed the Bristol Exploratory hands-on science centre. It currently provides a home for the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum. Temple Meads is thought to be the first true ‘terminus’ type of railway station in which trains and people inhabited the same space beneath a single over-sailing roof. Some contemporary critics considered the turrets, façades and decoration were inappropriate and anachronistic, but it is today admired for the way style, space and structure come together naturally and
coherently. Geoffrey Channon in his account of the promotion of the GWR has written that opponents to the GWR Bill persistently argued about the location for the Bristol station:

As generations of tired travellers have observed, the terminus was chosen on a site which was near to the centre of the ancient city but not in it... A small sub-committee of three directors examined the matter. Brunel took them to the top of St Mary Redcliffe Church to survey the various options. From there it was apparent that Temple Meads was the only site that had plenty of space to develop depots and other facilities.

Brunel had insisted on using his broad gauge (7ft/2.14m) system instead of the standard gauge (4ft 8.5/1.43 m) endorsed by Robert and George Stephenson. This led to difficulties when the two gauges met as passengers had to transfer trains. With carriages and locomotives designed by Daniel Gooch to Brunel’s specifications, the broad gauge system was more comfortable and allowed for faster travel than the narrower gauge. However, in 1846 the government decided in favour of the standard and all new lines were built to that gauge (the GWR would complete its conversion to standard in 1892). The government’s decision made economic sense as by that time 2,000 miles of standard gauge track had been lain compared with only 300 of broad. Unlike the Stephensons, Brunel did not appear to have a vision of a national rail network using the same gauge: he saw the GWR as a self-contained route. Writing in his diary, Gooch wrote of the battle of the gauges:

Were the whole question now open to be decided, the broad gauge is safer, cheaper, more comfortable, and attains a much higher speed than the narrow, and would be best for the national gauge. But as the proportion of broad to narrow is small, there is no doubt the country must submit to a gradual displacement of the broad, and the day will come when it will cease. The fight has been of great benefit to the public; it has pricked on all parties to exertion; the competition of the gauges has introduction high speeds and great improvements to engines, and was of great practical use to all those who were actively mixed in the contest, as they were forced to think and experiment.



Dawn near Reading, showing a west-bound GWR train c. 1870, artist unkown (Elton Collection: Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust)

Over the next 20 years, the GWR and its associated lines, including the Bristol and Exeter, South Devon and Cornwall Railways, rapidly spread throughout the South West, South Wales and Midlands. Part of the South Devon route was originally designed to be worked by an atmospheric system. Brunel had thought the system would allow him to adopt stiffer gradients through the difficult coastal terrain: the developments in the capabilities of steam locomotives soon made this advantage obsolete. After a series of trial runs, it was announced at a meeting of shareholders at the Royal Hotel in Plymouth on 29 August 1848 that the atmospheric system was to be abandoned.

Through his work on the railway, Brunel contributed to a process that would come to physically unify the country, conquer distances, widen access to public transport, and lead to the general adoption of Greenwich Meantime. By the end of his career it is estimated that Brunel was responsible for laying nearly 1,200 miles of track including stretches in Italy, Ireland and Bengal.

As with any project he undertook, Brunel set his personal stamp on the Great Western Railway. His reluctance to delegate meant every aspect of the line reflected him as an engineer. Although other railway engineers may have produced more miles of track and more economically, no other rail system was so influenced by a single creative genius. Brunel wanted to build not just the rail route, but the gauge, the engines, the civil engineering structures and everything else connected to it.

Brunel’s Great Western Railway enhanced the transport and
communication facilities offered by Bristol, and strengthened it as a regional centre and as a gateway to the South West. Much of the route Brunel mapped out and the bridges, viaducts, cuttings and tunnels he constructed continue to be used today. There is a campaign to attain World Heritage Site status for this route and the ‘pearls’ strung along it between London and Bristol, including Paddington station, Wharncliffe Viaduct, the Maidenhead Bridge, Swindon Railway Village, Wootton Bassett Incline, Box Tunnel, Sydney Gardens and Temple Meads Passenger Shed.



Great Western Railway information leaflet for signalling systems
(National Trust)