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The Great Western Society which is located adjacent to Didcot Parkway Station, has been a long time family favourite with my household.
Much of the work at Didcot is undertaken 'on site' and the depth of engineering knowledge of a bygone age is a joy to behold. The GWS has, quite rightly, gained a reputation of excellence in its field and has contributed immensely to the number of steam locomotives running on Britains Railways today.
There are frequent Steam Days throughout the year and the GWS is thoroughly deserving of your visit and support.
The Society has strived to recreate the atmosphere of the great days of steam through the hard work of its volunteers and a visit to the centre is like taking a walk in the past.
To this end my own son has become involved as a Youth Volunteer in the last twelve months. Last summer he spent a week at the Centre as part of its Youth Volunteer Programme and is counting the weeks and days until he can get his hands (and in fact most of the rest of him!) dirty again.
My own interest in the days of steam has always been centred around the Great Western Railway - my grandfather served his apprenticeship at Swindon in the early 1900's and all talk in my youth of Steam revolved around 'God's Wonderful Railway'!
As a result of this I'm very fortunate in having a collection of photographs from my grandfather - I believe they actually came from the Archieve of the GWR and are 'official' photographs, so I reproduce some of them here for you to share. I am more than happy to credit these to the GWR or its successors.
So there are two photo gallerys included on this topic - one of my own pictures and one of the historical shots.
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