Not only did Swindon Works have diesel shunting locos, other factories and industrial sidings in Swindon were also owners of their own diesel shunting locos.

WH & DO Wills, the cigarette makers in Colbourne Street, had a loco until 1980 when the factory and its 250-yard sidings closed. It was named Woodbine after that famous brand.

I can remember when you could buy five woodbines for a shilling and then have a crafty smoke behind the school bike sheds – not of course that I ever did that!

The Woodbine was a Fowler 0-4-0, 40hp diesel mechanical shunter built in 1936.

It worked almost daily at the factory until closure, when it found its way to the Swindon and Cricklade Railway at Blunsdon.

The Colbourne Street factory began its life in the First World War when in 1916 the Ministry of Munitions set up what was known as the Stratton Filling Factory, where shells were filled with explosive nitrates.

This had been situated somewhere near to or on the current scrap metal yard.

It had used an aerial ropeway to take the nitrates from there to the Colbourne Street factory.

The volatile nature of the explosives dictated that four-wheel battery locomotives were used in the factory.

These 2ft gauge locos were commonplace in such factories and munitions dumps.

The operation had required the building of sidings off the Highworth branch line, and when it closed in 1919, Wills took it over. Much later I believe Plessey and Press Steel Fisher expanded operations in this area, at the beginning of the Second World War.

In the late 1950s Pressed Steel rail operations were expanded, the plant had rail links at either end of its buildings and used the railways extensively throughout the site.

I believe that there was a man named Woodsworth, who had the job of ensuring that all the track on this site was up to scratch.

A combined weighbridge for weighing both lorries and railway vans was also used.

The loaded vans were dispatched to BL plants at Longbridge and Oxford.

To do this Press Steel had crews of loco drivers and shunters, also using these locos to bring in heating oil rail tankers for the plant’s boilers.

As late as 1980 much of the track was re-laid, and Pressed Steel had six locomotives that were in daily use there until 1982, when I believe two of them, 0-4-0 Fowlers built in the mid 1950s, went to the Swindon and Cricklade Railway.

It’s not only the locos that found their way there, as BMW lifted the sidings recently, some of the rails, sleepers, etc were donated to the railway too.

The Woodbine loco, along with the PF loco can be seen at Blunsdon.