The topic of my last article was the arrival at Swindon works of manager Harry Roberts – here we look at what happened during the next decade or so.

Though the BREL “Sword of Damocles” was ever present over Swindon works from 1972, the workers pulled Swindon works up by its boot laces and a halcyon period began, more akin to a sustained glow rather than the final spark of life, of desperation.

Harry’s plan was simple: “More output from reduced space,with less staff, at the right price to the prescribed quality, within the scheduled time period.”

Sounds simple today – it’s all part of business strategy, but Harry and Swindon workers together were forging a new path in the railway world of 19th century workshops and practices being dragged screaming into the 20th century.

The fact is that this was achieved during the turbulent 70s – can you remember power cuts, three- day weeks, strikes, lock outs, walk outs, culminating in the winter of discontent? In Swindon it was an open style of management, which Harry described as light years ahead of its time, when unions and management sat down and resolved issues; it even had rival unions talking to each other!

This economic revival plan was innovative and resourceful; nothing was wasted, anything that could be salvaged and recycled was.

The aluminium body sheets off diesels were melted down to produce collectors’ plaques, diesel engines from locos were refurbished and sold on outside of the railway world for private use. Buses were refurbished, gearboxes and engines from saw mills and other customers were rebuilt, along with missile launchers, high speed off shore boats etc.

Work that could not be completed on time at other railway workshops was clandestinely brought into Swindon to be completed. This was so successful that the Works began to take on staff, and not make them redundant as in previous years.

Because Swindon works’ survival was so precarious, it could never say no, and BREL knew this, so any unpopular BREL work was pushed Swindon’s way. An example of this was the Advanced Passenger Train Jigs whose tight limits of construction did not appeal to the works which should have built them.

Interestingly 13 years after the last diesel loco class 14 teddy bears had been built at Swindon works in the mid 1960s, an order was placed for 20 locomotives for Kenya; these were special one- metre gauge locos.

Swindon was given a punitive time scale to build these locomotives, even though it had no equipment to do it. The other works had told the Board it was not possible to do it in the planned timeframe or for the contract price. Swindon workers would not be cowed or beaten by such advice, and anyway when did they ever take instruction from BREL?

The Swindon workers immediately set about clearing a shop and laying out a production line, and metre gauge track.

This required the building of its its own plant, including Jigs, specialist tools etc, knowing there would be no repeat order. It was viewed by those outside Swindon as a recipe for failure. Harry intimated that his colleagues told him he was crazy to have accepted this work for Swindon.

But Harry had confidence in the Swindon workforce as they turned out the locomotives in time, and on price.

Sadly this record breaking feat was a swansong.

In 1985, the 150th anniversary year of the GWR, the government in what I can only describe as an act of recklessness, or perhaps desperation, announced the closure of the Swindon works.

On reflection the government had to do this as the Swindon workforce had been a very prickly thorn in BREL’s side for many years and despite being kicked, would not lie down and roll over. They just kept coming back for more punishment in the tradition of true underdogs.