Carriages or coaches, a name clearly linked to the past when horses pulled them along the Bath road.

When railways began to carry passengers it was in open wagons with wooden benches.

However if you were a “toff” and had your own carriage then you could have it collected by the railway company and pulled, with you inside it, to the station by the railway company’s teams of horses.

Once there it was placed on to a flat wagon secured by ropes and leather straps and, again with you sitting inside it, conveyed you to your railway destination.

On arrival at your destination station, you promptly hired the company’s horses to continue your journey – unless you were a super toff and had a spare team ready for you at your destination.

You could then finish your journey by road in your carriage to your final destination.

Sometimes these private carriages caught fire from the sparks from the locomotive’s chimney.

Many of the early train carriages were nothing more than horse-drawn coaches put on to railway axles. Brunel was the first to put some effort into designing carriages for carrying passengers. As ever Brunel always came up with a novel name to describe his invention.

This time he chose the name of Grand Saloon to describe his carriages and he had them fitted out in grand style and sumptuous comfort.

Carriages continued to be four- wheel then six and finally eight- wheel rigid affairs constructed from wood.

It was the Great Western Railway that led the way in carriage design.

From 1844 it built many of its own carriages and wagons, later much of this work was centred on Swindon.

In the early days the passengers were supplied with foot warmers but they had to bring their own blankets in a bid to keep warm when travelling.

The communication cords were also fixed to the outside of the carriages, so to to pull them in an emergency passengers had to lean out of a window and pull hard, as the cords were prone to freezing!

The GWR was the first to introduce all corridor trains towards the end of the 19th century, on the Paddington to Birkenhead route.

Corridor trains had every modern feature, including heating, toilets and electric lighting, as well as vacuum brakes and refreshments.

Churchward was very far sighted, not only with his locomotives but with the stringent demands he placed on carriage design. He pushed the boundary to bring in carriages of more than 60ft long.

He calculated the weight per passenger to ensure that locomotives could cope with their loads.

Some say he called his carriages “Dreadnoughts” as at the turn of the 20th century the world was frightened by the might of the Royal Navy’s dreadnoughts.

Perhaps Churchward wanted to instil a similar fear into the other railway companies?