When British Railways was formed in 1948, the big four railway companies ceased to exist.

Mumbling in the railway world began about conserving some of the past railway heritage. As I previously mentioned, the LNER had a museum in York that had survived the reorganisation.

In the early 1920s the London Omnibus Company had preserved and exhibited horse drawn and motorised buses. The scrapping of trams and trolley buses meant that more space was needed.

In 1960 the former tram garage at Clapham was to become the home of the British Transport Museum. This provided an opportunity for the railways, which had introduced a modernisation programme in the late 1950s, to place some of the withdrawn railway locomotives there, for exhibition. This move in London became the catalyst for Swindon Council and British Railways, in June 1962, to open a GWR museum, in Faringdon Road, boasting quite a large collection for such a tight space.

It had an archive and library, as well as exhibiting the 9400 Pannier Tank loco Dean goods and City of Truro, locos along with the rail car known as the “flying banana”. It contained nameplates and other historical artefacts including the famous “carriage door handles” display that so many visitors still appear to be fascinated by, and not just the children!

The museum established a high standard and was always referred to as being of good quality by visitors and people in the heritage world – often it was mentioned just how clean and spick and span the locomotives on show were.

Many people will recall that when exhibits were changed everything in that part of Swindon stopped as crowds of people gathered to see locos being squeezed in and out of the building. In 1965 it had over 37,000 visitors and was also expanding the amount of products to sell to visitors, including a “hot seller,” facsimiles of GWR platform tickets! The British Transport Museum was a good draw for visitors too, but as the 1970s wore on British Railways was losing £1m a week running its rail services, and reluctantly it decided to leave Clapham.

In 1973 the museum moved to Syon Park, to be known as the London Transport Museum. It is now in Covent Garden.

British Railways used its own redundant locomotive shed and associated buildings next to York station for the site of a National Railway Museum, taking back its collection of railway items from the London museum, combining it with the collection of the former LNER museum in York to exhibit all on one site. Swindon fortunately kept hold of its collection, beginning its own search for larger premises. This was achieved in 2000 when our truly remarkable Steam dream was born!