It is difficult to believe that at the time this aerial photograph was taken in the 1950s, the railway industry was officially in decline. Visiting Swindon Junction in 1840, Brunel and his superintendent of locomotives, Daniel Gooch decided this would be an ideal place to establish a repair and maintenance depot. The works opened in January 1843 with 423 men on the pay roll. Today the Churchward estate occupies what was once the site of 'A' Shop completed in 1920 and reputed to be one of the largest covered workshops in the world. These were the heady days of the GWR when more than 14,000 worked 'inside' the vast railway factory complex. The railway industry was nationalised in 1948 by the post war Labour government and the 100 year old GWR works was renamed British Railways Workshops. In 1960 the Evening Star was the last steam loco built for BR at Swindon and three years later a large part of the Carriage Works closed. The end came at 4.30 pm Mar...