The Trust was formed in July 2000 to raise awareness of the impact of the gloucestershire warwickshire Railway and its forerunners on the local customs and traditions of the areas through which it passes. The Trust focuses particularly on the railway's effects on the local heritage and is encouraging interest in local industrial and social history. A wide-ranging display of artefacts and photographs has been established in a former Great Western Railway parcels brake coach at Toddington station, with local material at its core.
The construction of the line through Toddington was part of the Great Western Railway's development programme in the Edwardian era to finally rid itself of the jibe that 'GWR' stood for 'Great Way Round'. The new sections of line between Tyseley in the Birmingham suburbs and Bearley, north of Stratford and from Honeybourne to Cheltenham gave the GWR a new direct main line from the West Midlands to the West Country.
Also in this era, new direct lines were constructed from Banbury to London via High Wycombe, and Reading to Taunton via Westbury, so avoiding the longer original route via Bristol. Our line was opened progressively for local passenger services south from Honeybourne, with Toddington opening on 1st December 1904. The motor age had already dawned and the new line was very rural in nature north of Winchcombe. As a consequence, the local passenger services that were established between Cheltenham Malvern Road Station and Honeybourne became an early victim of cuts prior to the Beeching Plan.
The last trains ran on 3rd March 1960. All intermediate stations and halts were closed to passengers, although this had no effect on through traffic at the time. The run-down of this started a couple of years later.
This project allows the Trust to train more volunteers with an interest in such work to digitally archive the large and growing collection of photographs in its care, providing equipment where necessary. In providing the Trust with a digital projector, it also permits development of a range of digital slide presentations that will be made available to both inform and entertain a wide range of local groups. The content will be varied to suit either general or specialist audiences.
Presenting photographs in this way, particularly old colour slides, allows the pictures with captions added to be shown to a wider audience without causing further damage to the originals. In some cases these have been badly affected by the passage of time and indifferent storage conditions. An examination of a pair of copies of the same slide will show what can be achieved in the way of fault correction on old photographs. This includes, for example, fogging caused during film loading to an image that has been lying in a cupboard unseen for about 35 years
By the end of the project, the complete catalogue of archived photographs in the Trust's care will be made available for public access on a computer in the coach at Toddington. This will be constantly updated as photographs are added and if there is sufficient demand for its use, we will look to locate further copies at other locations on the railway. It is also planned to place a number of other screens in the coach running digital slide presentations. The Trust will be investigating the best means of providing public access within this coach to the oral archive that will be established using a digital recorder provided within the project.
An archive of photographs of the local railway network is being developed.
