Great Western Coffee Shop

I'm posting in "the lighter side" ... but rather sad really that I don't think this is current or accurate, even though I spotted it as part of a prominent display earlier this month

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/fgwowntrains.jpg)

23 years since privatisation began, 15 years since the demise of Railtrack and a couple of years (?) since First Group rebranded to GWR.

I think someone needs to update their interpretation material...!

Will you be naming and shaming the source of this?!

What struck me was that "most of the trains ... are owned by First Great Western Ltd".   As I understood it, FGW / GWR don't own any of the trains - five are owned by another First subsidiary, and all the rest by companies independent of the train operator.   

You would think that a council owned (? or leased) and operated museum at the heard of the Great Western empire would get its facts right.   As I read other panels looking back in history to before my time, I wondered just how accurate they are - can I trust what I read, or do I need a pinch of salt and a pair of rose tinted spectacles?

Ahh... Swindon Steam Museum?

I'd like to think that if you dropped them a line they'd correct the information.

That was what struck me, too. Some of the other information on that sign is out of date, but that particular statement was never true since most of the passenger trains have been owned by Porterbrook/Eversholt/Angel since privatisation.

It's grammatically  incorrect too. The track, station and signalling "is" looked after...

.....I'm guessing that most children (even in Swindon), go to school and hence don't rely on a Steam museum for their education?

(Although I get that it's pretty sloppy, especially taking the location into account)

What do you mean ?

School trips are those specialist outings where the young sample and learn about some subjects beyond what their teachers know. There's a big responsibility on those who provide the informative text to get it right and have it reasonably current. 


An informed guess based on current year experience and observation suggests that what you might like to think and what would actually happen would be unlikely to coincide.

You could just let your inner teacher escape and get a white marker pen out and make some corrections yourself...  ;D

Encouraged by your suggestion, I did drop them a line and they've confirmed that they're aware (and have been) of the issues with this text, which appears "within a much larger display panel".