At Charlbury Museum on Saturday 28th October 2023, the Cotswold Line Promotion Group (CLPG) presented to the museum a nameplate from a former Great Western Railway High Speed Train. The nameplate was provided by the CLPG in 2003 both to celebrate the life of Sir Peter Parker, the former Chairman of the British Railways Board, and to mark the 150th anniversary of the Cotswold Line between Oxford and Worcester which opened in 1853.
The nameplate would have travelled the tracks across the GWR network from London Paddington to Penzance, into South Wales, to Cheltenham and Gloucester, and our own Cotswold Line through Hereford. The gross distance travelled in the train’s lifetime is likely to have been around 8,000,000 miles!
The nameplate has found an excellent home surrounded by memorabilia of the old station, including a magnificent platform gas lamp, Charlbury Station’s old Edmonson card ticket issuing rack and a varied selection of photographs of the station in past times.
The pictures were taken at the presentation event held in the museum in October. Brian Murray (committee member of the CLPG) and Sue Rangeley (trustee of the museum) are pictured in front of the nameplate, while the photograph beneath it is of the President of the CLPG, Lord Faulkner of Worcester.