Adrian Vaughan – författare

Despite being one of the best-known and admired rail companies in the country, by 1947 the GWR was at the lowest ebb of its entire history. Worn out by war, there had been no maintenance for six years and the government couldn’t supply the steel it needed for repair. The latter half of the 1940s presented a multitude of challenges to overcome, some due to the recent war and others individual to the GWR: the staff coped with rationing, a desperately cold winter and a blazing hot summer, and dealt with floods, collisions, broken rails and failing locomotives. The incredible strength of character and can-do attitude of GWR workers kept the railway running through it all. This history, taken from GWR papers and illustrated from them throughout, reveals the details of every day, as well as the problems and difficulties the staff faced. Above all, it shows how well they overcame their problems with only muscle power and a steam crane to help – and, of course, no health and safety regulations and arguments to slow them down. Adrian Vaughan’s unique history of this famous rail company shows just how special the GWR was right through to the end of its very last year.

A commemorative history of the railways of the beautiful Oxfordshire district 'Vale of the White Horse', running twenty-seven miles from Steventon to Wootton Bassett. The book spans the history of the route from the opening in 1840 until 1965, when British Rail withdrew all the local passenger services between Didcot and Swindon and all the intermediate stations were closed. With personal insight and images from railway historian Adrian Vaughan, the book covers the Great Western Railway's development of the route, as part of Brunel's 'Bristol Railway' and shows the original correspondence between Brunel and his staff. Fully illustrated with hundreds of historical photographs and detailed track diagrams, Railways Through the Vale of the White Horse is an ideal resource for anyone with an interest in this scenic railway route and a nostalgia for the early days of railways in Britain.

In Signalman's Twilight, Adrian continues the story of his railway life in rural West Berkshire. Adrian revelled in the gentle, old-world atmosphere and seized every opportunity, on duty and off, to talk to the older railwaymen, many of whom had begun their careers on the GWR in 1919 - 21, some of whom had served in the trenches with the Wiltshire Regiment in 1916 - 18, and others of whom had worked for the Midland & South Western Junction Railway in 1913 on to 1921, 'when we took over the Great Western', as they put it. He visited other signal boxes, rode the footplates of goods trains and express trains alike. Signalman's Twilight recalls the openness of the railway. Adrian could go wherever he liked on the railway and was welcomed - even riding in the Track Testing Car behind Sudeley Castle at 97 mph. The book recalls the skill and commitment of the railwaymen, which was not undermined by their allowing Adrian into their workplaces and onto their engines. He tells the amazing story of how Signalman Abrahams saved what would have been a fatal train crash - just as he was about to start to demonstrate a new hymn he had learned for next Sunday's service. Adrian's admiration for the oldhand railwaymen knew no bounds. Then came modernisation, dieselisation, and station closures under Dr Beeching's 'Axe'. Adrian describes how he tried, single-handedly, to save Challow station only to earn a severe reprimand from high authority. The Axe fell and destroyed not only the stations of the Vale but a happy, settled way of life.