December 2022

Christmas Photographs

To mark the festive season, December’s Object of the Month takes a look at some photographs in our collection which show Christmas being celebrated across the GWR.

Father Christmas pays a visit to Swindon Station in around the 1940s.  A small group of station staff and the public have gathered round to meet him as he steps off a train carriage – presumably it was the reindeer’s day off.

This photograph of the Carriage Trimming Shop at Swindon Works was taken in 1938.  An amazing display of Christmas decorations hang from the roof supports and across the windows.  Were the workbenches tidied and carriage door propped neatly against the walls especially for this photograph, or had the staff packed away and gone home for Christmas?

The lavish decorations on The Lawn at Paddington Station in December 1935 are the focus of this photograph.  The writing on the cracker held by the large Father Christmas tells us that the station was celebrating the GWR’s 100^th Christmas, dating from when the Great Western Railway Act was passed in 1835.

Paddington Station decorated for Christmas 1956.  The Santa’s Grotto in the middle of the Lawn is raising funds for the Greater London Fund for the Blind, while huge lanterns and ‘flakes of snow’ and hang from the vast roof space above.