The crew of the Thunderbolt await the inspector at Mallingford (Bristol Temple Meads)

For those of you with a pedigree of railways and railway films, the quote above will be all too familiar. The Titfield Thunderbolt’s inspection run crewed by the dog collar brigade, grey shirt at the controls, purple shirt firing.

As you may have noticed from my earlier posts I do like an oddity or a might have been. One day I would like to produce the Titfield Thunderbolt set but the title of this post is actually because I want to discuss a might have been linked to bishops – the Great Western Cathedrals.

Despite being born, brought up, and living in Yorkshire I do like the Great Western. The influence for that is my father who was born and brought up in Gloucester so was innundated with GW and LMS designs. His Uncle was signalman at…