1977 was a good year for the former GWR Works in Swindon. Against all expectation it won an order to build new locomotives for the first time since 1965. Within ten years of winning that order, Swindon Works had closed, resulting in 3,500 job losses. Ronald Bateman first entered the Works Training School in August 1977, before continuing his apprenticeship 'inside' Swindon Works a year later. As a skilled coach-painter, Ronald witnessed the fight to save the works and the crushing blow of closure from the inside. He has collated both his own memories and the recollections of many other insiders to present for the first time the full story of the time when hope tuned to despair as the curtain came down on 147 years of railway engineering in Swindon.
