Give a little whistle, as Jiminy Cricket used to tell Pinocchio in the Walt Disney film of the same name. Actually, someone has recently given a rather large whistle — a train whistle — to the railway enthusiasts of the Great Western Society. Since this column has been without rail buffery for many months now — an omission some have noted — I shall tell you about it.

First, though, a point that has just occurred to me concerning my use of the words ‘train whistle’. As someone familiar with the vocabulary of railways throughout my life, I have always been careful to avoid the solecism of writing ‘train’ where properly only ‘engine’ or ‘locomotive’ will do. Such an error would come, for instance, in a reference to the ‘record-breaking train Mallard’. Now ‘train whistle’ might appear to be an error of the same sort but actually isn’t. It’s the proper name for an accessory that is also known as an ‘air whistle’ and used to be called a ‘steam trumpet’. I wonder why this is.

Anyway, this particular whistle used to belong on an engine of the Hall class that was stored in Oxford after being taken out of service in the 1960s. Its story can be quickly told by Simon Foote, who has just relinquished its ownership in favour of the GWS.

“During the winter of 1965-66 I spent a number of Saturdays photographing the remaining steam workings north of Oxford in the area around Heyford station, along with an old school friend, Graham Hartley.

“We travelled out from London by train and, in the evenings, called in at Oxford engine shed to look around before catching the evening train home. During one of these visits to the shed a BR employee gave Graham the whistle which came from a GWR Hall 6900 series loco, possibly 6947 or 6957. I can’t be sure which loco it was as there were many Halls withdrawn at this time. My records show 31 stored there on January 8, 1966.

“Sadly Graham died of a brain tumour in 1994 and the whistle was kindly passed on to me by Graham’s widow Pat, and his daughters Emma and Kathryn. I know we will all be very pleased to see the whistle go full circle, so to speak, and return to a GWR loco.

“I am sure that it will be a very moving time when we hear it blown after all this time, but appreciate that it may be some years before it happens.”

The whistle is going to be placed on an engine called County of Glamorgan. This is being build from scratch at the GWS’s headquarters at Didcot, using some new parts and others from locomotives at Woodham’s scrapyard at Barry Island, which proved an invaluable resource to the rail preservation movement over many years.

The engine will fill an important gap in the society’s collection, as no example of the class survived into preservation. Once a class of 30 locomotives, the Countys were built in the 1940s, and were the final development of the Great Western Railway’s two-cylinder 4-6-0 locomotives which began with the Saint class at the beginning of the 20th century. A Saint is also under construction at Didcot.

Still with railway matters, a date has been fixed for the first outing of newly restored No 6023 King Edward II. It will be launched in British Railways blue livery at Didcot Railway Centre on April 2 next year.

One of the engines retrieved from the scrapyard at Barry Island (see above), it was considered perhaps the most ambitious such rescue. A team of Great Western Society volunteeers spent more than 20 years on the task. The project cost £700,000 and involved more than 40,000 hours of work.