Portraits at STEAM; times gone by on the GWR, when engines were steam powered, the railway was "wonderful", travellers were real passengers and not just "customers" or merely "consumers" and having a ticket was a contract between you and the original GWR company that meant something.

So here we are back in the golden age of steam at the GWR works in Swindon (or rather what's left of them) in what is now the STEAM Museum.

As well as numerous steam engine exhibits, as you would expect, there a number of other interesting displays supported in no small part by part by life size mannequins appropriately costumed for tor the time and activity they represent.

So I decided on this particular visit to concentrate upon a bit of mannequin portraiture as an alternative to the much photographed and, I must admit magnificent, GWR dragons of the rail.

As well as models representing passengers there those personifying GWR personnel both those of the Swindon Works where they built steam engines themselves and the railway upon which they ran.

Some of the mannequins were reasonably lifelike but some were amusingly, at times, less so. Never-the-less all conveyed the feel of the era they were meant to represent. 

It was strange in some ways applying many of the same skills of portraiture to wax models as you would to real people except you couldn't interact with them to try to get them to relax and capture their essence so to speak.

Plus of course they were in one fixed pose but that added to the fun of it. All in all it made for a grand day out and a totally different visitor experience.