What is the Great Western Railway Roundel?

The Great Western Railway Roundel is a logo used by the GWR on locomotives and rolling stock between 1934 and 1942. The roundel is unusual in the fact that it was superseded by the very logo it had replaced just eight years earlier.

The logo is simple but effective in design displaying little more than the letters GWR sized to fill the centre of an encompassing circle, on locomotives, the roundel appeared in black-lined gilt while on coaches it was of a yellow design. It is often remarked that at just one-foot tall, the logo looked somewhat lost and insignificant on the sides of locomotives.