Although some rail routes in Britain have long passed their 150th anniversaries it is only just over 140 years since Queen Victoria made her first journey by rail, five years after the first part of the London & Birmingham Railway had opened, and four after what might be termed he own local railway, the Great Western, the nearest to Windsor Castle, had started services between Paddington and Maidenhead with an intermediate stop--if not a station, at Slough, in 1838.