12T Van - W18422

W18422 is a mystery. I can find no information about this van at all. The W prefix suggests it is a Great Western Railway vehicle however it has pressed steel ends which are a LMS/BR feature. It also has vertical planking where the Swindon standard (from photographs of GW Vans) seems to be horizontal planking. W18422 is seen here in the yard at Quorn, 1st November 2008.

http://pics-by-john.photoblog.org.uk/p54708070.html

I would like to improve the caption to my photograph. Any information gratefully received.

 

The design suggests Eastern Region parentage - not Swindon. LNER vans featured the vertical planking evident here, and the single horizontal brace on the door. The chassis and ends looks closer to a BR standard tho - the former with the morton brakegear - but the buffer shanks, brake levers and axle boxes/ W irons look decidedly Eastern. This is all off the top of my head - and without any further research I'd suggest this could be either an LNER built van later fitted out with various BR parts during its working life, or a BR van based on an NE design.

 

Possibly done as a repair after a mishap of some sort?

 

Does the "W" just mean it was based on the western region, as per MK1 coaches?

 

It looks like a standard LNER 12ton ventilated van, as in:
http://gallery6801.fotopic.net/p30420890.html
http://gallery6801.fotopic.net/p30420947.html

David

 

Yes, but mostly tended to find GW vans with W prefixes, and SR vans with an S prefix etc, but being common carriers, it was not uncommon to find an Eastern van with a W for example.

 

Are you sure? I always thought that the prefix related to their origin: M-LMS, E-LNER, S-SR, W-GWR, P-Private owner and B -BR built and these never changed. If they related to the allocated regions, what happened to wagons in Scotland?
On the subject of wagon numbering, there is a 1950 dated photo on P575 of this months Railway Bylines which clearly shows a 16T mineral wagon with the number MoT26132. I can never ever recall seeing a wagon numbered thus.

 

The Ministry of Transport had there own 16Ts during WWII. There were quite a few private owner 16Ts before the main line companies took them up and there were some railway company ones pre BR too.

As for the first question on the van - could I suggest that perhaps whoever last repainted and lettered it (almost certainly in preservation looking at that) got it well wrong?

 

From this I assume that the wagon no.MoT26132 is a 'private owner' pre-nationalisation number and it would eventually have been re-numbered P26132?

 

The Glos-Warks Railway has a similarly numbered van W18425 (ex. ROF 5245), which looks more like a LNER van than a GWR van. However, they maintain it was built at Swindon in 1939....

Hope this is of interest?

 

Having consulted my friend: the Walking Railway Stock encyclopedia, he says this wagon is a post-war built LNER standard box-van and the wiggly ends were as standard at this time (an upgrade from the planked ends)

 

Scotish stock was prefixed SC as seen here, so im led to believe

 

Tom

I see you have been swapping exciting photos with the Reverend!

 

That's a coach! We were talking about wagons, which were numbered entirely differently. Coaches generally carried the prefix of the region it was allocated to, not their ancestry.

 

Just to mention to anyone who might be looking at the wagons on the GCR - if the numbers on them at first glance don't seem to match with what they evidently are - then the numbers are probably not correct - more than a few wagons on the GCR carry guessed or fictional numbers when their patronage is unknown although a couple of our volunteers are slowly tracking them down.

The windcutters in particular mainly carry false numbers increasing by the order in which they arrived at the railway (although some of their true identities are known).

 

Sorry to go a bit off track , but a smashing photo of 1705, the 'Flying Scotsman' / 'Elizabethan' Buffet Lounge Car which survived until the late 80's but was then put through the burning tunnel due to blue asbestos under the floor. It was actually more intact than sister 1706, which is at Llangollen in its 1954 condition, with a long bar , which may be sampled at Steel ,Steam & Stars II, probably marshalled next to the 'Beavertail'
I also note that the 'E' has been removed (should be SC1705E)

Bob.

 

Thanks....im well aware it is a carriage \/ However I was not aware the number prefix was different to Wagons so cheers for the info

 

18422 and 18424 are both on the GCR - 18424 is the grey one usually in the yard at Rothley.

Although clearly of LNER design their underframes are stamped "GWR 1939 18422" and "GWR 1939 18424" respectively.

18422 was once known as No.48 and 18424 carries a small plate with 5254 on it.

I am led to believe that both were built by MCW (Metropolitan Carriage & Wagon); presumably MCW must also be stamped on them for this to be determined, but I can't quite remember what the stamping says now.

During the war the various railway workshops built vehicles for each other depending on who had capacity to build things quickly - both the LMS and GWR had batches of SR vans, for example.

The owner of W18422 took the view that perhaps MCW had been building LNER-pattern vans and supplied a batch to the GWR, so he applied the number with a W prefix; there is no record of this GWR numbering sequence though, so this may be incorrect. The owner of 18424 takes a different view and believes that they were built for the Army and merely registered by the GWR, but never in GWR (or indeed LNER) ownership.

They have are a number of 'quirks', for example they are (or were) fitted with lamp irons despite being unfitted (W18422 has been through-piped in preservation).

The news of a 18425 also known as ROF 5245 on the G/WR is interesting. I wonder if the '48' attributed to 18422 should really be 5248? That would put it in a similar ROF sequence; clearly their ROF numbers were out of sequence with their GWR registration numbers - quite probably the ROF numbers were added later and it probably depended on the order in which the wagons were standing in the siding that day.

Hope this helps - it isn't a complete answer though and I'd welcome further information.

Phil