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Introduction: Noel7


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Good afternoon. Having recently joined, domestic matters have delayed this post, in which time I did post once, which I hope you will excuse. I do not own any vehicles, nor, given my age am I likely to, but have been a visitor to this Forum for some time, before joining. I am a modeller, primarily of railways, but am aware that military vehicles were seen on and around the railways of the UK in my period of interest [circa 1960] and thought that it would be interesting to show this in model terms. This led to questions of what types of vehicles, with what markings, and what VRNs. The VRN part of this has rather taken on a life of its own, and gone way beyond what I actually needed. However, I have never come across any reference to a listing of VRNs by type of vehicle for the 1949 series, and something of the sort must presumably have existed. I would like to find out more about this, if possible.

Noel

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You are right to assume that a document listed VRNs from the period 1945 to 1950 that listed vehicles and equipment by make and type seventy thousand registrations from the R* series were allocated for this purpose the first list showed blocks not taken up but the second list showed that some of these had been used there was a short fall in the R* allocation so VRNs in the Y*  X*and Z* registration  were used . From 1950 to 1961 a more complete and detailed list  was kept from  xxBC xx to  xxDLxx these lists for both periods. were in ledger form  These lists only covered B vehicles not A or C types

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Thanks, Wally. My interest is B and C vehicles; some A vehicles did travel by rail in the UK in the late 1950s, as they still do, but usually in train loads, whereas B vehicles especially were much more likely to appear in small numbers, both on rail wagons and on street, which is simpler to model in restricted spaces.

I have been able to trace rebuild numbers into xxRHxx and early 1952 (the highest I have been able to identify so far, from a photo, is 66RH15). After that this series apparently went out of use and rebuilds continued to carry the original number on the chassis (from the X*, Y* and ZA-ZC series).

Thanks for the confirmation about the registers; I assume that these were one per number series and only one, or at most a very small number of copies, so unlikely still to exist now?

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Noel, if you wish to model railways and military vehicles I'm sure you could do worse than take on the Longmoor military railway, which was still running in the 1960s, although somewhat reduced in traffic. I don't know what information is available to work from, but no doubt the folk on this forum could provide all that you require. 

Like you, I'm a bit long in the tooth to be taking on the real thing, so welcome to the forum and good luck with whatever you decide to do.

Steve.

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NOEL

If you were to do any thing on longmoor there a number of good books by my old boss  COLONEL DAVID RONALD on the railway we had no end of plans and pictures at the museum before it closed the ROYAL ENGINEERS MUSEUM  may hold what was at beverley. 

To add to the subject of VRNS all new vehicles purchased between 1945 /49 still had the wartime census style numbering starting with a pre fix letter these vehicle were renumbered in 1950 with the two number two letters two  numbers the first been 80 inch Land Rovers in the BC series purchased in 1949

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Thanks both. Longmoor is a bit restricted from the railway point of view, unfortunately, so not for me, I'm afraid. I remember from childhood stations with 3T GS and sometimes other vehicles waiting outside for National Service arrivals or people returning from leave, or to collect stores, and have noticed from contemporary photos how often military, or ex-military, vehicles appeared on railway vehicles. The railway seems to have carried whole trainloads of identical vehicles on occasion [presumably vehicles being returned to stores or their replacements, vehicles being taken to a disposal site or vehicles issued to TA units for exercises], but this is not really practical in model terms. It also sometimes carried smaller numbers [to/from TA units?] and unregistered individual vehicles, presumably from a disposal site, either of which is much more achievable.

Census numbers had disappeared by the period I'm interested in, replaced by 1949 series numbers. Vehicles from BA [armour] and BC [softskin] were, so far as I know, new vehicles, though, and never carried census numbers. Anything originally allocated a census number would have been in the Rx, Xx, Yx or Zx series, like the very first batch of Land Rovers for the army, ordered in 1948, which were in 90YJxx.

 

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