Noel7

Wikipedia's entry on the Wellington has the same photo and identifies the aircraft as being from the batch of 30 Mark 1s obtained pre-war by the RNZAF, transferred to the RAF 8/1939, and used by 75 squadron. Wikimedia Commons identifies the location as RAF Stradishall 10/7/1939 "Ready to fly to Brussells and Paris as a show of strength from the RAF" and then gives the date as "September or August 1939"

Mind you, MSN weren't doing that much better - their headline refers to a 'battleship', and their text to a 'battlecruiser'. The latter would be correct for the WW2 version, but the WW1 Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were armoured cruisers [the nearest WW2 equivalent being a heavy cruiser]. Definitely no match for Invincible and Inflexible, which really were battlecruisers.

I am very reluctant to disagree with you, Wally, but while the range you quote does, according to the evidence I have, indeed have Bedford QLDs at the beginning and the end, there are a lot of assorted other [non-Bedford] types in between. The nearest number I have identified is 50RB96, which was apparently a Morris C8 FAT, for example. I am not suggesting that this means that the data plate shown comes from a C8, as rebuilt batches sometimes seem to have been quite small.

I suspect that this date has come from the Old Classic Car website lists of VRNs. That for "MM" shows AMMnnn as running from 10/1933 and nnnAMM from 11/1953, which makes sense, as the 'letter first' series up to ZMM999 would normally be used up before the 'number first' series was started. However, the start date for the BMMnnn series is shown as 6/1952, and for the CMMnnn series as 7/1952, which do not fit the pattern. DMMnnn is shown as starting in 4/1936, and this and subsequent series are as expected. London had a lot of number series, and registration authorities sometimes did odd things, but I think that the date for BMMnnn and CMMnnn are probably errors. The other entries in the list suggest that BMMnnn should start about 8/1934 and CMMnnn about 6/1935. The list for the "MG" series runs from 3/1930 to 3/1949. All of this is dependent on the lists as published, and my assumption that the "MM" list has the errors identified, but I hope it helps.

If you can get access to a copy of "Bedford to Berlin and Beyond QL:The Forces Favourite 4x4", pages 83-4 give a basic sequence for dismantling airportable QLD GS and QLW. It runs to 24 separate operations, but no with detail on how they are carried out, so I don't know how much it will help. It also adds that "some additional tasks were required for the tipper". It does, as Retriever indicated, involve castors being fitted.

Wally, 98RC23 is possibly an error in the RQMS ledger. According to your post 14/4/2016 in thread 27014 "Post war sales catalogues" this is in a range allocated to Bedford QL TCVs, which is also as shown in Appendix 2 of the book 'Bedford to Berlin and beyond - Bedford QL: The Forces Favourite 4x4'. My understanding is that rebuild VRN ranges were allocated when the rebuild contract was issued, so other vehicle types in the range are presumably not likely? I have identified 92RC98 as a K6 gantry, and 'Bedford to Berlin' Appendix 2 shows a Bedford QL range starting at 93RC60, which is the next number I have, so could 98RC23 actually have been 93RC23?

I don't understand this. Unless I'm missing something [always possible 😊] I think your source has crossed wires here.

What are the propellers made of? Ship propellers are usually a copper alloy such as brass, bronze or gunmetal, which doesn't need painting.

Shame the nose of the aircraft is not visible, which would have made the identification so much easier! However, what is visible is consistent with a Blenheim. The turret confused me, as it was not the type I was expecting to see, but some research on the internet indicated that late production Mark IVs had a lower profile Bristol twin Browning turret [different to that of the Mark V], so I think this is what the photo shows.

Greece was invaded before the Blenheim V came into service, and I doubt they would have had any after the war. So far as I know Coastal Command didn't operate outside the Atlantic and North Sea, or operate Blenheim Vs. As the lighter colour appears on part of the fin and rudder, alongside the darker colour, I think they are in sand and stone; their last front line service would have been in North Africa.

The Bisley (officially the Blenheim V, I believe, the Bisley proper being a ground attack version which was not proceed with) ceased to be used as a bomber in 1943 (it was already obsolete when built). The ones in the photograph have had the gun turrets removed, so are presumably trainers or communications aircraft. They are unlikely to have been retained for very long after May 1945, as much better aircraft would have become available after VE day, and even more so after VJ day. Having the manpower available to salvage a write-off and rebuild it, and finish it in silver, with peace-time roundels (the white circle is wider than that on the Bisley) suggests that the war is over, so I suggest late 1945/early 1946.

All of the pictures posted are of vehicles with number plates which are consistent in style [some white on black, some black on white, admittedly] and location, with the exception of the ambulance in the Italian one, which has a number painted on in a more or less random location, partly across the Red Cross marking. At seven digits it seems too long to be a VRN. It may well be a census number, I don't know, but the presence of an Arabic version of the number implies it was added whilst the vehicle was still in north Africa, as there would be no need for it in Italy, which may affect the dating. It also implies, I think, that the vehicle had no number plate when it was done, as the Arabic version of the number plate would make the Arabic version of the longer number unnecessary [I'm assuming that the Arabic version is for the benefit of Egyptian civil police].

The website "License Plates of the World" shows under "Egypt" a black on a white plate with red vertical central bar [matching the style in the second picture] captioned as 'British Forces 1930-1945'. It's described as a replica, and oddly has different numbers in English and Arabic; those in the two photos are the same numbers in both scripts. The two 1930s-1940s civilian plates shown on the website are white on black, in different styles. Military vehicles in Britain had civilian registration plates until early in WW2, as well as census numbers, and some at least kept them for some time, although new vehicles no longer had them allocated. My suggestion would be that something similar happened in Egypt, where the UK had administrative control, so that pre-war and early wartime vehicles in Egypt had civilian style plates and kept them, at least in some cases, but no more were allocated to arrivals after some point in late 1939/early 1940.

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.

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?

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

I'm no expert, but it looks as though it is a version of the classical Chinese character for "Fist" (Quan), what Europeans call 'Boxers' being known to Chinese by a name which translates as 'Righteous Harmonious Fists'. Modern printed Chinese (Pinyin) uses a different character set.