David Fletcher - Tanks and Trains

[The Tank Museum]

 

Above: Mark IV tanks on a train leaving the Armstrong-Whitworth works in Newcastle. The leading one is uncovered, the rest sheeted down.

 

David Fletcher MBE, former Tank Museum Historian, presents the first in a series of exclusive articles inspired by the extensive archive of unique historic documents and photographs held at The Tank Museum.

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Cuthbert Hamilton-Ellis, writing his entertaining story of The Midland Railway in 1953 recalls how, in 1917, he witnessed what he described as a trainload of Mark V tanks being hauled by a Somerset and Dorset 7F Class 2-8-0 locomotive rolling southward across the Dorset meadows.

 

Now it is not my place to argue with the great man, he was writing many years before me and actually remembering things from a lot earlier, but if it really was 1917 then I would be inclined to suggest they were Mark IV tanks, not Mark V, but as he described them they were heavily sheeted down so it would be difficult, but not impossible, to tell them apart. However if it was 1918 then they could have been Mark V tanks or even Mark V*, all of which were built in Birmingham. Either way the delivery details outlined below still apply.

 

But if they were Mark IV tanks, where had they come from? We need to realise that whatever the date this was before the establishment of a central tank testing facility at Newbury in Berkshire. In other words, where ever these tanks had come from they would have been tested locally before delivery. It seems therefore that if they were Mark IV tanks they could have come from Birmingham or Scotland; not Lincoln perhaps, trains from there are unlikely to have travelled by way of the Somerset and Dorset. The Somerset and Dorset Railway had its northern end at Bath, a direct connection with what was then the Midland Railway which itself had many connections with the London and North Western Railway, and of course the Midland itself, as well as the London and North Western served Birmingham directly and had connections with the Glasgow area through Carlisle.

 

(Right) A Mark V* being driven aboard a Rectank wagon at the Metropolitan Carriage, Wagon and Finance Company works at Saltley, Birmingham, using the side loading method.

 

Now although in fact the routes a trainload of tanks could have used from Birmingham and the north, could be many, the fact that this particular train finished up on the Somerset and Dorset gives some focus to the route used. The train would most likely have originated on the west coast, or possibly the west midlands.

 

(Left) A Mark V* bridges the gap between two Rectank wagons, both of which have their end jacks down. This method was more common when they were end loading.

 

So with the limited information available we can’t really say where the tanks came from. The odds are in favour of the Birmingham/Oldbury area because, according to surviving returns, they were delivering approximately 200 tanks per month while the three factories in Glasgow, Mirlees, Watson Co. Ltd., William Beardmore Co. Ltd., and the Coventry Ordnance Works were only turning out about 50 a month between them. Not that we know what constituted a trainload but probably not much more than a dozen so we can’t say for sure where they came from even then.

 

(Right) A tank securely sheeted down and passing under the loading gauge at Saltley

 

So where were they going. The fact that they were on the Somerset and Dorset is not much of a clue, it rather depends on which line they took after leaving Broadstone, heading south. Both led to the London and South Western line, but that to the right would have taken them down to join the South Western near Hamworthy and then on in a westbound direction through Wareham to Wool, where they would be unloaded and driven up the road to Bovington Camp.

 

If, on the other hand, they had taken the left hand line out of Broadstone they would have continued down to join the South Western just outside Poole, heading east through Poole and Bournemouth and across the New Forest to Southampton, from where they would be shipped across to France with their final destination probably being Tank Corps Central Workshops at Erin, in the Ternoise Valley.

 

(Left) Tanks being loaded onto a Ferry over the special terminal at Southampton. This only came in to service towards the end of the war. Before that tanks had to be craned aboard ship.

 

So you can see how, even the chance sighting of a trainload of tanks in 1917 can’t really help us to decide where they had come from, or where they are going. What it does do is tell us that the Somerset and Dorset Railway was one of the routes they used. However the real point of all this is to say, as I have done a few times before.

 

That one really needs to read all around a subject in order to learn as much as possible. Alright in this case it was pure chance that, while reading this book I came across the reference to tanks on the Somerset and Dorset, and I wouldn’t be reading the book if I wasn’t also interested in railway history, But the point is that you never know where a reference to tanks might turn up so I say again, as I have said before, keep your options open and your interests wide in case you learn something more.

 

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