Military registration numbers

[Zero-Five-Two]

Any body know if there is like a giant register of what registration numbers were allocated to batches of vehicles?  E.G. I'm told the range  17EK96 to 18EK77 was issued to an order of Militants.  Who would have such a list, and how can I get to view it?  Thanks for looking, any ideas welcomed

[welbike]

It's listed in one of the "Warpaint" volumes, but not sure if they can still be found? OK, had a look, it's more about wartime vehicles, will add it here.

Cheers,

Lex

 

[fv1609]

Not sure if you are after the allocations for batches of vehicles or after the details of specific vehicles within a batch.

A lot of work was done by the Road Transport Fleet Data Society in 1970s-90s who produced booklets on most of the series. These were based I think on records held at Beverley, supplemented by observations of vehicles seen.

The EK series was covered https://www.worldcat.org/title/223703067

not sure if that is downloadable though.

For more recent allocations there were a series of MERLIN spreadsheets released as the result of FOI requests to the MOD. I think there were a series of seven that had downloadable links that were on this very forum several years (5?) ago.

[radiomike7]

2 hours ago, Zero-Five-Two said:

Any body know if there is like a giant register of what registration numbers were allocated to batches of vehicles?  E.G. I'm told the range  17EK96 to 18EK77 was issued to an order of Militants.  Who would have such a list, and how can I get to view it?  Thanks for looking, any ideas welcomed

Not a great help but 17EK70, 17EK71 and 18EK14 were Militants.

EK is listed for B and D vehicles 1962/63

[radiomike7]

7 minutes ago, fv1609 said:

Not sure if you are after the allocations for batches of vehicles or after the details of specific vehicles within a batch.

A lot of work was done by the Road Transport Fleet Data Society in 1970s-90s who produced booklets on most of the series. These were based I think on records held at Beverley, supplemented by observations of vehicles seen.

The EK series was covered https://www.worldcat.org/title/223703067

not sure if that is downloadable though.

For more recent allocations there were a series of MERLIN spreadsheets released as the result of FOI requests to the MOD. I think there were a series of seven that had downloadable links that were on this very forum several years (5?) ago.

No, not downloadable but telling me there is a copy at my local library just a mile away.

[fv1609]

[Zero-Five-Two]

14 minutes ago, fv1609 said:

That looks like the very thing I was thinking of. Where does that appear?  I'm not after specific vehicles as such, more generic information of batches or orders of vehicles or rather Militants.  I only used the EK registration as an example, I know there were CL and ER registrations also allocated to Militants, but how many, and what others?

[fv1609]

Somewhere(!) on this site there is a thread with 7 MERLIN XLS documents. I did a brief search but it meant trailing through 30 odd pages of posts. You may have more success if you tailor your search more specifically. Bear in mind these are only the ERMs that are captured by MERLIN, there are great chunks of ERMs that are not listed where vehicles went out of services some while back. As for official proper ledgers Wally would have been the man to tell us but sadly he doesn't come on here any more.

Alternatively I think the XLS also appear as the result of FOIs to the MOD under the auspices of "What do they know?" I think Abbeywood were only too keen to get all this in the public domain to relieve some of the workload of FOIs that they receive.

[Noel7]

As a modeller I started some time ago to record sources of info on army VRNs so I could put the right numbers on models, and it escalated somewhat, so I have a note of a thread on the old site, thread 11284, which is now https://hmvf.co.uk/topic/8093-6x4-militant-why/.

[10FM68]

here's the link to the Merlin website: https://merlinarchive.uk/

But Merlin goes back only so far - somewhere about the mid to late 80s, perhaps (someone should be able to correct me on that) and recorded only those vehicles which were taken onto the Merlin accounting system.  The other problem with it is that it shows the Unit Identification Number of the then current user.  SO, for example: if the UIN of 1 Glosters was A12345A and, following amalgamations through RGBW and then the Light Infantry, that same UIN was allocated to, say 1LI, then, even if the vehicle left service before the amalgamations, it will be shown as having been allocated to 1LI. This can be a bit confusing and misleading.