Last year, I sent down a Bachmann 7 Plank Wagon to a friend, with the intention of having it turned into a Great Central 12T End Door Coal Wagon in LNER livery. My friend is following the photo that is in LNER Wagons Vol.1 on P119 (photo below).
Last night my friend asked me if I could find him an alternate number to one that the wagon in photo has as there's not enough room to put H10181 on it. When I looked in my book with the photo, I could not understand the information on these wagons.
Can anyone give me a selection of random numbers (besides H10181) that these wagons would have had please? Also, can anyone explain what the 'H' represents on these wagons by the way?
jwealleans wrote:All Ferry vans were 'H' vehicles - as per the one in the NRM.
I know this is going a bit off the thread; but I too have noticed the ferry van at NRM and wondered why it is lettered "Return to Dover and not Harwich. Or it could just be another NRM inaccuracy - like the Mk2 TSO in Midland Pullman livery, or the older BR crest on Maude facing backwards!
The lettering on the PLM van was done in France - I believe it was restored at the SNCF workshops in Mulhouse - and is consistent with photos I have from the 1950s (news of nationalisation doesn't seem to have crossed the Channel for many years. One of David Larkin's books has a photo of a French wagon labelled 'On Hire to SR' in 1970).
I have enquired whether the LNER had a facility at Dover but not found anything as yet. The GE had a siding and staff in Zeebrugge to attend to wagons needing repair, but the LNER and SR may just have had some sort of reciprocal arrangement.
I'm guessing these were marked for return to Dover as demurrage was payable on ferry wagons and that would be the quickest route back to the SNCF.
