Southern Region class 42/43 Warships liveries

[phil gollin]

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In 1963 (?) the Southern Region began using Class 42/43 Warships on semi-fast services to the West Country, were any of the early services run using Warships without small  yellow warning panels, or by maroon coloured Warships ?

 

Thanks.

 

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[Rivercider]

My understanding was that SR men started learning Warships in May 1964, and they started regular work out of Waterloo from August or September 1964. (I don't remember, as I was 5 at the time!)

 

Here is D803 at Woking in October 1964

Flickr by Robert Carroll

 

 

cheers

Edited March 13, 2021 by Rivercider
Additional photo

[Dunsignalling]

Generally only Class 42s on Waterloo - Exeter services. the odd 43 that did get through was a mistake! I only remember a couple in five years.

 

Waterloo and Exmouth Junction crews only officially learned the Swindon locos, though some Salisbury men were passed on 43s for the Portsmouth - Cardiff route.

 

No Warships got painted maroon before 1965 AFAIK.

 

WR locos generally got yellow panels quite quickly and I doubt many Warships lacked them by the time they came up the Southern (1964, as stated by Rivercider, though I think there may have been a few test runs in late 1963). The SR seem not to have liked the idea and some Class 33s were still running around without them when steam finished on the Bournemouth line in 1967.

 

As an aside, Hymeks started turning up on milk trains from the autumn of 1963.

 

John

Edited March 13, 2021 by Dunsignalling

[Dunsignalling]

48 minutes ago, Rivercider said:

My understanding was that SR men started learning Warships in May 1964, and they started regular work out of Waterloo from August or September 1964. (I don't remember, as I was 5 at the time!)

 

Here is D803 at Woking in October 1964

Flickr by Robert Carroll

 

 

cheers

Interesting pic. I thought they'd all received 4-character headcode boxes by then. Were those and yellow panels applied together, I wonder?

 

IIRC, Warship haulage commenced with the winter 1964 timetable, which would have been mid-September.

 

John

Edited March 13, 2021 by Dunsignalling
Spelling

[Halvarras]

16 hours ago, Dunsignalling said:

Interesting pic. I thought they'd all received 4-character headcode boxes by then. Were those and yellow panels applied together, I wonder?

 

IIRC, Warship haulage commenced with the winter 1964 timetable, which would have been mid-September.

 

John

 

D803 eventually became the only disc headcode Warship to turn up at Swindon Works for h/c conversion without yellow panels already applied - outshopped 2/65. These conversions were generally carried out between late 1963 and early 1965, although the last one, D810, evaded the procedure until 9/65, and therefore must have got very close to being outshopped in maroon after conversion.

The last h/c panel Swindon Warship to receive yellow panels was the now-preserved D821, in 2/64 (last of all was NBL D856, 5/65).

 

 

 

[Dunsignalling]

1 hour ago, Neil Phillips said:

 

D803 eventually became the only disc headcode Warship to turn up at Swindon Works for h/c conversion without yellow panels already applied - outshopped 2/65. These conversions were generally carried out between late 1963 and early 1965, although the last one, D810, evaded the procedure until 9/65, and therefore must have got very close to being outshopped in maroon after conversion.

The last h/c panel Swindon Warship to receive yellow panels was the now-preserved D821, in 2/64 (last of all was NBL D856, 5/65).

 

 

 

Thanks for filling in the detail on the loco in the photo, Neil. I wasn't aware of doing so but must have held a long-standing assumption that the changes happened in a uniform sequence, i.e. new headcode before yellow panel, or both together. From a modelling perspective, things were clearly more interesting than that.....

 

Am I understanding the bit about D810 correctly, that repainting of Warships into maroon only began towards the end of 1965?

 

Regards

 

John

 

 

[Halvarras]

6 minutes ago, Dunsignalling said:

 

Am I understanding the bit about D810 correctly, that repainting of Warships into maroon only began towards the end of 1965?

 

Regards

 

John

 

Yes John, the first two done were D863 (8/65) and D857 (22/9/65), although D857 was slightly odd in having its numbers applied in the same position as per green locos, i.e. low down, which makes me wonder whether this one was actually finished first. It would appear that the repositioning of the numbers higher up on other maroon repaints had them aligned with the nameplates, although this could have been coincidental. By the time BR blue arrived around 15 months later 32 Warships had been painted maroon, some achievement.

 

This means that maroon Warships running alongside WR steam is not technically  correct, but hey, Rule 1.........!

 

These details came from "The Book of the Warships" (Irwell Press), an absolute mine of information on these locomotives. For instance, with regard to the 13 D800s converted from disc to panel headcodes, it's known that D801/4 retained the centre lamp brackets and headboard brackets that the rest had; D806/09/12 only retained the lamp brackets; the other 8 retained neither. When these 13 locos are sorted by date of conversion you realise that Swindon converted them in this order, in other words they gave up fitting these bits as they went along. Another interesting snippet is that it took two and a half years to convert the five D600s from discs to boxes - not exactly a priority job then!

 

Neil

[Phil Bullock]

13 minutes ago, Neil Phillips said:

 

This means that maroon Warships running alongside WR steam is not technically  correct, but hey, Rule 1.........!

Oxford Gloucester and Worcester didn’t finish with steam until 31st December 65 Neil so that gives a 4 month window ... and 16xx and 57xx continued in to 1966 on the books of the LMR stretching the window a bit wider 

[Halvarras]

56 minutes ago, Phil Bullock said:

Oxford Gloucester and Worcester didn’t finish with steam until 31st December 65 Neil so that gives a 4 month window ... and 16xx and 57xx continued in to 1966 on the books of the LMR stretching the window a bit wider 

 

Well there you go, I learned something new today - thanks Phil! 

[phil gollin]

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Thanks for all the replies, particularly "Rivercider".

 

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[Calidore]

Hi @phil gollin -- this is a little late, but thought you might be interested. UID maroon warship at Waterloo alongside Lord Dowding, undated but presumably 1965-66. 34052 looks too tidy for it to be any later than that I think.

 

 

(I don't have a reference for the photo to hand -- happy to correct / remove if anyone has further details)

 

Adam

Edited March 29, 2021 by Calidore