WW2 WD Livery and Markings 1940

[webbcompound]

I'm posting here thinking that War Department activity has more in common with industrial than main line railway interests, (odd locos, odd workings).  Does anyone have any information on the livery and markings of locos in use by the War Department Engineer Railway Companies in 1940. I'm modelling the WD companies in France after Dunkirk. Aves's book has a photo of a newly repainted Dean Goods, but I haven't so far found anything on the Jintys and Diesel electrics sent out there.

[Caledonian]

On 30/01/2020 at 15:48, webbcompound said:

I'm posting here thinking that War Department activity has more in common with industrial than main line railway interests, (odd locos, odd workings).  Does anyone have any information on the livery and markings of locos in use by the War Department Engineer Railway Companies in 1940. I'm modelling the WD companies in France after Dunkirk. Aves's book has a photo of a newly repainted Dean Goods, but I haven't so far found anything on the Jintys and Diesel electrics sent out there.

 

Its a good question and thus far I've only scraped up a couple of clues.

 

If you've read Bill Aves' earlier book on the ROD in WWI you'll know that an unlined all black livery was employed, including black rather than red buffer beams. The photies in his WD book [including that newly outshopped Dean Goods] appear to show the same. They certainly didn't appear in khaki or any variant of it.

 

The difficulty lies with numbers and symbols. There's a very helpful diagram with dimensions for the Dean, again in his book, but I've not come across either photies or diagrams for the shunters, but...

 

After the book was published a photie of No.8 turned up. This one had been captured by the Germans and when it turned up in a Berlin yard after the war it had a wide and varied collection of Wehrmacht scripts and symbols plastered all over it, but in the midst of it all is the number 8 positioned on the tank under the forward side-sheet of the cab. This one is about two thirds of the way up from the running plate. There is another, this time within a circle immediately in front of the cab but much lower down. Both are about half the size of the cab numbers used by British Railways, but one of them must be the original WD number. You pays your money and you takes your pick, but as I recall the much longer numbers which later appeared on the cab side-sheets of the Austerity tanks were quite low down. In addition there will have been the obligatory WD separated by a broad arrow on the centre of the tank.

 

Unless of course somebody turns up a photie showing something completely different...

[webbcompound]

 

 

Thanks Caledonian. This sounds like a similar location to the Deans. Also the Deans have two sizes of number (large and small, though this is not carried through to the tender which always seems to be in large W^D. Looks like the W^D only appears on tenders, which of course the Jinty and DE do not have. I think I will go with the larger numbers just below the cab forward side screen, on both the Jinty and the DE.

[Caledonian]

And here we have No.8 [well no its not, but if you click on the link and scroll down to the bottom of the page you'll find it]

 

 

[webbcompound]

Hmm. interesting photo, but I'm not entirely convinced by the number.  The missing three are 8, 13 and 15 and no other loco retained its WD number in such a prominent way. In addition other DR or military numbers are less visible, so the question would be why the WD number was repainted after them.

Edited February 3, 2020 by webbcompound

[Caledonian]

Good question but its all we've got apart from another even fainter clue in 7611 as returned from France. None of the "ex SNCF" locos display any WD markings but if you look very closely at the two photies on p39 there appears to be a rectangular sanded patch in the right place, suggesting that a number was erased

[webbcompound]

Looking again at the photos the right hand side seems to have several patches. The one you refer to may well indicate the removal of an SNCF numberplate (attached photo of a USA tank shows exactly this in terms of size and location). But the other four patches could well indicate widely spaced letter/symbols in two rows. They could show W ^ D on the top line, in a similar slayout to the Dean tenders, with the WD number 11 in the center below the arrow. 

 

[Caledonian]

I'm not convinced by the plate theory partly because I'd expect more of a scar and also because 7607, shown working for the French at Savenay [page 37] doesn't have one.

 

On the subject of plates , I'm assuming that the smokebox number plates will have been removed, just as those on the cab sidesheets  on the Deans were, and again reverting to the Deans although there's some uncertainty as to where the numbers and broad arrows on the sides went, I think we can cheerfully assume a number painted on the front buffer beam and on the bunker rear

[Tony Cane]

Attached is a scan of the Swindon drawing for WD lettering on the Dean Goods in 1939.

I can see no reason why a similar scheme would not be used on the LMS 0-6-0T.

[Caledonian]

Thanks Tony. This is reproduced in Bill Aves' book and I agree that something very similar was probably applied to the Jinties, ie; WD with broad arrow in the middle of the tank and the loco number applied just forward of the cab door. The only reservation I'd have is whether it was all scaled down a bit

[Nearholmer]

A book that contains a good number of photos of locos in W^D livery is "The Shrophsire & Montgomeryshire Light Railway Under Military Control 194-60", a paving slab hardback from Lightmoor Press.

 

Coincidentally, I'm about to dispose of my copy and the similar OPC one about The Bicester Military Railway, so, without actually advertising, PM me with a sensible offer if you are interested (they are heavy, so postage might be quite expensive).

[Tony Cane]

I have looked through the RCTS book on the LMS diesels, which has some livery information on those requisitioned by the WD, but the earliest references are to 2 inch numbers seen in 1941.

The earliest pictures of diesel shunters in WD liver that can find are both of 1941 built engines.

There is a builders photograph of an Andrew Barclay 0-4-0D in the booklet  Engines of War. This has W(arrow)D above the number on the side of the cab in front of the doors in, what I estimate to be, 4 inch characters.

The other is WD17 built 1941 and sent to the Middle East, and photographed in 1943. This has “WD17” as a single line of characters, again on the cab side in front of the doors, in similar size characters.

[Nearholmer]

The arrows between the W and the D seem to vary between 'railway applied', which are an "arrow proper", as per the painting diagram posted above, and 'military applied', which are the classic 'benchmark' symbol, consisting of three separate slim triangles grouped to form an arrow, presumably applied via a stencil.

Edited February 5, 2020 by Nearholmer

[Caledonian]

Having a bit of time on my hands on account of current events, I finally got around to ordering some WD transfers from Railtec and actually getting around to applying them on the two selected locos.

 

This of course meant making decisions...

 

The WD [small but not smallest size] on the tank side, leading edge in line with the front of the belpaire. Looking good so far, but what about the numbers?

 

With nothing beyond the unsatisfactory clues discussed above and a seeming lack of uniformity from loco to loco, I reckoned it was a matter of placing them where it looked right, but at the same time it also occurred to me when looking at that GWR drawing again that the insignia and numbers on the Dean Goods corresponded to the positioning of the GWR numbers.

 

So off we went, the loco numbers went on the bunker side in LMS fashion and it looks just right - until of course somebody comes up with a photie of the original