GWR Monster Carriage Trucks

[scratcher]

Photos I have seen usually show an individual Monster attached to normal carriages, but I wondered how they were actually used in the 1930s. Were they employed singly attached to service trains, or were trains of Monsters made up for conveying say an entire circus, or were they used in conjunction with Damos or Asmos for car carrying,  or ... ? 

[Neal Ball]

2 minutes ago, scratcher said:

Photos I have seen usually show an individual Monster attached to normal carriages, but I wondered how they were actually used in the 1930s. Were they employed singly attached to service trains, or were trains of Monsters made up for conveying say an entire circus, or were they used in conjunction with Damos or Asmos for car carrying,  or ... ? 

 

I am not in front of the relevant books at the moment, but recall they were also used by touring theatrical productions for scenery. I would therefore say they would be unlikely to work as car-carrying.

 

Circus and Theatres.... 

[Paul H Vigor]

According to the Bluebell Railway:

 

"The Western Region continued the Great Western tradition of giving their vehicles interesting telegraphic codes. The "Monster" was a GWR design of CCT. Their end-loading doors allowed cars (or carriages) to be loaded, but they were found to be generally very useful for a wide variety of cargoes. They were rated to run in passenger trains, and such vans often found their way onto the Southern Region on parcels trains.

 

Purchased by the Bluebell's loco department from a scrap yard, the end-doors made it ideal for the storage of such awkward items as boiler tubes."

[scratcher]

Sorry if my original post wasn't clear. What I'm really after is how the vehicles were used in practice. For example, would a theatre or circus charter an entire train or just attach one or more vehicles to a service train. Photos seem elusive. 

 

I threw in the car carrying as I came across this a while ago https://friendsofvt.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/MOGO-Details-and-Development.pdf and there is a photo of a rake of Pythons with the caption "This photograph from the June 1933 GWR Magazine shows a special train of PYTHON wagons at the Singer Motorcar Works in Small Heath (Singer Motors Ltd acquired this site on the Coventry Road in 1926, where the ASDA supermarket is now). The train was transporting new motorcars to Brentford Docks in west London for export."  

Edited February 12, 2023 by scratcher
Correction

[Welchester]

The Warwickshire Railways site also has the photograph of the Singer car train and motorcycles being loaded, together with details of the formation of a couple of circus trains.

Edited February 12, 2023 by Welchester
Repaired bad link.

[Nick Gough]

There is a photo in 'Truly the Great Western', by Maurice Earley, with the caption,

 "No. 4072 Tresco Abbey as an original 'Star'class seen here on a down Sunday Bristol stopper in 1926. A really interesting selection of rolling stock, one suspects that the leading vehicles may have been for a theatrical party with all their scenery and effects."

 

 Vehicles one and four are 'Monsters', vehicle two a 'Python', vehicle three a 6-wheeled 'Syphon', followed by at least five passenger carriages.