Early British Railways Headlamp codes (ER express freights)

[65179]

I’ve been looking at a photocopy of a 1949 working timetables for the Cheshire Lines. Amongst the freights shown are Eastern Region No.1, No.2 and No.3 express freights. Can anyone tell me what headlamp codes these would correspond with and how the train would be described (e.g. continuous brake in use on not less than 4 vehicles etc)?

 

The CLC 1935 general appendix refers to no.1 and no.2 express freights, but not no.3 (and I’m unsure if these would be the same as the ER classification anyway), and also this timetable obviously pre-dates the May 1950 BR codes.

 

Thanks,

 

Simon

[Nick Holliday]

Not being an expert on this area I have been waiting for those who are to respond, but as this hasn't happened yet I have trawled through a number of Appendices and came up with the following comparisons:

As far as I can tell the CLC codes were basically the same as those used by the LNER, with the exception of the No 3 Express Goods which, according to my source, only appeared in LNER documentation. Unfortunately the LNER and CLC sheets don't appear to prescribe the proportion of fitted vehicles, but, given the close similarity to the post 1950 BR codes, I would suspect that the BR descriptions would apply. (The GWR just had to be that little bit different though!)

[65179]

Nick,

 

Thanks for going to the trouble of doing that comparison. It's very useful. I wonder why the CLC felt no need to have a No.3 goods code? I asked my original question on the LNER encyclopedia forum and someone was kind enough to post extracts from the 1947 appendix showing both the headlamp codes and the proportions of wagons to be fitted with the continuous brake for No.1 express goods according to train length:

http://www.lner.info/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=5483&p=49225#p49225.

It's interesting that the proportions vary whereas the information with the BR codes (and the 1937 LMS codes) suggests simply minimum proportions. I don't have any appendices other than the CLC one to see whether other companies also provided more detailed (general) information.

 

Simon