A member has seen reports of GWR railcar 19 in the north east in 1942 and in Yorkshire in 1948. Additional reports give GWR railcars 6 and 19 as on trial and in service Newcastle Area in 1944, which corresponds to the only mention of such activities in the RCTS Locomotives of the Great Western Railway Part Eleven. There is a photograph of railcar (by then) W19, in Whitaker and Cryer’s The Queensbury Lines at Thornton station on the GN Queensbury to Keighley line. Clarification of exactly when these events took place, and the lines involved is requested.

(AW:9027)

Answers

I saw GWR railcar 19 on 18th April 1944 when it was working on the North Wylam branch in place of a G5 class 0-4-4T on a push and pull set. I was on my to Carlisle at the time and never saw it again as our normal train spotting was at Chester-le-Street. (SAS:2425)

There is a paragraph on this in RCTS Locomotives of the LNER part 10A Page 34 and also a longer piece regarding plans to replace the Sentinel cars, on Page 6 in Part 10B. (CC:10911)

In April 1944 GWR diesel railcar 19 was loaned to the LNER for trials. These took place on the Newcastle-North Wylam and Newcastle-Blackhill routes. Locomotives of the Great Western Railway Part Eleven quotes cars 6 and 19 as having been used on local LNER services in the Newcastle area for a while during 1944. In August 1952 railcar 20 was based at Neville Hill shed for trials between Leeds and Harrogate and on 24th August worked on its own and with single vehicle trailing loads. It left Yorkshire in September 1952 and there were trials in the Boston and Grantham areas before returning to the western region. There is an article referring to the trials in Railway Bylines of January 2002. (AM:6448, RP:12021)