Factfile: GWR diesel railcar
Critics of the Great Western would accuse it of a lack of innovation and ‘nothing new after Churchward’. The Collett era takes the brunt of that criticism due to the CME’S many updates of much older designs, not least the replacement of ‘517’ class autotanks with the very similar-looking ‘48XX’ (later ‘14XX’) class. However, in 1912 the GWR had acquired a four-wheel petrol-engined railbus which was tested on the Windsor branch, and for the next two decades it dabbled with internal combustion-engined locomotives for light shunting. In the early 1920s, in cooperation with Hardy Motors, an open-cab rail-mounted lorry was trialled at Slough, and shunted wagons on the Estates railway. From this came the development, in 1932, of a streamlined diesel railcar intended for ‘Flying Hamburger’-style use, on fast, limited stop services where demand was low. More of these railcars followed. They were particularly successful on Cardiff-birmingham services and soon had to be replaced by locomotivehauled trains. One was tried on branch line services but its braking power proved inadequate and its inability to haul a tailload was a handicap. However, a branch line railcar was needed in order to bring economies on lines where it was becoming difficult to justify autotrains with a crew of three. This became increasingly important as the GWR found it difficult to recruit adequate numbers of steam crews in the London area during the 1930s. A situation which would continue during and immediately after the war.
The result was a new railcar, No. 18, known as ‘the Lambourn car’ because it was specifically designed (and geared to 40mph) to haul a tail-load of a couple of horseboxes and spent most of its career on the Newbury-lambourn branch. With the approach of the Second World War the GWR brought the construction of railcars in-house and produced a new angular body design which could be built at Swindon. Nos. 19-33 were delivered from 1940. No. 34 was a window-less version of the same vehicle, for parcels traffic and Nos. 35/36 and 37/38 were single-ended cars built as two-car units. These were the fore-runners of the fleet of DMUS ordered by BR a decade later.
These later-style GWR railcars, more recently called by railway modellers ‘razor-edge’ cars, lasted in service until displaced in the early 1960s by the Gloucester RCW single units (Nos. W55000-19). As a consequence there were quite a lot of livery variations, at least three versions of GWR, two of carmine and cream and three of lined green.
The railcars operated branch lines and local services in the London area, including the Greenford loop, Staines, Uxbridge and Windsor during the early 1950s and were also to be found working from Bristol, the Wye Valley and ending their careers working from Worcester on the Severn Valley routes and some West Midlands local services. The last examples were withdrawn in October 1962. No. W20W, still in carmine and cream livery, was acquired by the Kent & East Sussex Railway. It was withdrawn in 1980 for major body repairs which remain ongoing. No. W22W, in light green livery, was acquired by the Great Western Society. Restored to GWR livery, it operated from Bridgnorth on the Severn Valley Railway until transferred to Didcot Railway Centre where it remains in operation.