Special Delivery

A part of the post-election return to normality, I attended the local monthly Toy and Model Train Fair today.  As ever, I managed to pick up a couple of bargains.  While I was tempted by a number of things - including a Bachmann Standard Class 5 that need some repairs, lots of trackwork and some more cheap freight stock - I eventually settled upon a tatty Wrenn Pullman brake second that needs replacement couplings and the roof repainted and a maroon Lima British Railways General Utility Van (GUV), still in its box.  I've been looking for a reasonably priced example of the latter for a long time - prices on eBay are insane.  This one cost under a tenner, partly because there is a roof to solebar scratch on one side, possibly caused by a slipping craft knife.  From normal viewing distances it isn't visible at all.  Anyway, here is said van,  coupled up to its ex-Southern Railway equivalent:

The BR GUV (on the left) started appearing in the fifties, part of a series of standardised designs intended to eventually replace older pre-nationalisation designs such as the Southern Railway GUV (on the right).  Unlike the older design, the BR GUV had steel sides and end doors for loading large items, in contrast to the wooden sided SR design, which was equipped with end passenger gangways, (as well as running in van trains with similar vehicles, they were frequently to be found coupled to passenger trains, to provide additional luggage space - they were superceded in this role by the BR Mk1 BG).  The end doors meant that BR GUVs were often to be found carrying cars in specialised 'Motorail' type services.

This particular GUV is numbered as a Western Region vehicle, making it likely that it would have also  been seen on the Southern Region on inter-regional trains.  Thanks to the large numbers of SR GUVs in service on the Southern Region in the steam era, the BR version tended not to be allocated there until later in the sixties, but nevertheless could often be seen on Southern Region trains, (as were Western Region allocated BGs, which eventually supplanted the SR GUVs as luggage vans on boat trains and Pullman services, with the SR eventually getting its own allocation of green-painted BGs in the mid-sixties).  While Lima did produce a Souther Region numbered green liveried BR GUV, I'm not entirel sure that was prototypical.

The SR GUV, in the later blue livery that started appearing from the mid-sixties, was also bought from the Train Fair, a few months ago.  It is the old Tri-ang model, (but fitted with some replacement wheels by a previous owner), but was even cheaper than the Lima model, being unboxed.  It's a nice model, pretty much in 'as new' condition and joins three others I already had (two in bauxite, one in green, although they all sport the same running number).  

So there you go - more luggage/parcels stock.  Believe me, you can never have enough such vans, especially when modelling the Southern Region where they featured prominently on both regular passenger services and boat trains, as well as being formed up into dedicated parcels and newspaper trains and being used as brakes on milk trains.