LMS Route: Rugby to Wolverhampton
LMS Route: Nuneaton to Leamington

Coventry Station: lnwrcov3732

Another view showing the seven Hillman Minx cars with the LNWR sheds in the background beyond the footbridge from Spencer Park to Grosvenor Road. The car in the foreground is also a Hillman Minx with this elevation showing that all were also equipped with a sunroof.

What is surprising is why the photograph was taken at Coventry Goods Yard because the Humber Group (which had bought out Hillman Cars in 1928) used Gosford Green Goods Yard on the Coventry Loop Line to transport cars as seen in image 'lnwrcll3218'. It may well be that they used both yards, Gosford Green for dedicated trains made up entirely of wagons or vans carrying their cars and Coventry Goods Yard for instances where their cars only formed part of the load. Another possibility is that Hillman cars were still being produced at their Ryton works, the original headquarters of Hillman Cars. In 1931 the Rootes Group took over Humber Cars with Hillman becoming the dominant brand within the Rootes empire, alongside Humber, Sunbeam and Singer. As image 'lnwrcov2762' shows, the Ryton plant was being used in 1948 for their production, based at the shadow factory opened in 1940. Whether this was the same site as used by Hillman Cars post their take-over by Humber Cars and then the Rootes 'group' is unknown.

Peter Speding wrote in Volume 6, Edition 10 of the LNWR Society's Journal an article which featured this photograph, 'This is one of a set of five undated photographs found at Nuneaton sometime between 1960 and 1962. They were found in an envelope postmarked 14.11.1932 with a Midland Daily Telegraph label. The postmark date appears consistent with the subject matter of the photographs, each one of which is stamped on the reverse with 'Copyright Photograph by Midland Daily Telegraph and Coventry Herald, Coventry/ The Coventry Telegraph is the successor to the Midland Daily Telegraph and the Coventry Herald and research by their chief librarian revealed no trace of the pictures having been published and, because all the records of the time were destroyed in the Coventry blitz, it is not possible to obtain any other information. The photographs appear to be about the despatch of cars from the Coventry area and are split into two sections, those below taken in Coventry Goods yard and those on the next page showing a train of about twenty long wheelbase vans.

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