GWR Route: Banbury to Wolverhampton

Hockley Station: gwrhd710

A number of Hockley's GWR designed horse drawn vehicles together with a range of commercially designed lorries. Whilst the horse-drawn carts seen here are almost all to a common design, the three motor vehicles photographed at Hockley on 2nd May 1940 are all different models. The nearest is a three-wheel 3 ton Scammel tractor, which was called a 'mechanical horse', because it was designed to haul demountable trailers in confined spaces and had an excellent turning circle. The next motor vehicle is a 2 ton Morris Commercial forward control chassis fitted with a Swindon van body carrying the words ‘Express Cartage Services’ on the rear portion and an advertising space was provided on the forward portion. The final motor vehicle is a 4 ton Thonycroft PB chassis and cab with what appears to be a flat platform body (again this would have been manufactured and fitted at Swindon Works). Earlier Thornycroft designs had open cabs, but safety-glass in windscreens became a legal requirement in 1937 and the road licence incentives introduced in 1933, meant that solid tyres (which caused more damage to road surfaces) were replaced with pneumatic tyres from 1933.

A new motor fleet numbering system was introduced in 1938, which used a prefix letter to identify the vehicle type and the first of the subsequent numbers to indicate the vehicles carrying capacity in tons. Below are examples:

Robert Ferris

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