GWR Route: Banbury to Wolverhampton

Moor Street Station: gwrms2756

The Great Western Railway contracted the maintenance, servicing and calibration of all their weighbridges and other weighing machines to the specialist firm of Henry Pooley & Son, who from 1890 were based at 72 John Bright Street, Birmingham. They provided H Pooley & Son with a number of modified covered wagons to use as mobile workshops and stores. Prior to the grouping in 1921, these were all newly built wagons, adapted from standard covered wagon designs with additional roof lighting, windows, stove and steps. After the grouping the workshop vans were mainly converted from surplus covered wagons.

This particular H Pooley & Son mobile workshop van (No DW37458) was photographed in Moor Street Goods Yard on 6th June 1964. It is branded:

The first H Pooley & Son mobile workshop van for the Newtown District was an absorbed Cambrian Meat Van converted soon after the Grouping in December 1922, but the wagon in the photograph has many characteristics of a Great Western Railway unfitted covered wagon and is thought to be a converted diagram V12 wagon. If the number of the original wagon has been retained, then it probably was originally constructed in Lot L816 (1915) and may be one of the unidentified wagons listed below as converted in Lot L1148 (1934).

The table below gives details of the various H Pooley & Son mobile workshop vans:

Robert Ferris

back