GWR Route: Banbury to Wolverhampton

Olton Station: gwro1026

An original Derby built three-car Western Region Diesel Multiple Unit (DMU) is seen leaving Olton station on 1.00pm Stratford upon Avon to Birmingham Snow Hill service on 13th January 1964. During the later 1950s BR introduced a large number of diesel multiple units, or DMUs, with body designs based on the new (and for its time advanced) BR Mk 1 coach. These 'first generation' passenger DMUs were mostly two-car units but there were quite a few three-car and a few four-car sets and a few 'single' car types.

All but the Class 112/113 units had two engines on each power car, feeding power through a fluid flywheel to cardan shafts driving one axle on the adjacent bogie. The 112 and 113 units had only a single engine but they operated as two car sets with two power cars. These diesel units proved successful and many of the units built at this time remained in service into the 1990s, a few made it into the new Millennium (I understand that some had their engines removed for use in the 'second generation' Class 142 rail-bus units of the 1980s). The individual types are described according to BR Class number below.

The first sets delivered were the Derby Lightweight and Metropolitan-Cammell lightweight two car units, both introduced in 1954. Both these were non standard in various ways so they were withdrawn from service by 1969 and never received a TOPS class number. Detailed descriptions will be found below. Both the Derby and the Metropolitan-Cammell lightweight units were equipped with four white electric lights on the front, replicating the four position headcode disks used on locomotives. In practice as neither was geared to haul a trailing load they would normally have only used the two outer lamps above the buffer beam (stopping passenger train).

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