GWR Route: Banbury to Wolverhampton

GWR Route: North Warwickshire Line

Tyseley Station: gwrt1346

A British Railways diesel parcels car is seen wearing early BR livery as it passes through Tyseley on an up parcels service in October 1966. Introduced in 1959 and built by British United Traction, originally only eight of the class were ordered but this was quickly increased to ten. Each of the units were fitted with two 230 hp Leyland Albion engines providing ample power to handle heavy parcel traffic. Dedicated from the outset for parcel traffic the class had no passenger accommodation being fitted out with parcel racks and bike storages at each end.

Four members of the class were allocated to the London Midland Region whilst the remainder were based on the Western Region. The last members of the class were withdrawn in 1991, and none were preserved. This class together with the three Cravens parcels units, enabled British Railways to operate a through parcels service in the absence of a regular passenger service, or when the time a train was allocated to stand at a station were insufficient to permit the loading and unloading of mail.

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