Some research

Where possible, I like the locos on Foundry Lane to represent ones which are likely to have been seen on the West Midlands during the early 70s.  The latest of these is a class 25 which will be subject of another blog post, which needed to be renumbered.  The excellent Derby Sulzers site was my starting point, which provided me with a short list of potential candidates, but I had a few gaps in depot allocations.  After a bit of Googling I stumbled upon the BR Database website – which looks like a really useful resource.  With the Class 25 identified (it’ll be Bescot’s 25038, since you ask), I started digging further into the database.

Looking up a couple of the New Haden locos, my EE type 1 (D8000) was new to 1D (Devons Road) in June 1957, but moved to Crewe South in October ’58, where she stayed for a couple of years before moving to 1B (Camden).  My Sulzer type 2 (D5030) is more of a problem though.  Built in June ’59 she was new to 31B (March), so not exactly local!  Being built at Crewe, suppose the excuse that she was on a test run will have to stand as her Crewe allocated classmates had details differences which rule out a simple renumbering.

It covers those steam things too; for example Geoff’s Fairburn (42234) was at Stoke from 1952 to 1957, then moving to Rugby until withdrawal in 1964.

Worth a look if you are about to do some renumbering – I’ll add a link to our “blogroll”.