Model Railway Forum

I picked these up from a stateside seller not because I had a particular hole in my collection, but because they are vintage, looked
interesting, and I didn't have to pay a whopping shipping fee plus tariffs. Your American Cousin would like to know: what are they,
when were they in use, and I gather they were employed by the Southern Railway. Also I got them because they are light, and might make an interesting rake for the Triang Electra, whilst attractive and fun, is
not much for tractive effort.

General Utility Van or GUV. Used for mail, parcels and general goods. The green one are Southern but I believe they travelled far and wide.

The tooling was still being used until not that many years ago
https://www.hampshiremodels.co.uk/produ ... uggage-van

WTD
The red ones were Southern region as well. When these were built by the Southern Railway in 1920s they painted them green and remained green until the early 1950s when British Railways Southern Region painted them red. Then after 1956 BR changed its mind and started painting them green again.
The real ones were actually built on old passenger carriage underframes. One was painted chocolate and cream in 1965 to carry the coffin of Sir Winston Churchill to his final resting place. It is now preserved. Seen here in National Railway Museum.

Thanks LC. I had a red one very early on, my dad must gave bought it, and it was always one of my favourites.

Here it is on my previous layout.

Fabulous responses. Thank you so much. Now I know!

I remember the best thing about it was that the doors opened, all 12 of them

Modelled on a woodbody variant a couple of different versions been made in models from wagon length to coach length. Some were used on boat trains like bournemouth sometimes with early electric 3rd rail locos pulling them. did appear in green red and blue and in rea life many served last years in service as enparts wagons carrying parts of locos etc where needed. a couple were modified with b4/b5 bogies

I presume these were the SR equivalent of the GWR Siphon?

I rebuilt a rather damaged and warped one by casting new pairs of doors in resin and glueing them on as shut pairs, and also I repaired a rather warped roof using resin as well. It worked out rather nice.
I have two examples in B.R. blue somewhere. That is one of them.

Just to add, GUV's like this were also commonly used on newspaper trains. Some of the later B.R. versions also could carry cars and vans etc inside them if required as the end doors would open up to facilitate this. These Southern Railway versions could not do that but they did have vestibule doors instead making them useful if staff had to walk from vehicle to vehicle while the train is in motion.