Wickham railcars DB 965330 and DB 965331 were moved from the Ayrshire Railway Preservation Group at Dunaskin, Ayrshire to Sheildon, County Durham on Tuesday 30th August. The two railcars will be restored to an operational condition in the workshops of “Rail Restorations North East”. The restoration work is scheduled to take about six months and when it is completed, they will then be available by arrangement for loan or hire to any standard gauge railway preservation society who wants to use them. The cars have fully enclosed metal framed bodywork with integral sliding doors and good thermal insulation, in order to meet the requirements of working in the rugged Scottish Highlands. The cars can operate singly or coupled back-to-back as a pair in “push-pull” mode, having identical driving controls at both ends. The eight upholstered seats (two driver and six passenger) in each railcar are of the reversible “tram” type.

These are the only two surviving Wickham “Type 18 Mk. X” railcars and they are therefore unique. To meet a particular performance specification, they were powered by German-built Deutz diesel engines of type F4L812, as a special order. They were ordered (number 05612) by the Chief Civil Engineer, British Railways Scottish Region from D. Wickham & Co. Ltd., of Ware, Hertfordshire. These cars stayed together in Scotland all of their working lives, firstly at Invernessin, then Spean Bridge and finally at BR Kilmarnock Works. The wheel arrangement notation is “4W DMR”.

Details of the railcars are as follows:

DB 965330, later became DX 68002. Wickham works number 10180 of 1968.

DB 965331, later became DX 68003. Wickham works number 10179 of 1968.

Any enquires can be directed to martinallen01@hotmail.com

Regards,

Martin Allen