bit of a poser

Yey! we have a winner!

 

Hate to think what might have happened if these two locos had been allocated to the wrong workings. The Sheffield-St Pancras passenger service might have been delayed a little.

 

Highly commended runner up.....well done

 

Interestingly I believe that the number 20 was in fact part of the old GWR series for petrol mechanical shunters, one of which was replaced by No20 in Reading. Possibly the latest allocated number in a pre nationalisation series and one of the last survivors of those series.

 

According to Wikipedia, it was officially 97020 though.

 

so the obvious question is..how did it end up with the number 20 ?

 

I don't think it's that cut and dried as the D prefix didn't go until after steam went,the VoR locos being the usual exception. 7029 wasn't a BR loco (in the 70s) and the A4s and the Class 60s fall on the same thorn too

 

not until 1980

 

you could also I suppose say the same situation arose uo to the early 1960s with railcar number 20 (which I saw a great video of the other day at Bewdley incidentally)

 

Prior to the 97xxx renumbering each region seemed to have its own series. LMR had the ED series of shunters, SR had the DS, WR PWM as well as a few two digit numbers and IIRC ER/NER had a two digit series.

 

Additional info, and I never saw this in use (maybe buseng did? ) . There used to be a low level crossing from Reading Signal Works to the Goods Depot across Vastern Road next to the railway bridge. No 20 would presumably have used this to transfer wagons to and from the Signal Works. This was in addition to the more usual incline and massive iron bridge that No20 usually, lived under as a makeshift shed.

Also the Signal Works yard was used to stable Lydia and Isle of Thanet after their use in Churchull's funeral train and before they went stateside.

More info: The Works boundary fence was made of old boiler tubes.

 

Strictly speaking the ED series on the LMR was just for the Engineers Dept and the PWM series was just for PW machines. All SR departmentals were in the DS series originally, not just locos and I can recall DS400 and DS600 DS1169 and DS1173 as locos. (I once saw ED3 at Reading, remarkably and also DS600 on Reading DMD when it ran a hotbox en route for scrap)

 

Copped ED3 inside Bedford shed. Regarding the DS SR series, didn't their railway cranes get numbered DSxxx?

 

But after the 1970s the introduction of TOPS meant that steam and diesel weren't identified by the cab side number alone. The steam locomotives used a 5 character number in which characters 1 / 2 were Class No = 98; character 3 = Power Class; Characters 4 / 5 = last 2 digits of cab-side number thus 60009 is now identified as 98809 whilst 3440 is now 98240 and 7029 is now 98730 (5029 is 98729 IIRC therefore 7029 takes next higher available number)

 

But how many steam locos display/displayed their TOPS numbers other than on the plaque they carry inside the cab?

 

more to the point how many of them were run by BR?

 

Not a lot.

 

7 8 and 9 only,