D Day narrow gauge railway / tramway

In the photo via the topmost link the loco appears to have a Gardner 6L3 engine.

 

Our Number 16 certainly has a Gardner engine in it.
http://www.yorkareagroup.co.uk/76-2/number-16-0-4-0-dm/

 

And Army 226 at Mangapps. I believe that all the wartime army locos, whether the Barclay or Drewry/Vulcan Foundry version, had the Gardner 6L3. Both Drewry and Barclay continued to use Gardner L3 engines in their post-war designs, 6 cyl on the smaller 0-4-0s, 8 cyl on the larger 0-4-0s and 0-6-0s, culminating in the Barclay-built BR class 01, 05 and 06, Drewry-built class 04 and BR-built class 03. The 03s and 04s also used the same transmission as the wartime locos- Self Changing Gears air-operated epicyclic gearbox and Wilson-Drewry final drive, which also had a war connection- it was originally developed for the WW1 Mk.1 tank!

 

Further to all the responses which came in to this enquiry, I recently bought a bookazine from Key publishing called "D Day the most crucial 24 hours of World war 2". On page 120 there is a clear photograph of a Sherman tank on the Route de Lion in Ouistreham. The little railway's track is clearly visible in the bottom corner of the picture and in the backgrund there is a train effectively parked in the middle of the street. Could this be the final service, as previously mentioned, which was apparently abandoned by the crew when the invasion broke out? certainly I cannot imagine that it was left there for long once the military started to transport odnance and supplies inland and you can just imagine it being towed out of the way by a tank, or maybe just pushed out of the way as the military were no respecters of that sort of thing.

Regards
Bob

 

Bob,
I'm sure that you are right, the train didn't survive for long! My daughter's father-in-law, who sadly died a few months ago, was a demolition specialist with the Royal Engineers, attached to a Canadian unit, the Regiment de Chaudiere. His group landed near Courseuilles-sur-Mer early on the morning of D-Day. They had a bad landing, losing half of their 30 men, including their officers and senior NCOs, as a result of which he was given a field promotion to sergeant and found himself in command of the 15 survivors. After dealing with the beach obstacles their next job was to clear the roads of abandoned vehicles. Their instructions were to tow or push these out of the way with an AVRE, a Churchill tank adapted for Engineers use, but this was too slow and, working under heavy fire, dangerous. They had adequate supplies of the (new) plastic explosive and this proved a faster (and more spectacular!) way of clearing obstructions. He never told me whether he removed any trains by this method-I doubt whether he knew or cared- to him, it was all junk that had to be moved!
JJ.

 

At least three of the original "Normandy Four" have survived to the 70th Anniversary; Mulberry at Long Marston in working order, the one at Hoorn (above) also in working order and used as the stand-by for SHM steam services, and another at the Foxfield which has gearbox issues. They were shipped from Southampton by 181 Railway Operating Company RE and arrived on D-day + 8, the first of a massive Allied loco fleet deployment. For a list of the Royal Engineers railway Sappers who died in WW2 see the Roll of Honour on the 8F Society website. It is a very long list.

 

A long time ago I came across a reference to the CF du Calvados in an old Talyllyn journal, one of their members was going through Normandy shortly after D-Day and recalled seeing an abandoned 4-6-0 tank in the station. I'm afraid I can't find the reference now. Jean Arrivietz fictionalised this episode in a short story, Dernier Train de Sword Beach, which recounted that the pride of the line, the "Paris Exhibition Coach" was reserved for German officers going on leave in the early morning. The French train crew had sworn that one day something would happen to make them miss their connection - and on that day it did.

Tim

 

Hello,

Being a member of the Stichting 162, mentioned earlier in this topic, I can tell you that the "historische foto's" on our website are NOT taken in France! We do not have pictures of the WD 33 in action on the route through Bernieres in France, other than the one when it was on the LST on the same picture as the WD 32 is moved ashore. The historical pictures on our website are from the engines WD 29, 33, 41 and 45 running in the Netherlands between Steenwijk and Gorredijk until 1956 when they were replaced by new build diesellocomotives. At that time they were renummerd into NS 161 - 165. WD 70040 should also be there, but other than 1 picture when found in Nijmegen shortly after the ending of WW2, we do not have any picture seing it running as NS 163.

In France, the locos run on the "Chemin de Fer de Cean a la Mer" as this line has a third rail, allowing normal gauge locos using the line from Caen to Courselleus passing Bernieres-sur-Mer were the locos went ashore. The other line was 600 mm only. There are pictures published with WD 33 and 32 testing rebuild bridges on SNCF-lines around Caen.

Current status on WD 33 (in black, in 2014, see the picture) is that it is now in Dutch Railways green livery and numberd NS 162 (see the picture). We are doing an overhaul of the engine and hope to have it running again on the Hoorn-Medemblik museumrailway as soon as possible. Visit www.stichting162.nl or find us at www.facebook.com/stichting162 for the latest news. We are also restoring at least 1 ex USA-TC box-car, wich were assembeld at Hainault in London in 1944 prior to shipping to Europe.

Greetings,
Raymond v/d Hoven, Utrecht, The Netherlands
Stichting 162

 

I stand corrected! Thank you for the info and great work on 162.

 

I stayed at Port en Bessin in 2011 and, having read of the Chemins de Fer de Calvados locally, I was able to spot some traces of the miniscule earthworks / reservation alongside the road to Bayeux.

 

WD30 (subsequently renumbered WD820) is now being restored at Foxfield Railway in Staffordshire, for those that are interested we have set up a go fundme page to support what is going to be an extensive restoration. https://www.gofundme.com/wd-820-restoration

 

On a related tack.
Does anyone know any detail of the same type of locos that were sent out to the Middle east during 1944 - 45.
We have Drewry 0-4-0 WD 37, then MEF 44 and later 70037 on the NYMR
What we know of its history is in the attached link.
https://www.nymr-pway.co.uk/plant/drewry-diesel-no-16/