'D's and Dots

Evening all,

Bit of an obscure question this... I've recently repainted my class 03 into original green livery, minus wasp stripes which is the livery it was delivered in back in 1959. Now that I've added the BR crests and numbers, everyone keeps asking me the same question - the numbers are in the same font as those on BR steam locos (as opposed to the later font which was used on diesels and electrics from 1968), and there is a dot between the D and the first number. I know that this is authentic from various contemporary photos I've seen (although this style didn't last long) but the question is, what is the dot for? Does it have a purpose or is it just there to differentiate between the letter and the numbers?

Any information gratefully received, it'd be nice to be able to give anyone that asks me a truthful answer, rather than just looking at them blankly and saying 'dunno but it looks nice'!!!

Cheers

Damien

 

Interesting question..

Could It's origins lie with in Steam locomotives in departmental service.. ?

see this picture of a USA tank with departmental number:

http://www.railbrit.co.uk/images/31000/31425.jpg

 

Is it simply that when you use an abbreviated form (in this case D standing for Diesel) traditional punctuation requires a full stop to denote this. Hence P.S. is the correct shortened form of Postscript, etc. is correct for etcetera. Its fallen away in recent years with people leaving the full stop out. So if the intention was that the D denoted Diesel its quite likely that someone in those grammatically correct days felt the "dot" to be necessary.

 

Many thanks for the replies gents, thinking about it the abbreviation idea does make a lot of sense, particularly when you look at the picture of the Yankee tank, the number of which is D dot S dot... You've only got to look at the old BTF films of the era to see that grammar was always 'just so', back in the days when people talked proper like what they should!!!