Readers’ Letters
Shed code and number plates
Sir: My friend Mike Yeoman asks questions about the fonts used on BR steam locomotive smokebox numberplates and shedplates (‘Tail Lamp’, April 2024).
During the first year of my engineering apprenticeship at Eastleigh locomotive works in 1954, I spent a few weeks in the iron foundry. One of my tasks was using wooden numberplate patterns to create sand moulds for casting numberplates to be used on BR class ‘4’ 2-6-4T locomotives being built at Brighton Works.
I now know that the lettering style officially used was Gill Sans (as described as ‘normal’ in the 61A and 46201 pictures in the April issue). The numbers on former GWR and BR Standard locomotive smokebox numberplates were 5in high, whereas for everything else they were supposed to be 4in high. (When Swindon Works cast a new numberplate for 46229 during preservation, it had 5in numbers, but that was corrected after several years.)
Mike comments about some plates that used a different style font for the numbers. Indeed, early on, some ex-LMS locomotives received smokebox numberplates with an LMS standard serif font. Also, on the Southern, Ashford Works applied smokebox door numberplates with a different font on all 40 of the ‘Schools’ class 4-4-0s, but I do not know where those plates had been cast. My photograph of 30905 at Bournemouth shows the incorrect font on the smokebox (note the bottom curl of the ‘9’) compared with the correct use of Gill Sans on the cabside numeral transfers.
Why the incorrect fonts? Like Mike, I really don’t know. (Maybe the official guidance to works failed to reach some people?)
Colin Boocock
Crewe Works pilots
Sir: With regards to the article about Crewe Works pilots in the March edition of Steam Days here is some information which may be of interest to the authors.
Use of Crewe cab. With the exception of pay day when the cab was used to convey wages and pay office staff to various points in the works to pay out wages the use of the cab was restricted to senior management and VIP visitors. Its regular use was to convey the most senior staff to and from their homes, which had direct access to the railway line, to the general offices as well as around the works as required. It was also used to collect senior managers and important visitors from the station and convey them to the works and return them to the station. Apparently use of the cab declined in LMS days and may well have ended prior to nationalisation.
Pilot dutie
