19810110_ZD_GerardFletcher
E50346 + E56114 March
Gloucester RC&W dmu car E50346 had an interesting if somewhat charmed life. It was new in July 1957 and was supposed to be one of the batch which brought the new diesels to southern Scotland, however, it spent a few months on loan to the Manchester and Stoke areas before it finally got there., It remained in Scotland until it was transferred south to Cambridge in May 1968 as part of a fleet to replace the non-standard yellow diamond Derby Lightweight and Metro-Cammell sets. When Cambridge ceased to have an allocation of sets in 1970, E50346 moved to Norwich where it was withdrawn in October 1972. It was then stored at Cambridge until it was reinstated, again at Norwich in March 1975. It then became the power car in Norwich set 68 as shown here., I was more than a little surprised to see it turn up at March on this occasion on a very damp August 17th 1979 in ex works condition with domino style headcode display. After this hasty (and somewhat blurred) photo had been taken, I went down to the platform where further scrutiny revealed a paint date of 29//7/79. It was paired here with a rather less sparkling Cravens trailer, E56114. The trailer itself was noteworthy too though, as being part of the first Cravens dmu delivered to BR in 1956., The set was working the 17.10 Cambridge to Peterborough service and the power car survived at Norwich until October 1980 when (with the other Norwich based Gloucester cars, 51115/25/27) a move to the LMR once again saw it working off Manchester where it had started some 23 years earlier. Harris states that it was out of use at Longsight by June 1982 and it eventually returned to East Anglia where it met its demise at Mayer Newman's scrapyard at Snailwell in May 1984.,
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