An original wickham photo

In original colours

In Research livery

Drivers eye-view

The Wickham was built in 1958 and was originally known as the ‘Elliott Track Recording Coach’. It was developed by a company known as Elliott Bros (London) Ltd in conjunction with the British Transport Commission Research and Development Engineers. The equipment for track measuring was to be provided by Elliott’s and they effectively were the supplier of the vehicle to British Railways. As they were manufacturers of instrumentation etc and not railway vehicle builders the construction of the vehicle was sub-contracted to the firm of D. Wickham & Co who were based in Ware in Hertfordshire. Wickham’s were probably best known for the many hundreds of permanent way trolleys that they manufactured although they built five passenger railbuses for British Railways also during 1958. The Wickham was built as a follow on to the passenger railbuses and has an identical body with the exception of the doors which were sliding on the passenger versions but hinged on this. The passenger railbuses were built on a tubular steel framework and weighed in at a mere 12 tons. As the Wickham needed to be more stable it was built on a substantial underframe which increased its weight to 24 tons. This gives you some idea of the strength of the frame. The passenger railbuses were numbered in the range SC79965 – SC79969 but as the Wickham was a Departmental vehicle it received the number DB999507.

 For the technical people amongst you the Wickham is self propelled and is carried on 2 axles, one of which is powered. The engine is a Meadows six cylinder horizontal engine of type 6HD500 and is rated at 97hp. The drive is via a Wickham patent centrifugal clutch to a R11 ‘Self Changing Gears’ gearbox which drives the axle via a drive shaft and a Wickham reversing final drive. It would seem that a Meadows engine is quite a rarity and if anybody has any information on these then it would be of great assistance. I do have an engine manual but this only has limited information.  

 I do not intend to go into detail about the track recording equipment that was fitted but I will give a brief summary of how it worked. The main pieces of equipment were probes which were mounted on a framework which itself was mounted on the axleboxes. These probes were lowered by air pressure and ran on the top and inner edge of the rail and the relative movement of these was fed up to a recorder in the vehicle. These probes were able to give readings capable of determining gauge and curvature. A high speed gyroscope was also fitted which would allow vehicle movement to be taken into account when measuring and also to allow the measurement of cant to be undertaken. Measurements were presented to the onboard staff as traces on photosensitive paper from a multi channel recorder. Whilst recording the vehicle could travel at up to 30 mph and has a top speed of 55 mph when travelling between recording sites.

 Little information is known about the Wickham in its early years. It presumably just got on with the job for which it was designed. From the mounds of drawings and paperwork that came with the Wickham it would appear that a substantial amount of work was carried out during 1974/1975. I have a number of drawings dated from around this time showing several proposed modifications. The most significant modification proposed was the addition of another gearbox which was to be bolted onto the front of the axle mounted final drive. This additional gearbox was to be used to reduce the top speed and make it easier to control at a slow speed. There were two proposals for this gearbox. One was to reduce the top speed to half and the other was to reduce the top speed to a third. It appears that the latter choice was selected as trials suggest that the top speed will now be around 18mph. It is still possible to select the higher speed range but this is certainly not a job for when you are moving. It involves crawling underneath and manually changing-over a selector arm. 

 The original test gear was also removed about this time so clearly the vehicle was to be given a new task. Entries in one of the vehicle log books from around this time gives clues as to what its new use was to be although it doesn’t directly say what it was. It seems that the Wickham used to follow the APT (British Rail’s Advanced Passenger Train) around the test track and record any changes in the track geometry particularly on curves after they had been traversed at high speeds. For this purpose a rail mounted trolley was towed behind the Wickham and equipment both on the Wickham and trolley would communicate with each other and forward this information back to staff on board. Some of the log entries also suggest that the Wickham could also be kept stationary and the trolley ‘reeled in’ to take measurements.

The Wickham was used for a number of years both on the main line and at BR Research’s Old Dalby test track and it was from this location that it was sold to the East Lancs Railway in November 1997. The Wickham was offered for sale early in 2003 and was privately purchased and moved to the Middleton Railway on 11th June 2003.

Builders plate carried inside the vehicle