D832 and D821 at Bishops LydeardAt the West Somerset Railway 2010 Diesel Gala on the 11 - 13 June both of the Warships in preservation were running. D821 was brought in from the Severn Valley Railway to work with D832 which is at the moment based on the West Somerset Railway. This picture shows both Warships just after they had been coupled together at Bishops Lydeard to work the last train to Minehead on the 12 June. They were reinacting the 2x Warship double headers that were seen on the Western Region in the late 60s but these two Warships are unlikely to have actually double headed a train when they worked for BR.
As the Warships were usually run solo on a train the multiple working equipment soon became faulty so double heading was rare to begin with. In the late 60s BR began to regularly run pairs of Warships on some of the top expresses which ran along the Paddington - Plymouth main line which runs just three miles south of the West Somerset Railway. Some of the Swindon built Warships had their multiple working cables repaired to allow double heading. While D832 was one of the Warships used in the double headers D821 was not.
Another route that saw regular Warships was Waterloo - Exeter. This route had its own pool of Warships including D821 which carried short circuiting bars needed to work over the extensive mileage over third rail track east of Basingstoke.
There was actually a third Warship preserved. This was D818 Glory but it was scrapped in 1985.
See
picture #9107 also
Picture added on 19 June 2010 at 10:30
Added by Mike Pursey on 19 June 2010.