2011 – Issue 2 of 4

COMMENTS ON RECENT NEWSLETTERS;
Dear Editor,
Comments on items published in recent newsletters may be of interest to the group.
Re. CARDIFF’s REGENT V’s;
Firstly, many thanks to Andrew Wiltshire for his excellent series on the vehicles bought
by City of Cardiff Transport. In the December article on the AEC Regent V he mentions
exposed-radiator examples which operated in England, but doesn’t mention those which
operated nearer to home. Bedwas & Machen U.D.C. had a single example, no. 9 (PWO
783) with a Longwell Green lowbridge body and the Rhondda Transport Co. had no less
than 27 examples with Weymann highbridge bodies – 298/9, 400-424 (STG 869-876,
TTX 984-998, UNY 4-7); all of these vehicles were new in 1956. I always thought these
vehicles looked rather odd, as the front dash was obviously constructed for a concealed
radiator!
Re. DWO 123;
Between 1903 and 1921, local authorities used differing systems to allocate vehicle
registration numbers. Some authorities used even numbers for cars and odd numbers for
commercial vehicles and buses, motor cycles were sometimes issued numbers 1-999 or
1-1999 in each series. Other local authorities kept three registers – one for motor
cycles, a second for cars and light commercials and a third for ‘heavy motor cars’
(commercials and road locomotives); these authorities either allocated blocks of
numbers for each type of vehicle or, more unusually, issued the same series of numbers
for each type of vehicle, leading to duplication. This was further compounded by most
authorities re-issuing the registration number of a vehicle officially notified as being
scrapped. Following changes in legislation in 1921, the re-issue of voided registrations
ceased and vehicles carrying duplicated registrations were re-registered to remove the
anomaly.
What has all this got to do with DWO 123 you may ask? Well, some authorities issued
registrations of the format xx-0nnn to heavy motor cars; examples being Norfolk issuing
AH-0nnn and Buckinghamshire BH-0nnn, this led to Hampshire omitting AHO and BHO
from its sequence of issues. I have seen one photograph (I can’t remember where,
unfortunately) of a traction engine or road locomotive carrying a registration in
Newport’s DW-0nnn series and this may be the reason DWO was not allocated to
neighbouring Monmouthshire. All two and three letter registration marks had to be
individually authorised by a ‘Statutory Instrument.’ DWO was eventually authorised for
issue in the 1990s when most previously un-issued (and non-abusive) combinations were
authorised, either so that an appropriate registration could be allocated to an historic
vehicle or, more usually, could be included in the DVLA’s ‘Sale of Marks’ scheme!
Regards, Mike Street (member 0306)
(Thanks Mike for your comments and giving us the most likely explanation of the nonappearance
of the DWO mark.)
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