
Visiting for the month of June only to the MSLR, we see a Brockford to Aspall Holt service at Aspall Holt station. The WMD railbuses were 5 of the total of 22 delivered in 1958 from five manufacturers (the rest British). They were planned to have "extensive trials". The underframe, power equipment, transmission and brake gear were similar to the Uerdingen railbus, common on the German Federal Railway. They were shipped via the Harwich-Zeebrugge train ferry. It was hoped they might be the answer to increasing losses on rural branch-lines. In the first year of the railbuses they saved £66,000 in operating costs, but the branches were still losing £4,000 a year (£85,000 at 2014 prices. However, at the time, such losses were unacceptable, and the lines they worked were closed. Info from Wikipedia.
Ian Sharman - All rights reserved. Please do not use my images without my explicit permission.