Would a peak and western cross paths?

[Topgun333]

I've not been able to resist buying a Mainline Peak Class 45 in BR Green for a bargain £14.50 but the other stock I have been building up including Westerns and Warships in BR Green and Maroon are with a BR Western Region layout in mind, possibly a fictional loco and carriage shed depot beyond a large town station terminal somewhere in Devon or Somerset on the north facing coast, circa 1965.

I know Peaks ran to the south west from the north east in later times but was wondering whether they made the occasional visit to the south west in 1965?

Also, would it depend on where the Peak was allocated. This one is D49 which I can see was allocated to Derby and Cricklewood about those times?

Thanks in advance for answers.

 

[Shaw S Hunter]

A quick check on http://www.derbysulzers.com/index.html suggests this would have been highly unlikely. Although Peaks were first allocated to Bristol (Barrow Road) in 1961 it appears to have been 1967 before they began to appear on workings south-west of Bristol. Although an intriguing report has a Peak at Newton Abbot depot on one occasion in 1963 in connection with testing of the then new carriage wash plant. HTIOI.

 

[Topgun333]

A quick check on http://www.derbysulzers.com/index.html suggests this would have been highly unlikely. Although Peaks were first allocated to Bristol (Barrow Road) in 1961 it appears to have been 1967 before they began to appear on workings south-west of Bristol. Although an intriguing report has a Peak at Newton Abbot depot on one occasion in 1963 in connection with testing of the then new carriage wash plant. HTIOI.

Thanks Shaw. Good thing I was planning to have a carriage wash plant shed then! A bit of artistic licence is clearly required if the Peak shows up on occasion then... Might need to renumber it to a Bristol based one too!

Edit: I have just discovered that D33 to D42 were located in Bristol at the time, although Bristol Bath Road by that point. So that is good enough! Bring on the t-cut and file to renumber and erase the "Manchester Regiment" name!

 

[aitchbomb2014]

I cleared all the class 45s and 46s and Westerns living in Churchdown between 1969 and 1971. The hymeks were easy too but not so much the North Brits and definitely Warships were few and far between.

 

[Cowley]

I'm sure they were seen together in green around Bristol in the late 60s. Maybe a renumbering and definitely some weathering might be in order. Pretty good model for it's time the old Mainline Peak.

 

[Taunton]

Bit late to this but there were no Peaks west of Bristol at that time, even on summer Saturdays. The controls were quite different on hydraulics, and nobody west of Bristol Bath Road signed them. The first penetrators were Brush 4s but even those didn't appear until well after the end of steam on the WR. Bristol was always a loco changing point - even the Plymouth to Liverpool via Hereford changed from a Warship to a WR Brush 4 at Bristol, and all the services hauled by Peaks from the Birmingham line did so as well.

There was just one type of diesel electric that was prominent, of course - the D3xxx / Class 08 shunters

By say 1970 all was different and most of the NE-SW services had Peaks throughout, quite a number of these changed crews at Taunton. As the hydraulics went the Peaks would be on all sorts of internal WR workings as well, although never the Paddington expresses - they did much of the freight work and even local ballast turns. The WR allocation of Peaks always seemed fairly nominal, they were pretty much mixed in with the LMR ones.