The Wickham trolley was a railway engineering personnel carrier built by D. Wickham & Co of Ware, Hertfordshire. This long established firm introduced their rail trolley in 1922 as a lightweight track inspection and maintenance vehicle. This was a success and production of rail trolleys and railcars for inspection and maintenance continued until 1990.
Company history
Dennis Wickham founded the company in 1886 as Motor Car and General Engineers with workshops in Priory Street, Ware. He came from a brewing family and an early product was machinery for breweries. In 1900 they moved to larger premises at Viaduct Road at the entrance to Crane Mead next to the river. The area was later redeveloped for town houses and was renamed Wickham Wharf. Dennis Wickham died in 1910, but the business continued and flourished. The company operated as D Wickham & Co. Ltd of Ware & Stevenage (Hertfordshire, UK), Wickham Rail Ltd of Suckley & Bishop's Frome (Worcestershire, UK) and Wickham Rail Cars of Goodyear (Arizona, USA).
Early products and services provided by D Wickham & Co included castings (e.g. manhole covers), brewery equipment and car repairs. The rail trolley idea started in the 1920s, but sales really took off in the 1930s with a large order from LNER, leading to their adoption across British Railways after it was formed in 1948. While the rail trolleys became their main product, Wickham provided many other products including railcars, coal mine man-riding cars, steam cleaners, rail grinders, and hoists for building sites.
Railcars were also produced, mainly for export. Three 58-seat railcars were ordered by Kenya & Uganda Railway in 1939 (though not delivered until 1946 due to World War II). These were works numbers 2828–2830, and were used on the Kisumu-Butere branch line. Other users of Wickham railcars were railways in Rhodesia, Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, Burma, Malaya and North Borneo. For example 47 were produced for Malayan Railways in 1963. The steel railways carriage frameworks were produced for Wickham by Metal Sections Ltd of Oldbury (a subsidiary of Tube Investments Ltd). The railcars were delivered in 'knocked-down' state for assembly in Malaya.
In the mid-1950s, Wickham produced five passenger diesel multiple units for British Rail (see British Rail Class 109 for details), of which one survived into preservation. These were of an unusual design with no separate chassis, but there were no further orders from British Rail. Another Wickham product for British Railways was the Elliot Track recording Coach (DB999507), produced to the designs of Elliot Brothers of London in 1958 this was designed for high speed track measurement. It was last used in 1991, and was sold into preservation in 1997.
Wickham Rail Trolleys
Wickham built their first railcar in April 1922 for the gauge Taltal Railway in Chile. This was powered by a Dorman engine, and had two transverse bench seats with reversible backrest so the occupants could face forward when travelling in either direction. Although bearing works number 1, it was classed as a Type 10 rail trolley.
Most early models of the permanent way maintenance ganger's trolley used a single-cylinder or vee-twin air-cooled JAP engine. This drove through a large flat flywheel and a friction drive.
On larger models, a standard four-cylinder motor car engine (such as the Ford E93A and later Ford 105E) provided power through a standard three-speed gearbox to a final chain drive transfer gearbox which included the forward and reverse selection. The last of these was outsourced in 1991. Nearly 12,000 vehicles of many varieties were produced to their designs, including a few railcars built by their successors in the 1990s.
Trolley types
Wickham trolleys were made in several different 'types' - though the basis of the type designations is not clear, with the very first trolley produced being type 10. Within a type designation different body styles were available, either as a gang trolley with quick in and out access, or as an inspection saloon with protection from the elements. Within the different types, there were variations indicated by a Mark number, e.g. Type 27 Mk III.