WD / Census Number tags

[Richard Farrant]

Originally Posted by David_Hayward

It seems that the M of S inspected vehicles supplied under Contracts or Demands, and I can imagine that if a vehicle was not accepted by the Inspector after driven off the line, it was not taken into stock and thus allocated a number. Up until 1941 this may not have occurred simply because the demand was so great....delivery was all-important and rectification could be done later. After that there was a luxury of being able to get rectification work done in the factory before delivery. I can also imagine that the VRDs were swamped in practice by defects and this led to the call for remedial work to be carried out at source.

David,

All that makes perfect sense, with inexperienced labour, faults were bound to occur and with parts and facilities at the factory, it makes sense to rectify there, anyway, it is doubtful the MoS inspector would sign them out until they were in order. A thought has just occured, that perhaps the reason that census numbers are out of line with chassis numbers, is that any vehicle held back were not numbered until signed out. The VRD were no more than open storage areas, often on grass. They would accept vehicles, then issue from there once demands came in for that particular type.