Photo:
Tim Cook - The GUV in the Up Yard March 2002

This general utility vehicle (the design known as GUV) was one of 422 built in 1958 to lot 30417. It was used to carry passenger cars as part of the Motorail fleet (when it was numbered E86450), based at Bristol. It has end opening doors and hinged flaps to go over the buffers, a rake of 10 or 11 vehicles could be loaded quite quickly, each vehicle carrying up to four cars in each. When the cars were loaded, a securing bar was held in position at the front and rear wheels of each car.

Motorail was a 1950s service that enabled a car to be loaded onto an overnight train, with the passengers travelling in sleeping cars on the same train. Loading terminals were London (Olympia), Edinburgh, Perth and later, St Austell in Cornwall. one service, which pioneered in 1960, ran from Surbiton to Okehampton, and was very popular. The train consisted of seven GUVs and three coaches. The GUVs were shunted into a loading dock at Surbiton, where the intending passengers left their cars to the British Rail staff to load and secure. The services declined with improved cars and motorways, and ceased around 1982.

In the 1960s a modern carflat vehicle was introduced for transporting cars and these GUVs became redundant. The GUVs, after Motorail traffic had declined, were used extensively on parcels traffic and were allocated the TOPS code NJ. This meant that they were wired through to carry electric train heating feed cables, but there is no heating in the vehicles, with the exception of those vehicles used for sorting newspapers.

93450 was purchased from British Rail at Barton Hill, Bristol, and arrived at Quainton in 12th January 1994. It is now used for an exhibition of Great Train Robbery associated with the Travelling Post Office displays in the Upyard.