EAW004219 ENGLAND (1947). J. Rank Ltd Solent Flour Mills, Southampton, 1947

2ndWW barbed wire entanglement.

Rubble from the demolition of a 2ndWW pillbox.

Rubble from the demolition of a 2ndWW pillbox.

WW2 Anti-Tank Obstacles Cylinders

Advert Southern Railways

WW2 Static Water Supply SWS

Warehouse being demolished, see photo from 1946.

POW Camp?

The Pirelli factory

Southampton power station

Southampton Civic Centre

The Southern Railway main line from London to Bournemouth between the tunnel and Southampton Central station.

More trucks lined up on railway land, possible waiting to be sold off so their new owners could compete with the railway for small freight traffic. Few in the government after the 1914-18 war or the 1939-45 war seem to have any idea how the sale of surplus road vehicles posed a problem for the railways that cost the government a great deal more than the mounts gained by the sale of surplus equipment.

A line up of old buses .... possible former wartime mobile catering vehicles.

This looks like store of military road vehicles.

Standard Southern Railway utility vans for the carriage of passengers luggage, of which there was a plentiful supply at Southampton.

This building, that look almost like one of the quay transhipment sheds, is in fact set back behind the main row of building and in land of Herbert Walker Way is of a slightly different style, being the Southern Railways carriage shed providing stock for train originating from the port. Interesting to see a clerestory roofed coach in the sheds. The clerestory shape was not common on the Southern, apart from the ex-LSWR restaurant cars. By this time these vehicles had been convert into military train, department use or scraped. The white square on the side of the coach could well be a red cross on a white ground, indicating that this indeed a hospital train. More correctly Gordon Weddell (the authority on LSWR coaches) tells me that three of the restaurant cars became part of 'Casualty Evacuation Trains' Nos. 332, 333 and 334. This probably means they are Southern vehicles. Why they are still awaiting traffic in 1947 is a mystery, as one would have assumed most casualties had been repatriated by then.

Vans for carriage of bagged flour.

A feature always watched out for when travelling through Southampton on the train... when one was not looking out for ships.