RO-RAILERS AHEAD OF THEIR TIME OR OVERTAKEN BY EVENTS?
The Ro-railer, or road-rail vehicle, is an innovation that has flickered in and out of fashion and topicality, with changing social and economic conditions. The first Karrier Motors single-deck ro-rail bus of 1931 was a short-lived experiment that was never developed beyond the prototype.
The same applied to the ro-rail lorry trialled briefly by the LNER. The covered road tractor or locomotive-hauled ro-rail vans of the 1960s had a similarly brief life.
The ro-rail bus was introduced by the LMS after the company had bought the Grade II*-listed 19th century neo-Jacobean mansion Welcombe House, in Stratford-upon-Avon. This acquisition followed the death of Sir George Otto Trevelyan in 1928. Sir George, father of the eminent historian George Macaulay Trevelyan, had married Caroline Needham Phillips, of whose estate the house had formed part. The LMS considerably enlarged and extended the house, opening it as The Welcombe Hotel in 1931.
Road and rail
The bus was a single decker, designed by J Shearman, a road motor engineer of the LMS, and built by Karrier Motors of Huddersfield, with bodywork by Cravens of Sheffield. It was equipped with manually interchangeable rail and road wheels. Introduced early in 1932, it operated on the Stratford-upon-Avon and Midland Junction Railway line (SMJ),
