Please could you help me on the nex informations ;
On the year 1947 are sold from the Britisch war department a Ransomes & Rapier 45 ton Railway kran to the Dutch Railway company . The crana become the Dutch number 459 and was locatet on the depot ZWOLLE and scrabed in the 1975 .

That crane was this ...............
459 Steam 45T 4-8-4RB R&R F5937 49/1943or44.
( All 6no. of above batch tested between 10/43 and 4/44. )
MoS for British Army, sold in 1946 to NS, for £11000.
Still in use by NS, at Zwolle, until 1973.
Nicknamed ‘De Rapier’ – dutch translation ‘The Sword’..
Photo – c. NVBS/J.A.Bonthuis, at Utrecht, 5/46.
Photo/scan – Zwolle 1963,( with 455; one of the two 1931 Figee 40 tonne BDC )

Chris Capewell

ps Any further information/photos regarding the two Figee cranes would be appreciated.

chriscapewellATgooglemail.com

Anyone finding this thread of interest might want to check out the recent book "British Coastal Weapons vs German Coastal Weapons: The Dover Strait 1940–44" by Neil Short and Adam Hook, amazon link here.

This is a thorough study of both British and German coastal batteries and railguns and includes some interesting photos, most of which I haven't seen before. Of particular interest are two photos of breakdown cranes servicing the big guns, one shows three R&R cranes and the other three CS cranes. At present I haven't had the time to devote to the necessary deductive detective work to identify the cranes, but neither picture, as far as I know, has been published before.

Although not particularly relevant to breakdown cranes, there is also exceptional detail photo-coverage of the two preserved German railguns.

Overall I have no hesitation in recommending this publication if this is a subject which interests you. It is also both inexpensive and not written in German, which are further plus points in my opinion!

Swindon-based author Peter Timms has written several books about Swindon Works, based mainly on interviews with staff from the works. His latest, "Swindon The Complete Works" (Crecy Publishing Ltd, 2021), has a page on the Works' cranes and breakdown trains on which he states:

During the war, the cross-Channel guns that were aimed at the Germans in occupied France had to have the 16in barrels bored out and relined. Swindon's big cranes were sent down to Dover to help remove the barrels, which were then brought back to Swindon Works for machining. The gun barrels were then returned accompanied by the cranes and lifted back into position.

The "big cranes" at Swindon at this time were No2 (R&R, 1908, 36-tons) and No 19 (R&R, 1940, 45-tons), and if Timms is correct then these two should be added to the list above.

There are however some elements of the story which either don't ring true or which merit further examination. Firstly there is the fact that there were no fixed 16" guns at Dover, there were only 14" ("Winnie" and "Pooh") and 15" (At the Wanstone Down battery), however it is most likely that this is a simple mistake.

Secondly although not completely impossible it is fairly unlikely that even Swindon Works could reline a 14" or 15" gun, and it seems far more likely that the job would be sent to somewhere like Elswick for the job. I am not aware of any photographic evidence of guns barrels of this sort of size in the Swindon Works area, but would be happy to be proved wrong.

Finally there is the fact that the two Swindon cranes alone would not have been capable of lifting either a 14" or 15" barrel without a third crane of similar size. This however is of course not in anyway something which casts doubt on the assertion that the Swindon cranes were used for the purpose, merely that another crane must have been used as well.

Mr Timms latest book is an interesting and enjoyable read and can be recommended. Sadly like many authors the finer points of crane identification does seem to escape him and it is unfortunate that there is a glaring example of misidentification in the caption to the photo on P178, where a standard GWR engineering crane of probably 12-ton capacity is mis-identified as a 45-ton crane.