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REME MUSEUM of TECHNOLOGY

HISTORIC VEHICLE COLLECTION

Mobile Workshop Vehicles

Truck 3 ton 4 x 4 GS Machinery M Bedford QL
(Acc 1965.728)

This vehicle is currently on display at the Museum

The pre-war RAOC machinery trucks were allocated letters of the alphabet as a code for each specific type. This system continued into the 1960s. The Type M was a general engineering workshop with a lathe, grinder, pillar drill and miscellaneous hand tools. Most carried gas welding equipment. Some were self contained with a small generator to produce current for the machinery but others depended on an external power source.

Most machinery trucks of the pre-war and World War 2 era had been built on the fairly standard 3 ton 6 x 4 chassis provided by Leyland, Thornycroft, Albion and others. Midway through World War 2, these vehicles were no longer in production, or were not available in sufficient quantity and machinery bodies had been designed to fit the shorter 4 x 4 chassis then in production.

The most common war time Type M machinery trucks to survive were those on the Ford WOT 6 chassis but the Museum's is built on the Bedford QL chassis. An attempt was made to standardise the types of truck used during the Korean War (1950 to 1953) when some transfers of bodies onto Bedford chassis took place. The Museum's may be one of these.

The standard Bedford 3 ton 4 x 4 chassis carries a timber body with drop down sides which form ground level benches. A rear drop down door carries steps. The machinery layout is as described above but this vehicle has a small generator.

The machinery Type M body on various surviving chassis was eventually supplanted by the Truck 3 ton 4 x 4 MT Repair Bedford RL. Some smaller REME units were allocated machinery trailers instead.

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REME Museum, Isaac Newton Road, Arborfield, Berkshire RG2 9NJ, United Kingdom

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Page produced by Peter Eldred - Last updated 24 July 2004