The Pontypool & Blaenavon Railway was fortunate to be allocated a class 205 DMU unit, in June 2005 and took the DMBS and DTCL from unit 205018, though the trailer car came, originally, from unit 205 029. This mismatch came as a result of involvement in the Cowden incident.
Due to the helpful co-operation of staff at T&RSMD Selhurst, the unit came with a significant amount of documentation, and this document attempts to reproduce it. The use of Optical Character Recognition software would have resulted in a very much more compact document, both in terms of number of pages, and of file size. After experimenting, it was considered preferable to present the original pages as GIF images ´warts and all´ so that none of the original text is lost or corrupted. A PDF file would be rather smaller (about 35% smaller), but few people have the facilities to ´manipulate´ such documents. (perhaps some kind soul might consider OCR-ing the files).
Although the notes were produced by British Railways, it is no longer clear in whom the copyright is vested, and no serious attempt has been made to determine who it might be. Copyright is however acknowledged and thanks are offered to who ever holds the copyright. This copy is made with no attempt to secure financial gain, and is offered to others on the same basis.
JD
South Wales
March 2006
