class-118-dmu

The BR Class 118 was a family of 45 three-car diesel multiple unit sets built by Birmingham Railway Carriage and Wagon Co. (Birmingham RC&W) in 1960 for the Western Region of British Railways, working suburban and semi-fast stopping passenger services on WR routes out of Paddington and Bristol in parallel with the Pressed Steel Class 117. The Birmingham RC&W design used the same general first-generation DMU specification as the concurrent Pressed Steel and Derby types — BUT diesel engines, mechanical transmission, 70 mph maximum speed — but with Birmingham RC&W's own body construction and external styling, giving the WR fleet a slight variety of appearance within a broadly standardised mechanical specification.

Birmingham RC&W was one of the established railway carriage manufacturers that contributed to the first-generation DMU programme alongside Metro-Cammell (a rival Birmingham firm), Derby Works, Pressed Steel, and Gloucester RC&W. Each builder produced vehicles to broadly the same BR specification but with their own characteristic external details and construction methods, reflecting the parallel procurement approach that BR used to develop the first-generation DMU fleet quickly and spread the work across the available manufacturing capacity.

One vehicle is preserved: 51131.