Thanks for your response to my post back in April and apologies for the delay in acknowledgement.
Rob, I am happy for the bike to appear on the website and I have emailed you to this effect.
Ron and Horror, my knowledge of military numbering and everything associated is minimal, could you please tell me the difference between a census number and a contract number.
I am planning to start recommissioning the Norton soon. No cosmetics to start with, I just want to get it running and rideable and take it from there. I'll be posting reports of progress soon.
When the Department of Army Contracts, later the Ministry of Supply ordered vehicles from a manufacturer, they issued first a 'Demand' and once terms were agreed, a contract. These contracts were numbered, initially with a prefix 'V' for Vehicles but 'C' (for motor-cycles). Later the prefix became 'S'. These were four or five digit numbers which were the same for a batch of thousands.
Each individual vehicle received a unique reference number which was displayed on it. Correctly referred to as a War Department (WD) Serial Number, because it referred to the numbers on the WD vehicle census, it is commonly known as the 'Census Number'. Motorcycles always have a 'C' prefix, if the next batch of numbers was for cars, the prefix was 'M'. Trucks had 'Z' etc.
