Keycards  (iss. 129)

After the war, the British Army re-registered their vehicles going from the census numbers to registration numbers with a combination of 2 digits, 2 letters, 2 digits. The conversion from the "old"census number to the new number was registered in the so called "Keycards".
The start date of the conversion is thought to have been around 1949, and the key cards do not contain RAF or RN Nortons.

Any analysis of the Keycards has a certain amount of inaccuracy and I can only say this analysis to be indicative but of uncertain truth. There is also a chance for "reading information into it" that was never meant to be and that I do not know if my copies are the real total as cards could be missing.

First problem in the cards is the uncertainty whether they noted engine or frame numbers. There are enough indications suggesting the numbers to have been chosen at random being either engine or frame numbers.
Second problem is that the accuracy of the pencilled down info is not known. There are obvious typo's all through the docs. Thirdly I may have made mistakes in the copying of them (only having BW photocopies makes them a bit difficult to read).
From the Keycards, information can be deduced with regard to total number of MC's re-registered for Army postwar use.
Total number of re-registered Norton MC's was 7020, a relatively small portion of the nearly 100.000 MC's made!
Based on the disposal sites, the Keycards show that these MC's were mainly used in England, Germany, Gibraltar and Cyprus, indicating that the postwar registrations were for European/Mediteranean use only.

A fair amount (243) of the re-registered MC's were sent to Greece in 1952 (158) and 1953 (85) "on repayment", meaning they were used by the British as compensation (payment) for the use of bases in Greece. However, there may have been more machines sent to Greece as some of the present bikes in Holland are definitly known to come from Greece, but are not mentioned in the Keycards! (This could be explained if the bikes had their engines changed and the keycards give engine numbers.)

The last machine to leave the British Army storage on November 5th 1962 was W91678 (C5486081), sold off to Roxburgh County Cadet Committee.

Following table shows the postwar number ranges used for Norton 16H (range upto and including last number)

The amount of bikes from different contracts were as follows, in numerical order of contract (so not by date!!)

These figures indicate that when they re-registered Nortons after the war, they probably were chosen at random. What could be expected is that they chose the "newest" machines but it shows that the distribution is rather more linked to the size of the contract and the number included MC's of pre war contracts.

In 2016, the Australian War Memorial published the Australian administration of vehicles from 1940 onwards on the internet, see AWM page.