Vintage Coaches. Pre and Post 1948 Carriages

Does it not veer violently towards pastiche though? It certainly sounds far more pastiche than anything else you've previously levelled that accusation at. It's not really a solution to the problem of "how can we improve a potrayal of a rural railway" only the problem of "I don't like Mk1s". In actual fact, your problem as we've drilled down to before is "I don't like grotty coaches" and it tends to be Mk1s that are the grottiest for various reasons. If a railway is stuck with Mk1s, then the only thing they can reasonably attempt to do is keep them in as good a condition as possible and make attempts where appropriate to backdate them with respect to moquette, lighting and wooden veneer panelling. The sort of half-way house you propose would only be of any benefit if we were overflowing with the skills to make wooden bodied carriages but couldn't do underframes, but that's not really the situation, not from where I see things anyway.
As a technical exercise I like the idea of "panelling" a Mk1 purely because I'd love to do all the lining out and sign-writing, I'd have an absolute field day, but I can see you'd just end up with a mongrel of a coach that still just "isn't" anything. I have briefly wondered what a Mk1 would look like with faux-panelling painted on, the first few Stanier coaches were outshopped like this and had a similar exterior appearance to Mk1s, but I suspect if I snuck in to the paintshop in the middle of the night and did that I'd cause quite a stir!

 

If you try it we won't tell


Keith

 

I think it may have to wait until I own one! I didn't cause nearly as much of a stir as I hoped when I gave our 03 a copper-capped chimney though...

 

I had in mjnd they would be used to provide running gear to go under accurate replicas of former carriage stock. Rather in the same way as is being done with locomotive components.

 

The Queen of Scots rake had at least one Mk1 that had been painted out in a mock panelled form I would imagine a MK1 would look very similar panelled out to a later post grouping wooden bodies coach that had steel panels attacked to wooden framing at least the lining would,

 

As I say though, that doesn't solve the major stumbling block, that older carriages are made of wood, which is very expensive, much more sensitive to the weather, more complicated in construction and harder to find the skilled people to work on them as they just aren't around in the numbers that metal workers are.

 

Any preservation organisation, whatever the field, which lets its necessary trade skills atrophy, is very misguided. Remember the Uppark House fire which prompted a hurried programme to train a new generation. I know of a preserved railway carriage works, well staffed and equipped for woodworking, which has made itself most useful in matters other than C&W. Shortly they will be making a display cabinet for the museum.

How traditional for a carriage works to make specialist pieces of furniture! There is more to railway preservation than just vehicles.

 

They're only necessary should we follow your suggestion! Our woodwork department often helps other departments, and has done a lot of work for things at Broadway including furniture and other bits and pieces. This has partly contributed to some of the woodwork on our carriages being slowed down.

 

Rather unfortunate.

 

Having been part of the decision making group my recollection is a little different. What we considered were class 501 North London Line EMUs. Trailers and driving trailers but not motor cars would have been used. Superficially attractive as they could have gone straight into traffic as they featured air brakes, were 57' long and had side buffers & screw couplings. While wider than the traditional Isle of Wight carriages they had window bars so we were not concerned about people sticking their heads out too far. We weren't interested in lighting as, at that time we hadn't even contemplated running after dark. I don't recollect whether we discussed heating or not, probably not.

We realised that if we acquired these EMU trailers our scarce resources of both people and money would have been used to keep them working so we decided that we would be true to our objectives and go down the restored grounded body route. In fact restoration of the first grounded body started before we purchased our PMVs. Quite arbitrarily we decided on 10 PMVs which we bought straight out of traffic, these have since been supplemented by others.

We are very happy with our wooden stock, it is high capacity and light weight.

 

Seems to be a lot of what if here. Many railways either only have Mk1's or at least rely on them for normal revenue service. Such railways will naturally have their resources geared to maintaining the Mk1's, not restoring grounded wooden bodies. That is pragmatic and sensible.

The experience of even a Mk 1 is so different to anything running on the 'real' railway I doubt that much incremental revenue would arise from replacing them all with pastiches. Or even replicas. You might attract a few carriage wibblers but they don't exist in sufficient numbers to make a difference.

What is important is that the carriages, be they Mk 1's or whatever, are properly maintained and above all clean.

 

That'll be me!

 

Again it seems like another instance of "he would say that wouldn't he" (Mandy Rice Davis) A pre-grouping carriage observed being painted yesterday looked better in grey primer than certain ubiquitous vehicles do in top coat.

 

Again it seems like another instance of "he would say that wouldn't he".

 

Not denying it but it was true enough.

 

Only in your humble opinion as a fellow "carriage wibbler" (carriage gricer?) though.

 

In the past, official photographs of locomotives were often taken with them in grey primer, sometimes with lining. This was to emphasise their features.

The carriage is a brake third and the van portion has elaborate wooden mouldings arranged to give the effect of faux window frames. I was surprised to see how the grey primer emphasised these mouldings. Post 1948 carriages are, by and large, dull in comparison.

 

Good luck with these.

 

I think if works grey was generally preferred as a livery (rather than a somewhat niche preference) the old companies wouldn't have bothered with the glossy liveries they chose! I rather suspect a degree of economy with the truth is being expressed in saying you prefer grey to any other livery. In practical terms, the choice of grey for official photographs was related to maximising the contrast available when taking photos using black and white film.

For enthusiasts and many members of the public, wooden-bodied carriages are a delight to travel in. But you don't do yourself any favours in wilfully ignoring the very real practical and operational difficulties of running an intensive service using only wooden stock; or of obtaining such stock for railways that don't currently have them. Restoring and securely storing them is massively resource intensive in both skills and capital, two commodities that no railway is over-endowed with. Pretending otherwise without actually presenting viable costed plans of how it might be tackled just looks either naive or cussed.

Tom