Pre-Nationalisation Coach Restorations, ex-End of the Line thread

Certainly looking at all this beautiful carriages has both surprised me in the number that are operating and also made me dislike the mundane MK 1 even more!

Thanks for that, I'll move the bodies then. As for the NLR coaches, I wanted to list some as operating, so I'll move the intermediate numbers around a bit. I'm only looking at the main constituent companies of each of the "bog" four as suggested by Wikipedia. Maybe another time...
If the S&D stock was mostly outside contractors, unless it was one specific then I'm not going to bother I don't think, will be a bit of a faff looking for it all if I can't just search S&D on the VCT - this was only something to do as I've been ill this week!

 

I think one factor is that, for some reason, the SR preferred to send LBSCR and SECR bogie stock to the Isle of Wight, so obviously the IoWSR's current rolling stock fleet reflects that - and the IoWSR fleet, in turn, represents a significant proportion of restored Southern rolling stock! Being pedantic though, Quainton can field an operational LSWR passenger luggage van (http://www.cs.vintagecarriagestrust.org/se/CarriageInfo.asp?Ref=323).

Still, hopefully that shiny new carriage shed will brighten the long-term prospects of the Bluebell's three other LSWR coaches! ;-)

 

Gary would probably know better, but I think that at the grouping, the LBSCR stock was most in need of replacement on the mainland. So the decision was taken to cascade it to the IoW and, at the same time, standardise on air brakes - which mean some SECR stock could also go over, but cascaded LSWR stock would need expensive conversion to air brakes. So the end result was that the IoW ended up with mostly LBSCR and SECR passenger stock (and a lot of LBSCR goods vehicles, as well). I think that LBSCR stock had basically disappeared from the mainland by the 1930s, replaced by newly built Maunsell stock for mainline trains and SECR stock for branch trains. The newest LSWR stock at grouping formed the basis of the first Maunsell carriages for the SR.

Tom

 

When the Southern inherited the railways of the Isle of Wight they were very run down.

Almost immediately they sent some locos - LSWR O2s were chosen, I've no idea why. They had to be converted to air brake to work the with existing coaching stock. There then followed waves of LBSC and (mainly) LCDR vehicles. Some of these were air braked anyway but some had been converted to air and were converted back! The IoWSR's current bogie fleet is from later transfers, indeed the SECR vehicles were transferred after the war and were built as vacuum vehicles.

The wagons are an interesting case. LBSCR wagons do not use Standard wheelsets and I wonder if the Southern, finding that they had a large fleet of relatively modern non standard vehicles decided to concentrate them in a place where they could be found and maintained easily. Pure speculation on my part.

PS - LBSCR carriage wheelsets are relatively non standard too, something that causes us problems today.

Nick

 

Tom, just 9 LSWR bogie coaches were transferred to the Island along with a larger number of 4 wheel vans and bogie vans. I know of at least one composite that is still in use as a holiday home, so perhaps one day

 

Thankfully they are compatible with a few other companies, indeed LBSCR Brake 3rd 4168 is running with LNWR wheelsets fitted to its existing bogies.

 

Sounds like a lot of hassle was had with the braking systems at the time! Done the LNER constituents, this was pretty much as I expected, lots of bodies, once they were removed, few coaches complete with underframes that hadn't been done:



GNR did the best for operating vehicles, boosted by the "Quad-art" set, but otherwise, very few vehicles operating.

 

GNNE doesn't seem worth including with just one carriage body surviving, ECJS wasn't noted as being a major company and none of its stock is operational anyway.

 

I think it was because effectively the railways on the IoW came under the influence of the Western Section, so Eastleigh dominated thoughts about locomotive affairs on the Island early in the grouping. Indeed, Bradley suggests that officials from the LSWR toured the Island in 1922 to form an opinion of future motive power needs. The O2s were chosen as a number were spare following suburban electrifications in London in 1915-16. At one point Adam's Radial Tanks were also considered, but rejected on account of their length. The Southern must have been fairly parsimonious in doing the conversions for air braking, since the original locos were converted but the work was carried out carefully enough that the LSWR livery could be preserved. (Some T9s were similarly superheated in SR days but retained LSWR livery, rather than going to the expense of a repaint).

Thanks Gary - good to know there is some hope! I always feel it a shame that none of the obvious former LSWR preserved railways seem especially interested in their pre-grouping heritage.

Tom

 

I agree, LSWR is my favourite of the Southern companies, and it is a shame the only railway that can even attempt anything LSWR is the bluebell which quite understandably wants to focus on its own pregrouping heritage first. MHR and SR are the ones that spring to mind, are there any others?

 

You have 11 GCR coaches listed but if you include MSLR there are at least 17 and that's without looking them up. The only two in anything like operable condition are the VCT's example, though that's basically a museum piece I believe, and one at Tanfield on a SR CCT underframe. Still a pretty poor result but the GCR Rolling Stock Trust up at Ruddington are trying to change that. Maybe one day...


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I can assure you it is not lack of interest, but it is very difficult to reflect LSWR heritage without the artefacts (carriages most especially). If the Bluebell would like to lease us all the ex-LSWR stock....
With what we have the most authentic overall picture we can provide to visitors is of the southern railways from around the middle 1950s to the end of steam. When we have some suitable carriages, along with the V and LN and S15 we will then also be able to show the 1940s as well. I think it is more important to have a consistent theme and carry it off well than to have bits of different things that don't sit well with the whole. We will never have enough pre-grouping equipment for that to be our theme, but the period from around 1935 to 1970 is very interesting because of the change in that period, and it is a period that we can increasingly show a very good representation of over the next few years, with a particular focus on 1950 to the end of steam.

 

You assume that LSWR and other pregrouping coaches were only in use prior to the BR era, whereas the fact is that the Mk 1 fleet took ten years to construct, and many of the Beeching closures never saw them. To be representative of the 50s and 60s probably 50%or more of a line's coaching stock ought to be pre-Mk1s, and heavily biased in favour of non-corridor stock. As the Mid Hants pre-Mk `1 stock currently appears to consist of three Bulleids it is probably only representative of a year or two at the very end of steam.

 

Actually, the Bluebell has very little LSWR stock either! There are only two unrestored LSWR bogie carriages on the railway, one of which was a substantial SR. rebuild.

With regard maintaining a consistent 1950s atmosphere: worth remembering that many pre-grouping carriages were still running under BR. Of the two carriages I allude to, the withdrawal dates from revenue service were 1953 and 1959.

Tom

 

Remember the SR never built any non corridor loco hauled coaches, so all these coaches which BR took over were at least 25 years old with some cases with new underframes.

 

The problem is the pre grouping railways coaches, of the pre grouping railways and where to list them.

 

I am not making that assumption, and nor do I think Joe Public mind whether the scene is 1930s or 50s or any other decade, and I don't think huge numbers would tell the difference. I also think that they will NOT accept dirty or worn out carriages unless the fare is very good value and even then it will not be a great incentive for repeat visits.
What I do think is that the scene portrayed by the railway needs to be reasonably consistent, and that is something I feel we are beginning to achieve on the MHR. In order to be consistent it helps if you have a vision of what you are trying to portray. My post was really about the fact that we cannot achieve a reasonable degree of consistency for an LSWR period however much we might wish to. However, accepting that there would been a lot of carriages that were not mk1s, we can represent the later periods reasonably well. In a museum sense, we are not accurate, but we are being representative of the period, unless you can tell a Maunsell from a Mk1. We are also (deliberately) not representative accurately of the liveries of the late 60s. Many carriages at the end of steam were blue/grey, but this is not what the customer expects to see. To them this is a jarring sight reminiscent of the diesel era of the 70s and 80s only. We are (heritage railways) are by and large in the theatre/leisure business, and (sadly in many ways I think) not able to be museums for commercial and academic reasons.
On the subject of consistency (and at the risk of howls of protest) I find both the carriage shed and the "Engine House" at the SVR to be jarring from an architectural standpoint being inconsistent with the rest of the railway, indeed inconsistent with any railway architecture. Highley (which I hadn't seen for 20 years) is utterly spoiled, though when the trees grow back a bit it will soften. I can imagine that they were cost effective, but I don't like them, and they drag one away from a scene which is otherwise pretty consistent and highly (pardon the pun) enjoyable.

 

If the stock is refurbished clean and in good order then I suspect Mr and Mrs Normal will always prefer older regrouping, it fits their Downton Abbey chocolate box perception of past times rather than reality. Nothing wrong with that at all, as long as its appreciated its not the 50s as it actually was - nobody should be subjected to or asked to pay good optional spend money to travel in the festering moldy rot boxes I remember from my school days. Even the 4CORs which were then just as old as the 377s are now would shoot water from the pass com cord conduits over you when braking in the wet.

Brian

 

I completely agree about the structures on the SVR, but at least they are out of sight of the main stations so won't ruin pictures in that way - I understand Bridgenorth almost got these kind of unsympathetic buildings but they were thankfully rejected. I don't see that it is necessary for a consistent time period to be applied across the whole railway, several railways I know have certain stations in set time periods, maybe one in the 30s, one in the 40s, and one in the 50s.

 

In fact one of those GNR vehicles is running (accurately) as M&GN 129 at the NNR. M&GN no 3 looks like it should be done in 2015 (by pictorial evidence not because I am working on it) and that'll be a confounder as it'll show as Midland but will be an LNER constituent carriage (M&GN was an independent joint LMS/LNER company for a while after grouping then LNER). I'm surprised there are only 2 GER. I'd have thought that between Stephen Middleton, the Mid-Suffolk Light Railway and KESR there must be at least 4. Is it because they are on replacement underframes? I think this may be distorting the pre-grouping figures as many that are now running were grounded and needed replacement underframes and some (but not all) of those are listed a body only, so sorry to be a pain but the figures are better than this implies.