Matching carriages to engines

[debe45]

I play with trains, I don't model but I want my engines to pull the correct coaches.  Currently I just put any coach with any engine depending on my tastes.  But of late I felt I would like to be more correct with what pulls what.  Is there an easy way to find which engine pulled what.  I know that LNER A4's pulled Teak coaches sometimes but what did others pull.  Nothing too complcated please!!

[NWR-Gordon-4]

It;s hard to know what goes with what, when we don't know which locomotives and coaches you have. Which locomotives and coahes do you have, debe45?

 

GNR-Gordon-4

[walkingthedog]

Good question Jacob. 

[NWR-Gordon-4]

Thanks. We need to know what debe45 has in their collection, before we can help them.

 

GNR-Gordon-4

[debe45]

Yes sorry about that,thought there might be a database somewhere other than in someones head.

I only have a few engines

Flying Scotsman

Mallard BR Green

A4 Peregrine

4-4-0 The Burton (Hunt Class) and The Cotswold

Pendennis Castle

Couple 0-6-0 Tank, mainly pulling frieght but I have seen photograph of them pulling coaches.

[NWR-Gordon-4]

Thanks for the list, debe45. I would say:

 

• Class A3 LNER 'Flying Scotsman' - LNER Coaches (Assuming you have Flying Scotsman in the LNER livery)
• Class A4 LNER 'Mallard' - BR Mk1 Coaches
• Class D49 LNER 'The Burton' - LNER Coaches
• Class D49 BR 'The Cotswolds' - BR Mk1 Coaches
• Castle Class GWR 'Pendennis' - GWR Coaches
• 0-6-0's - 4 Wheel Coaches

 

GNR-Gordon-4

[debe45]

Thanks for the info GNR-Gordon-4 Must buy some new coaches.  debe45

[NWR-Gordon-4]

That's alright.  😀

 

GNR-Gordon-4

[tyneside emu]

Hornby magazine has train formations with carriages in their monthly mag including the August edition, see if you can find previous copies over the last 6mths or so and the answer will be there.

[NWR-Gordon-4]

I forgot about those articles actually. I haven't read an issue of Hornby Magazine for at least 2 or 3 years!

 

GNR-Gordon-4

[81F]

 Further to Gordons suggestions

• Class A3 LNER 'Flying Scotsman' - If this is one with a "banjo dome" and numbered 4472 in LNER green, You could have it as a preserved loco. I remember this ran with BR Blue/Grey Mark 1s in the 1970s
• Class A4 LNER 'Mallard' - BR Mk1 Coaches in Blood and Custard livery, also ex-LNER Gresley Coaches in Marroon or Blood & Custard (I think hornby have made them in both liveries.
• Class D49 BR 'The Cotswolds' - BR Mk1 Coaches also the ex LNER suggested for Mallard
• 0-6-0's - I dont think it's safe to say they would all pull 4 wheeled coaches as many of Hornby's 0-6-0 prototypes are in liveries that are too modern for for four wheelers. Could you let us know which 0-6-0s you have?

[Colonel Leon]

I also saw the Flying Scotsman on TV hauling some blood and custards.

[NWR-Gordon-4]

@81F

 

 

You seemed to be more clearler than me!

 

 

@COLONEL Leon

 

 

Was that Flying Scotsman in his BR livery?

 

GNR-Gordon-4

[Colonel Leon]

Yes, it was in BR Green on a heritage run.

I've also seen it haul some New South Wales N type carriage stock, when it went to Australia, of course. 😆 It also double headed with NSW locomotive 3801, which is NSW's Flying Scotsman (famous loco, but not as famous as the Flying Scotsman, of course).

 

CL

[NWR-Gordon-4]

Thought it would be in the BR livery. Was that last year, it was on those tours?

 

GNR-Gordon-4

[LCDR]

 Matching locomotives and coaches is a complex topic, mainly because there are very many possible permutations and combinations and will also change depending upon which era you are trying to represent.

 

As already said the preservation era is perhaps the easiest because you can usually find a good excuse to run anything with anything else. 

 

PRE-GROUPING

The hardest is the pre-Grouping era when there were umpteen different companies each competing with each other, and a huge mixture of loco and carriage liveries. However there is very little available 'ready to run' in pre-Grouping liveries, especially carriages, and it is not nowadays very popular with mainstream model railway enthusiasts, and is more the province of dedicated specialists. There was a degree of interworking, especially of freight vehicles but this needs a specialist approach.

 

Post privatisation (the very modern scene) can be similar to pre-Grouping, but is made easier because railway operation is simpler. Each Train Operating Company has its own brand image and they do not usually mix.

 

GROUPING

Grouping (1923 to 1947) had the railway divided up into four large companies and a handful of small ones. Each had their own distinctive livery. The only thing to avoid if possible is including British Railways livery items (see later) in a train that is meant to be a train from the grouping era. 

 

There were joint lines where two or more companies supplied locos and rolling stock. The Somerset & Dorset for example had LMS locos and Southern carriages in the same train. Then there were through trains which might have trains including another company's vehicles included. Typically trains from the Northern companies (LMS or LNER) going through to south coast resorts behind Southern or Great Western locomotives would have a mis-match of loco and carriages.

 

To look right LMS black or red locos pulled red LMS carriages, Green or Blue  LNER engines pulled LNER teak carriages, dark green Great Western locos pulled chocolate and cream carriages, and green Southern locos pulled green Southern Railway coaches.

 

NATIONALISATION

After 1947 the railways were nationalised, and became British Railways. The first five years or so was a transition period and Grouping practices were gradually superceded by BR Standard liveries.  BR carriages were crimson & cream for corridor carriages or plain crimson for non-corridor stock. BR locos were green for express passenger (blue used for a short period  on the very largest locos), or lined black. These usually could be distinquished by a emblem on the tender (or tank) of a lion astride a wheel.

 

Then in 1957 there was a re-organisation on regional lines. Carriage colours were changed to maroon, and the tender emblem was replaced by one with a lion rising out of a crown holding a wheel. The Southern region (only) started painting their carriages green and the Western region painted their carriages chocolate and cream emulating the old GWR.

 

STEAM TO DIESEL

In 1965 it was all change again. The steam loco was doomed. The new diesel and electric locos were painted blue, and the carriages blue and grey.  There was again a period of about 5 years when both liveries could be seen side by side, one gradually replacing the other.. Trains of mixed maroon or blue and grey carriages (green and blue & grey on the Southern) was commonplace in the early years.

 

SECTORISATION

It all changed again in the 1980s. InterCity changed colours from blue and grey to beige, & dark grey with red and white stripes, Network South East was red, white and blue stripes, Provincial was two shades of blue with white stripes and occasionally grey and beige too.  Locos and coaches tended to be in colours that matched the carriages.

 

Properly matched trains can look smart, but then if there is a colour combination that takes your fancy, it is your layout, go for it!

 

Matching the type of loco to a train is also something worth considering. Big locos with 6 driving wheels and a total of ten or a dozen wheels under the engine look better on a long train of corridor coaches but a little tank engine matches better a couple of non-corridors.  Goods locos with 8 or 10 coupled driving wheels were used mostly on freight trains but could occasionally be called on to work a passenger train in an emergency.

 

[Colonel Leon]

@Jacob

Yes, I think so.

 

@LC

Great lot of info there. Thanks, may come in handy.

[RDS]

Great response LC&DR, thanks.

[Rule 1 Applies]

Chuck anything behind any loco, take some photos, post them on RMweb and sit back and take great pleasure in enjoying the sheer idiocy of how much it upsets a whole lot of people who really should get out more  😆

[debe45]

Thanks everyone for your advice - great amount of info LC & DR - I like the idea from Rule 1 but don't like to run the risk and upset people.

 

debe45

[Bulleidboy]

Chuck anything behind any loco, take some photos, post them on RMweb and sit back and take great pleasure in enjoying the sheer idiocy of how much it upsets a whole lot of people who really should get out more  😆

 

Now that I like - who's going to dare do it?

I should have added that the articles in Hornby Magazine about train formation are very useful. It's Southern Region in the August 2017 issue.

[LCDR]

 If you are running trains on your own layout at home and you run what you like even if they don't follow any of the 'rules' you will not be upsetting anyone. Therefore always think "It is my layout, and my hobby, I will do it MY way!" 

 

The need for historical accuracy is a rule you only impose on yourself if you want to, otherwise run what you like when you like, and most of all HAVE FUN.

 

Some people (myself included) do impose certain 'rules' on ourselves when we play trains  but only because we want to. (And now and again we break them.)  It is an attempt to re-create in miniature a world we knew years ago, and therefore it becomes important to replicate the past. However this is something we choose to do and we should not impose our views an anyone else. This works both ways of course. People who don't want to set rules should not ridicule those who do.

 

I and others on here have a lot of knowledge and experience which we are willing to share as advice, but this should never be seen as a compulsion which we expect others to obey. There is no right or wrong way on a model railway. If you want to run it realistically that is OK and we try and help you do that. If you want to use oodles of imagination and mix and match anything that takes your fancy that is OK too.

 

[Rule 1 Applies]

I think this is actually quite an interesting area of psychology because, while I don't take the hobby terribly seriously (life's too short and, as you say, it's supposed to be fun) I have my own 'rules'. We all do, from those who strive for absolute historical and prototypical accuracy right across the spectrum to where the only 'rule' is that there are no 'rules'!

 

For example, I do like to base my running very roughly in 'reality', in terms of the time period at least, even though my layout is in a completely fictional place that could never in reality have existed. For me it's not about copying the real past, I'm activaly creating what I would like to have seen in an idealised past! So in my fictional location I don't have a problem with a green Deltic on Mk1 Pullmans passing a BR green SR EMU, but the EMUs have third rails and you will never see a high intensity headlight, a pre-nationalisation or post-privatisation livery. Or indeed a road vehicle from the 1970s or later.

 

That's what I like most about this hobby - you can create your own reality and that reality can be whatever you want it to be. Nobody can tell you that you're 'wrong' because, as my username implies, Rule 1 is that it's yours and you are completely free to do whatever you like with it, no matter what anybody says. Do whatever you enjoy! 😆

 

(By the way LCDR, I wan't mocking those who 'want to set rules'. However, I was mocking those who get terribly self-important and disproprtionately upset - to the point of comedy - at those who don't, sneeringly dismissing their efforts as 'just a train set' or slagging off pastimes that they they don't happen to themselves enjoy (like dismissing football as 'just 22 men kicking a bag of wind'). It is these people who need to learn the meaning of the expression 'live and let live'. Model railways is only a hobby and, again, it's supposed to be fun.

I deliberately refer to it as 'toy trains', because I think a bit of self-deprecating humour does one the world of good. I know that when someone earnestly retorts "Oh no, it's not toy trains, it's model railways" then they are the sort of person with a sense of humour bypass that I am unlikely to want to have a pint with).

[walkingthedog]

They are toy trains I agree, because we play with them.

 

I thought football was 22 bags of wind kicking a ball.  😆

[NormanQ4]

WTD

In other words, 23 bags of wind.   How cruel you are.