Coach Rakes

[rpjallan]

Hi Everyone.

I haven't posted on here for a while.

I am going to start detailing some of my coaches (passengers, lighting, tail lamps, weathering etc.) and arranging them in more permanent rakes. So, in the real world, in a rake of corridor coaches, would the corridors always be arranged on the same side of the train?

Thanks in advance for any help...

[LCDR]

Not necessarily.

 

Because of the way carriages are used it would be impossible to arrange for all carriages to be a particular way round. 

 

In steam days it was normal practice to have a guards van at the outer ends of trains, and where the train was made up from seperate portions each portion would have a brake van, and if longer than two carriages these portions would normally be arranged with one each outermost.

 

However there were cases where a degree of standardisation occured. Some railways, notably the Southern and LNER, kept coaches in fixed sets and once the set was formed it remained like that sequence for a long time.  The SR had numerous permanent sets of three or four coaches  which had a brake carriage as first and last vehicle with guards compartment outermost. The brakes were all built with the corridor on the same side, so immediately there were coaches in the rake with corridors on either side. 

 

The LNER was fond of articulated carriages where adjacent carriages shared a bogie. Seperating these needed a visit to workshops. These remainded coupled for a long time as well.

 

The Great Western had some trains formed into sets, and unlike the other railways had brake vans built with the corridor on one side or the other depending upon how you looked at them. Composite carriages were also made left handed or right handed. This would ensure the corridor was on the same side in the set when correctly marshalled. Hornby's Collett carriages are like this, and are available as left and right handed.

 

BR standard carriages Mark 1 to 3 are all built the same way round so all the time there was a brake van outermost the corridors were on different sides.  With the tendency for open saloon carriages the way round didn't otherwise matter that much.

 

Sometimes the livery forced the train to be marshalled in a particular way. I am thinking here specifically of the Virgin East Coast Red and White swoosh livery .

[LCDR]

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This is how a SR three car set would be formed.

[rpjallan]

Thanks LC&DR. I actually have five of the Hornby Collett coaches in crimson & cream but they haven't been run yet. They're still in the boxes.

I have actually travelled quite a bit in corridor coaches back in the day but never really took any notice of how the corridors were arranged.

[LCDR]

One problem for modellers of steam railways today is that since 1968 the way railways are run are totally different to the ways they were when steam was 'King' . And there are diminishing numbers of people around who can remember how it was. And unfortunately there are so called 'experts; contributing to various forums who do not have adequate professional knowledge.Present day heritage railways are not accurate enough either, because they are obliged to do what the can with what they can afford or get their hands on.

 

There is of course no substitute for in depth research and study if you want to get it right.

 

Formation of trains is always going to be wrong on a heritage line, with the exception of the Great Central none of them operate the trains that would have been seen on the kind of railway that has been preserved. 

 

Because guards and luggage vans don't have seats for passengers Heritage railways include the bare minimum, to maximise seated accomodation, but in the old days luggage accomodation was vitally important with mail, and parcels being a vital income source. In fact some branch line trains might carry more mail and parcels than passengers.

 

 

[rpjallan]

Thanks again LC&DR. I totally agree.

I have been going back through my copies of Hornby Magazine that have Train Formation sections. I guess these must be quite accurate as the have the location as well as, often, the origin and destination as well as the year. Sometimes they list the actual date. It is quite surprising some of the formations listed. Of course this is only accurate if you can find the period and area you are trying to model but it gives an interesting insight. Some of the trains are surprisingly "higgledy piggledy"!

[LCDR]

Just picking up on a train at random, the 2:15 pm St. Pancras to Manchester in 1955 would usually be formed as follows.

 

Locomotive (possibly a Jubilee)

Brake Third Corridor, BR Mark 1

Corridor Third, BR Mark 1

Corridor Third, BR Mark 1

Composite Corridor, BR Mark 1

Open First LMS PIII

Composite Corridor, BR Mark 1

Brake Third Corridor, BR Mark 1 

Brake Composite Corridor, LMS PIII (detach at Buxton)

Cafeteria Car LMS PII, (detach at Derby)

Brake Third Corridor, LMS PIII (detach at Derby)

 

 

Because Mark 1 carriages had Pullman gangways with Buckeye couplers and LMS carriages had British Standard gangways with screw couplings, gangway adaptors were required between the different types of carriages. 

The LNER and Southern were Pullman Gangway railways, but the LMS and GWR retained British Standard gangways. When BR introduced the Mark 1 carriages they opted for the Pullman gangway, because it allowed automatic coupling. The legacy of this was that mixed trains of stock with LMSR or GWR carriages were more complicated to couple and uncouple.

[rpjallan]

I have a full rake of the nine LMS Coronation Scot coaches on pre-order. I wonder if Hornby are intending to release other sets like this?

[81F]

 I think this is a good example of where getting a good photograph taken during the period you are modelling is valuable. Sadly most photographers chose to concentrait on the loco so I have found it difficult to get compleate formations.

 

Also complete formations are generally much longer that I can accomodate on the standard gauge section of my railway sio I have to adopt some license. Also the perion/location I principly model (GWR, Shrewsbury-Chester mainline around 1910s to 1935) has very few of the photos I need so I do have to get inspiration from other parts of the GWR.

 

According to photographs (and some accounts I have read) formations were not always uniform particularly on summer Saturdays when different types of coach could be mixed together.

 

A particulary good resource I use is WarwickshireRailways.com. Unfortunately may of the coaches are not available in rtr or kit form making the task harder. However, below is some links which I hope explains what I am trying to describe:

 

https://www.warwickshirerailways.com/gwr/gwrbh26.htm

 

https://www.warwickshirerailways.com/gwr/gwrwe2886.htm (I hoften run an approximatation of this train made up using a B'man City (unlined green), a Hornby long clerestory brake (non panelled livery) and some Hornby Railroad Collet 57'. If you look closely the First three coaches show single wide windows between the doors so the corridoor is closest to the viewer. Interestingly the Hornby Long Clearestory coaches are of the opposite hand to the original "Railroad" Collett 57' coaches which makes keeping the corridore to the same side possible.

 

https://www.warwickshirerailways.com/gwr/gwrbsh3053.htm with this one I am not 100% sure that all three of the passenger coaches are the same way round but I have included this since it shows how the GWR used to marshal a brown vehicle between the loco and the rest of the train. I understand the reason for placing non passenger carrying parts of the train towards the front was to act as a barrier/buffer in the event of an accident.

 

Hope this helps though it is probably a bit too early as you you say you have the blood and custard Colletts

 

So to summerise in three word "Look at Photos" - I often find that tracking these down even on line is just as interesting and satisfying as running the models, or am I just odd?

 

 

[rpjallan]

Thanks for the reply 81F. I'll have a look at those links. I have been watching some steam era videos on YouTube recently which can be intersting but, as you say, they tend to concentrate on the locos.

[LCDR]

There have been some excellent books published although these can be extremely expensive. However I buy any and every book I can on carriages and wagons, AND I have a huge archive of official BR documents I gathered when I worked for BR so hopefully I should be able to answer some of the questions.

As a general rule every carriage built was allocated a "Diagram Number" which showed the outline of the carriage and the seating plan. This helped train planners to work out the train formations needed to supply a service over any particular route. Most companies published the diagrams in Diagram Books which werre a useful reference for railway operators. 

This is a page from a diagram book.

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Similar Diagram Books were issued for Goods wagons to help staff choose the right wagon to be loaded.

Once a train plan had been worked out and a timetable published the Train Planners would produce and publish a Carriage Working notice, a book which described the formations of all trains identifying individual carriages to be put into each train and where it should be marshalled.

Week by week and day by day changes were published on printed Special Traffic Notices.

This is an example of a page out of carriage working notice.

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. Each company (LNER, LMSR, GWR or SR) had their own diagram books and issued their own carriage workings.  BR at first carried on Company practice on the Regions, but soon provided a standardised system when the new BR Mark 1 Standard carriages became the dominent species.

 

Similar publications were produced for Diesel and Electric multiple units.

 

For those interesed in finding out more some of these documents can be examined at the National Railway Museum's Search Engine, or the Railway Correspondence and Travel Society Library. 

 

 

[steamy]

 We also tend to forget that there were a lot more first class seats (or coaches) in the years leading up to the 1950s. Even in the 1970s on a Scottish suburban line there were first class compartments on disele multiple units and they were used by first class ticket holders. (and small boys trying it on, usually to get a look out the front window into the drivers cab!)

[LCDR]

It used to be said that one First Class passenger paid the coal bill. I am not sure how true that was, but certainly the railways tried hard to win them.

Before 1940 the Southern Railway provided First Class on all suburban trains into London. It was usual that about a third the compartments and a quarter of the seats were allocated for First class passengers.