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Coach Livery Query


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I'm grateful to learn the coach has a real prototype. I'm intrigued by 'doubt it ever ran into Paddington'.?

I'm wondering where (and when) because I'm puzzled why the model was made.  

 

The builder's early years (born 1908ish) were in GW territory but he began work life in London. Almost all his 1/2" models were of another railway, with reasonable fidelity but not 'finescale-perfect'. He'd seen each of his prototypes at close quarters, although there were many years between 'seeing' and building the majority of the models.  

 

I have a couple of theories that might pivot on where he may have encountered such a vehicle.  

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Thank you, I'd not considered that angle which seems really good to me.  I had envisaged simply that the builder had access to books on GWR stock.  The model has a build date of 1971. 

 

If the approach was consistent with the builder's other work in the 1960s and 1970s, he would use a mix of technical information [not necessarily drawings], photographs and memory to achieve a result of good appearance and fidelity, particularly livery.  The livery connection was the reason for posting the images on this thread.  The builder's general motivation seems to be to create individual replicas of vehicles he'd seen or were 'iconic' in railways he was interested in.

 

My theories on the builder's motivation in this case had been either: 

 

(I) more likely - Birth and early years in Clutton, and remained attached to the area, so had seen GW trains;

or

(ii) less likely - builder lived in London from early 1920s, and had great interest in the Metropolitan Railway - and the Metropolitan used one or two trains of GW 4-wheel stock to strengthen its services, from 1919 to the early 1920s.  Alas, I've not seen evidence of exactly the 4w vehicles used in this role.

 

 

 

 

Edited by Engineer
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The GWR had sets of 'Metro' 4W coaches, with the round-topped doors that allowed them to be opened in tunnels to permit emergency evacuation, for use on their own services that travelled over the Met, so my guess would be that if they rented coaches to the Met-proper, it would be rakes of those. But, all of the "inner Met" had been electrified by the early 1920s, so where were they still using 4W stock? I thought that the loco hauled services to the outer areas would have been all bogie stock by then, but Mr Snowdon, who contributes to RMWeb, will now for certain.

 

Other four and six wheelers were also used by the GWR in the London area, though, although maybe before your builder's time - I was looking at a superb pre-WW1 picture of a GWR train climbing out of Victoria the other day: a 517 tank, hauling a horse box, a delivery cart on an open carriage truck, and a rake than seemed to have 4W parcels/brakes either end of a string of 6W coaches, all low-roofed. Maybe some lingered after WW1 on other suburban services.

 

 

Edited by Nearholmer
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51 minutes ago, Hal Nail said:

I didn't know that happened - was it a regular thing?

 

The Great Western was a part-owner of the Chatham side of Victoria Station (the Victoria Station and Pimlico Railway), along with the London & North Western and London Chatham and Dover. There was a third rail for the broad gauge laid in some parts of the station. The Great Western ran services at various times in the 19th century to Uxbridge, Slough, Windsor and Reading. I'm not sure about any LNWR services but the Midland had running powers, with services out as far as Bedford, I believe. In the days before the tube, these services direct to a West End station were much preferable to horse bus from the Euston Road termini.

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The LNWR ‘outer circle’ that ran to Victoria was re-routed onto the Met District Railway pretty much as soon as that opened. 
 

Summary of ‘outer circles’ is here https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Circle_(London)

 

The big attraction of that service for through travellers was that it called at Willesden Junction, which was also a calling point for most express trains in/out of Euston.

 

The GWR services continued to use Victoria (Chatham Side) for a lot longer, because of otherwise poor access from the western suburbs into the West End, the Central London Railway stations being a bit of a walk from Paddington.

 

Its worth remembering that Victoria was still a bit of a PITA for cross-London transits to Euston by ‘underground’ until the opening of the Victoria Line in 1967, because one either had to change at Embankment for the Northern Line, or go all round the Circle, then walk fro Euston Square in the rain. My father always used to drag us round the circle after nearly losing my small bro at Embankment once.

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The T47 were used, inter alia, in Bristol Division B-sets: basically an S9, U4 and T47 close coupled and with some other B3 stuck on the end. Sometimes they would run two of these close coupled sets together (brakes outermost of course) but I can't remember if these had a set designation.

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Thanks to all for responding with help and suggestions.

 

To Wagonman, from the advice on operational use it now feels most likely that the 1/24th scale T47 model is another ‘autobiographical’ essay, given the builder’s connections to Clutton and that general area of the country. It could, of course, be simply an attractive prototype for his plentiful modelling skllls.

 

To Miss P, many thanks for pointing out the GWR web pages, new detail for me.  Combining this with the Nearholmer notes gives me more logic than speculation to suggest that the 4-wheel coaches run by the Metropolitan were of the GWR 4-wheel ‘City’ design.  Clinging on to the livery theme in this thread, I guess that the coaches running on Met services 1919 to 1921ish would have had Crimson Lake livery.

 

From here, just to close the note and refer back to the Nearholmer note  I’ll comment on the Metropolitan side of the story – apologies to the GWR community.

 

The Met. was in a difficult place at the end of the First War, heavy demand, inadequate stock to keep up with maintenance let alone enhance services.  A large rolling stock procurement and reconstruction programme was initiated in 1919.  Already in 1918 the Officers’ Committee had resolved to approach the Great Western and the Midland for temporary use of stock and I guess that the eventual outcome was the hiring of available and suitable GW 4-wheel stock, to bridge the time gap while new stock and capacity emerged from 1921.

 

To make sense of the Met’s stock position going through the 1920s and into the 1930s, I’ve needed to go beyond the Snowdon book and its source material in the Ken Benest articles in Underground News in the 1960s, so Working Timetables have been very helpful.  Despite electrification, there was not enough capacity in the electric stock fleet to meet peak demand for seated accommodation.  From 1919 to 1921 there were 1-3 loco-hauled trains running at peak times only, Monday to Friday and Saturdays, workings including City to Willesden, Neasden, Wembley and Harrow, and occasionally reaching Uxbridge.   Notes in timetables indicate one or two of these trains as Great Western stock, in 10-coach formations.  I speculate that the other loco hauled trains were formed of Metropolitan Bogie Stock.  The Metropolitan’s ‘Bogie Stock’ fleet [referred to as 'Ashbury' in the technical and enthusiast press] was partly converted to Multiple Unit formations in the 1900s, and remaining vehicles were formed in steam stock trains among the ‘Main Line Stock’ [Dreadnoughts] that arrived in 1910 and 1912, as well as providing a pool of vehicles for the many ‘additional coaches’ scheduled to join particular trains.  This mix of use is supported by photographs.  The remaining Bogie Stock vehicles were released from ‘Steam Stock’ work when the 1919-ordered Main Line Stock’ arrived, and from loco-hauled work by better availability of Saloon Stock.  From 1921 the remaining Bogie Stock vehicles were converted to run in W Stock trains plus three spare vehicles.

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12 hours ago, Engineer said:

Already in 1918 the Officers’ Committee had resolved to approach the Great Western and the Midland for temporary use of stock and I guess that the eventual outcome was the hiring of available and suitable GW 4-wheel stock, to bridge the time gap while new stock and capacity emerged from 1921.

 

I think it was a time of rapid and complex change for everyone. From a GWR perspective, the Mainline & City Toplight sets of 1920/1 would have taken over the work of some of the 4-wheeler sets, but there were only six of the M&C sets, so could not have filled a gap of the 23 4-wheeler sets, and even the arrival of the three Collett articulated stock sets in 1925 would not have made up the shortfall. My guess is that many of the 4-wheelers probably drifted off before 1920, their place being taken by rakes of elderly non-corridor clerestories, put together in a typically ad hoc GWR fashion. (There were hundreds of C3s and C4s etc.) Your mention of a few GWR 4-wheel 10-coach sets being used for peak Metropolitan services is interesting, and seems to tie in with the stock changes on the GWR.

 

I can't recall seeing a pic of a GWR 4-wheeler in the London district after 1914.

 

There is a small 1978 Oakwood Press book 'Great Western London Suburban Services', but I seem to remember it didn't go into much detail about stock.
 

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Hijacking this topic again, has anyone got a photo of a clerestory coach in 1929 livery with double lining: black line, gold line, brown band, gold line, black line?  The livery only lasted 3 1/2 years and I’m wondering if older coaches such as clerestories even received it

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Back slightly off-topic, I checked a 1910 Bradshaw, and the GWR were still running several trains a day to/from Victoria, to/from Windsor or a station on the main-line short thereof. The service pattern suggests that the workings were based at Southall. 

 

The really intriguing bit is that on Sundays the service was worked by a "motor car, one class only", which I take to mean a steam rail motor....... which is something I would never have imagined. Not only that, but it appears to have made only one round trip, leaving Southall at 9 o'clock in the morning,  taking roughly an hour over the trip, and not coming back from Victoria until 9 o'clock at night! 

 

What did "motor car" and crew do for the intervening eleven hours? Did the SE&CR borrow them for the day? Or, was one company short of rail motors and hiring from the other, using this turn to swap them about on a weekly basis? Answers on a postcard, please.

 

 

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On 13/11/2019 at 09:14, Miss Prism said:

Statistically, a fair number of corridor clerestories would be up for a repaint in that 3.5 year window, and would have qualified for double waist lining as 'express stock', but I've never seen it confirmed in a pic.

 

 

Yes, I'd expect that about half of the clerestories would have recieved double waist lining.  But since there's no photo I'm doubting whether it happened

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If the NRM archive has records of when coaches were overhauled and released to traffic, one can postulate with some confidence that they would have been painted in the current livery for that date.  The problem is when there is more than one livery, and coaches for service in workmen's trains were being painted in an all over brown livery by the late 20s...

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14 hours ago, Penrhos1920 said:

Yes, I'd expect that about half of the clerestories would have recieved double waist lining.  But since there's no photo I'm doubting whether it happened

 

In which case, the current distinguisher of 'express stock' is not good enough, and we need a new formula.

 

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Even the youngest clerestory corridor carriages were over a quarter of a century old by 1929 so as a non-Great Western-expert, my presumption would be that if there was a specific livery variant for carriages used in the best expresses, they wouldn't have been in line for it.

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If I may interject a brief question here, this seems like the best place to ask. I've noticed on some older coaches (and brown vehicles, Siphons in particular), what appears to be the brown body color is carried up from the top of the body over the edge of the roof to the first drip rail. The T47 on the previous page is painted similarly, albeit with what appears to be grey below the drip rail. This appears on some vehicles but not others. Is there a rule for when this was/is applied to the roof of a coach or brown vehicle?

 

Thanks,

Zach

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10 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

Even the youngest clerestory corridor carriages were over a quarter of a century old by 1929 so as a non-Great Western-expert, my presumption would be that if there was a specific livery variant for carriages used in the best expresses, they wouldn't have been in line for it.

There wasn’t at that time a specific livery for the best expresses, but there was for stock not used in public timetable services, i.e. workman’s trains.  This was kept apart and the upholstery removed for ease of cleaning so that the punters could use them in working clothes.  

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