Coach identification 1947

[The Fatadder]

Can anyone help me identify the coaches in this link please?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/i/142526636571

 

The first I believe is a toplight third, the second with the flatter roof profile I have no idea, the third is clearly a centenary (I think I’m right in saying a third) and the last looks like some sort of bow end (my assumption being a brake composite given the lack of first class seats)

 

It looks an interesting formation to model...

[NCB]

The second coach could be one from one of the absorbed companies. The Cambrian bogie corridor carriages had long lives, were a tad lower with flatter roof profiles, and after grouping turned up all over the place. Not sure the sides are low enough for Cambrian though. Can't see enough details on the linked pic to say more.

 

Nigel

[chrisf]

Apologies if this turns out to be a red herring but that second coach has more than an air of the LNWR about it.  I'll leave you with that thought while I try to make sense of the tabulated gen in Eric Mountford's book on GW absorbed coaches. 

 

With any luck Tanatvalley will be along later.

 

Chris

[The Fatadder]

I’ve made an offer on the auction, so if I get it will see if I can make a higher resolution scan.

 

As an aside it is described as Exeter area, any thoughts as to where?

 

Having just had a quick look myself, there’s certainly an Lnwr resemblance in the 2nd coach. Though what it would be doing in a Devon M Set in1947 I don’t know.

[chris45lsw]

I’ve made an offer on the auction, so if I get it will see if I can make a higher resolution scan.

 

As an aside it is described as Exeter area, any thoughts as to where?

 

Having just had a quick look myself, there’s certainly an Lnwr resemblance in the 2nd coach. Though what it would be doing in a Devon M Set in1947 I don’t know.

 

I think both the first two coaches are ex LNWR - the first is a 57ft brake third, possibly diagram 306 while the second is a 50ft brake compo - possibly diag. 214 if cove roofed or diag. 216 if arc roofed. 

 

Chris Knowles-Thomas

[The Fatadder]

I have a higher resolution extract of the photo to aid in identification if it helps,

I’d definitely like to hear ah thoughts as to why ex lnwr coaches are in what looks to be a local he servixe pre nationalisation.

[The Johnster]

As the Exeter area has been mentioned, it may be that they are vehicles from a through working from the LMS that are being returned by a local service or ecs working (the loco headcode is not shown on the enlarged photo and the original link states it to be 'unavailable') to a point where they can be attached to a through train heading back towards the North or Midlands.  The consist is suggestive of a stock balancing working.

[petethemole]

I saved the photo for reference; the headcode is class B.

[chrisf]

Johnster may be on to something.  I do not pretend to know how things were done pre 1948 but if holiday traffic immediately post-war was anything like it was in the 1950s a surplus of LMS stock would have been building up at Paignton and sooner or later had to be sent back to its owning company.  The third coach in the [hesitates to use expression] set is Centenary stock which was too tubby to work over other companies' routes and was barred from the North and West line.  If such a formation were portrayed on yer average layout, whatever that may be, there would be expressions of disbelief, not least from those happy souls who cling to the notion that trains on the GWR were formed of nice tidy sets. 

 

It does not help either that we do not know for certain that the photograph was taken in the Exeter area ...

 

Chris

[81C]

Just to add to the mix the sun fall on the coaches suggest it's traveling south.

[TheSignalEngineer]

Throwing another idea into the ring, a number of LNWR coaches were transferred to the M&GN. Most of these seem to have outlasted those in LMS revenue service. One Corridor Third was photographed at Birmingham New Street on a service to the west in 1952.

http://www.warwickshirerailways.com/lms/lnwrbns_br1823.htm

[NCB]

Wonder how long it took things to get back to "normal" after WWII; not sure they ever did. During the war stock was sent all over the place to where it was needed, including locomotives (the GWR must have loved having things like LMS 2Fs on its tracks!). This must have continued for some time after the war; after all, specials were still being run to cope with things like demobilisation. Then with things like coal shortages it couldn't have been anything like normal on the railways. So a lot of services would have been cobbled together with anything to hand. Getting stock back to home territory would have been low priority. The Railway Executive Committee which was formed in 1938 and took over the railways in 1939 was effectively in charge until Nationalisation.

[The Johnster]

I don't think it's unreasonable to say that the 'normal' that everything got back to after the war was not the same normal as it had been when things took a sharp departure from it.  The effect of 6 years of total war on the only nation not overrun by the Axis that lasted that long, for some time the only nation fighting from it's home territory, was devastating in a way that is difficult for someone of my generation or those younger to get a grip on; everything about normal life in Britain was challenged to it's core, and much was discarded to never be taken up again during those years in terms of political, social, industrial, business, and artistic life.  Not all of it was much of a loss, but the brutality with which necessary change had to be imposed left an indelible mark on those of my parents' generation.

 

The victory we eventually achieved (with very considerable assistance from the Americans and considerably more assistance from the Russians) was military, and achieved a new World Order that is still to a large extent extant (can you say extent extant?); National Socialism and Japanese militarism were completely destroyed and a very good job too!  But we had little victory in any economic sense; we made little out of the war, which basically cost us the Empire, and the Marshall Aid we had from the country that really won hands down was offset by the massive lease-lend debt we owed them for many years.  I choose not to comment on the wisdom of the way our share of Marshall Aid was used.

 

The bankrupt post war UK, in which rationing was more strict that it had been during hostilities and the background against which the already nationally controlled railways were nationalised, was a place in which previous social norms and expectation were overturned as well.  Everything had changed forever, and was still changing.  The main problems on the railway were the backlog of maintenance work of all sorts, staff recruitment, and of course investment.  Particularly in the loco grades, men who had left their home depots to work in the big wartime traffic centres, the likes of Banbury, or Westbury, and had been temporarily promoted to firemen, passed firemen, or drivers, had to either give up or face being returned to their original depots and taking their low places in the seniority queue at lower grades and rates of pay at the same time as losing their places in the railway hostels which may not have been the height of luxury but were very cheap to live in.  There was a bitterness and resentment in these men still apparent when I worked with some of them in the 70s.

 

Locos had indeed been transferred all over the place to relieve shortages during the war itself.  Kidderminster had some antediluvian Great Eastern 0-6-0s to replace Dean Goods sent overseas, for example.  Nowhere were these locos well recieved, because even apart from the GW conviction that everybody else's stuff was rubbish had been taken into account the originating sheds had of course donated their worst locos.  There seems to have been a feeling on the GW that the LMS was being given an opportunity to take over, with 'Midland' (there can be no worse insult on the GW) engines built at Swindon and used on the railway along with borrowed austerity 2-8-0s whose LMS influence was not well hidden.  This continued to be the attitude after nationalisation when Ivatt 2-6-0s worked on parts of the former Cambrian system and the new Standards were being introduced.

 

I have no idea what the working in the photograph actually is; the stock balancing suggestion is only that, a suggestion, but it is significant that it carries a class B headcode and not a class C empty stock one.  It may of course be a post nationalisation photograph from 1948 or even early '49 before any of the stock or the locomotive had received new liveries; that would put a different light on matters!  But I'd be willing to bet it wasn't a 'normal' working!

[Marshall5]

Could it not be a 'scratch' set of carriages cobbled together to cover for the diagrammed set made unavailable due to, say, derailment or failure elsewhere.   There is a photo, in one of the Ian Allan colour albums, supposedly of the Bolton - Horwich local c1960 of a similarly mixed set, Radial 50850 (Bolton Stn pilot) Gresley teak corridor, Mk1 CK & Thompson BS.  By this time the working was always an 84xxx on a Stanier push-pull set or 2-6-4T on 3 period 3 corridors so I'm guessing this was a short-notice replacement using anything available.  Just my 2p worth.

Ray.

[The Johnster]

Yes, entirely plausible.  We are probably never going to get a definitive answer to this, and your interpretation is at least as good as mine!