(No?) CIWL interest

[Legend]

1 hour ago, HonestTom said:

I suspect that if some manufacturer took the plunge and made CIWL coaches in 00, they would sell. There might not be many people modelling CIWL, but that doesn't mean that people wouldn't buy the coaches if they were available. There are certainly enough Southern express locos out there. I think the Night Ferry has the same glamour factor as something like the Coronation Scot, which certainly does have coaches available, and I doubt everyone who buys the Coronation Scot set is doing so because they model the WCML in LMS days.

 

Agreed . If you look at the number of Pullmans Hornby turn out , matchboard , steel sided , 6 wheel bogies etc its amazing they havent done CIWL stock yet . Especially so as it was pictured behind a Lord Nelson as the front page of catalogue a few years ago , which raised interest then . They also make the necessary Pacifics .  It needs someone with vision in marketing and unfortunately they have been "inspired by " the Titfield Thunderbolt at the moment .

 

How many coaches would they need to model ?

[Fat Controller]

Whilst the passenger stock had a limited sphere of operations, the 4-wheel SR-built Brakes went into general use when the Golden Arrow and Night Ferry ceased. In 1972, I saw S3S, resplendent in Rail Blue, at the buffer stops at Swansea High St.

[Nearholmer]

1 hour ago, Legend said:

How many coaches would they need to model ?

One. With lots of different numbers. And ideally both the SR and SNCF fourgons.

[Legend]

1 minute ago, Nearholmer said:

One. With lots of different numbers. And ideally both the SR and SNCF fourgons.

 

Even more of a no brainer then !

[C126]

2 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

One. With lots of different numbers. And ideally both the SR and SNCF fourgons.

 

Perhaps two - different liveries and the window vents were altered.  But still, this seems like a cash machine to me.

[Steamport Southport]

4 hours ago, sncf231e said:

It was indeed MARC Models. This kit does not seem to be made anymore. I made an overview of models in all gauges of the Night Ferry; it is attached to this post.

Regards

Fred

The Night Ferry sleeper modelled.pdf 826.83 kB · 8 downloads

 

MARC Models have gone I'm afraid. The owner was severely ill and I don't think he was exactly young.

 

The Sleeping Cars and luggage vans were made as a commission for Model Rail. Also the adapter wagon. They ended up in the MARC Models range. They were only about £40 each when originally available. Unfortunately I didn't want them at the time but I now want a set.

 

 

 

Jason

[pete_mcfarlane]

IIRC There were two different types of SNCF fourgon, one with Guard's facilities and one without. So they'd need to tool up 4 different vehicles in total. 

 

(Not including the sleepers that ended up being pinched by the Germans and rebuilt for use by Mitropa... http://www.irps-wl.org.uk/wagon-lits/services/nightferry)

[C126]

20 minutes ago, Steamport Southport said:

MARC Models have gone I'm afraid. The owner was severely ill and I don't think he was exactly young.

 

This is grim news, and more so because I printed his web-page offering the 'week's wage for a R-T-R coach' only last year, I thought.  Very sorry to hear it.  If anyone is interested and does not own it, I do recommend Behrend's 'Night Ferry' (1985).  I had not heard of it before coming across this book on a visit to the Bluebell Railway shop.  And of course the film, 'Link Span'.

[Steamport Southport]

6 minutes ago, C126 said:

 

This is grim news, and more so because I printed his web-page offering the 'week's wage for a R-T-R coach' only last year, I thought.  Very sorry to hear it.  If anyone is interested and does not own it, I do recommend Behrend's 'Night Ferry' (1985).  I had not heard of it before coming across this book on a visit to the Bluebell Railway shop.  And of course the film, 'Link Span'.

 

If you like Behrend's books and style of writing try Don't Knock The Southern.

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dont-Knock-Southern-Recollections-present/dp/1857800036

 

Reminiscences of the SR from the viewpoint of a passenger rather than an enthusiast. Particularly of the expresses to the South Coast and Europe. ISTR the Night Ferry does get quite a bit of coverage.

 

 

Jason

[C126]

2 minutes ago, Steamport Southport said:

If you like Behrend's books and style of writing try Don't Knock The Southern.

 

Thanks for that.  I wondered just what it was about, seeing a list of his writings as author.  Shame there are no reviews on Amazon.

[pete_mcfarlane]

Behrend did a more general book on CIWL services, which is well worth a read. He is very good as a travel writer, describing what it was like to travel on these services.  

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Grand-European-Expresses-George-Behrend/dp/0043850049/ref=sr_1_18?qid=1644942551&refinements=p_27%3AGeorge+Behrend&s=books&sr=1-18&text=George+Behrend

[C126]

Of only oblique interest, I admit, but here is my 'substitute Night Ferry' from my teenage years (and I could not resist the picture in addition of the S.N.C.F. loco - so pretty):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These are the quadri-lingual Joueff C.I.W.L. coaches.  I used to run them between a Lima CCT and a wobbly Replica Railways BCK.  Happy days.

Edited June 28, 2022 by C126

[Allegheny1600]

I have a mild interest in this company for a variety of reasons, I was lent the book by Naglemakers* by a very good French friend, later I obtained my own English language copy. It’s a wonderful book but it’s packed well away and I can’t access it now. *was Naglemakers the author of the book or the originator of the train?

My German modelling colleague is very keen on the Rhinegold train so I’m kind of forced to follow something different to that!

Finally, you can actually get one C.I.W.L. coach in Greek livery/lettering in H0 and given my location, that’s of great interest to me but it’s so expensive!

In fact, apart from the somewhat crude models from the 1970s, all C.I.W.L. Vehicles appear to be very expensive, maybe this is why they are not very well followed in the UK?

[Michael Hodgson]

 

16 minutes ago, Allegheny1600 said:

 *was Naglemakers the author of the book or the originator of the train?

 

Nagelmackers was the founder of the CIWL company.

He was a member of a family of Belgian bankers - Nagelmackers Bank is still trading.

When I was working in Brussels, Brits usually referred to the bank as mangle knackers

[Staffordshire]

Regarding the Night Ferry by MARC Models ....  this is a set that was built a few years ago ...

 

 Hope it is of interest ..

[C126]

58 minutes ago, Staffordshire said:

Regarding the Night Ferry by MARC Models ....  this is a set that was built a few years ago ...

 

 Hope it is of interest ..

 

More than just interest from me, but blind jealousy I am ashamed to admit.  Were there a 'drooling' emoticon, I would use it.  If they are yours, I hope they are run on a layout regularly and enjoyed in motion.  Thanks for posting this.

[Pacific231G]

If you like CIWL stock (and I do!) it's worth remembering that, though, post-war, Voiture Lits mainly ran on international trains, Wagons Restaurant were far more common and, certainly in France, could be seen on many longer distance daytime expresses and rapides, sometimes accompanied by a CIWL Pullman car.

I can really only comment on France where domestic all Voiture Lit trains such as the Paris-Nice-Vintimille Train Bleu were very rare though it did remain all-sleeper until the 1970s . There were others with a number of Voiture-Lits along with couchettes but elsewhere, when they did appear, it was commonly just one or two in a train mostly made up from couchettes and day coaches. All these tended, not unnaturally, to run at night though in summer an overnight run might well include a period of daylightrunning. On international trains, they were more likely to be seen during the day as journey times were long enough to include periods of both day (bunks turned into a sofa) and night running.

 

By and large  the era of the all CIWL Grand Express didn't really survive the Second World War.  Loco-Revue have published a very useful book 60 ans de Compositions de Trains de Nuit Français (1950-2010) (ISBN 978-290365163-3) which includes around five hundred train compositions of mostly overnight rapides and expresses and it's surpising how relatively few of them conveyed sleeping cars as opposed to just couchettes. 

 

The book doesn't cover many international trains- just those with purely domestic coaches-  and though some domestic overnight rapides conveyed a few car transporters  (usually with one or two Voiture Lits) I think the Trains Auto Couchettes (TACs) included a good number of Voiture Lits but I don't know in what proportions and by then I'm pretty sure the Voiture lits belonged to SNCF rather than CIWL. In both cases their compositions would be interesting.

 

The Night Ferry, probably the only CIWL stock likely to be worth producing in 4mm scale, was not of course an all-sleeper train in  France as it it added a Wagon Restaurant and two or more day coaches for the cheapskates (like me!) travelling as walk-on ferry passengers . Unfortunately, in the winter when I used it and there were few walk on ferry passengers, it also picked up early morning commuters to Paris at Dunkerque-Ville and the outskirts of Lille so a long sleepless, albeit fascinating, night for David.  

 

Though it was pre-war and pre SNCF, there was an all Voiture-Lits day train that ran in the summer from Paris to Deauville. Why wealthier passengers would want their own private small room for no more than two people en route to a fashionable resort I won't comment on !   

Edited April 14, 2022 by Pacific231G

[bécasse]

I remember some thirty years ago when discussions started on possible night trains through the tunnel my French colleagues pointed out that as new tentacles were added to the daytime TGV network so the demand for parallel night services largely evaporated. Much of that demand, at least year round, had anyway been generated by military conscripts going on, or returning from, leave, and with the ending of conscription in France that traffic too disappeared.

 

Although they were too polite to say so directly, it was clear that the SNCF thought that European Passenger Services were mad to be contemplating night services. In fact there would then have been a viable market on a couple of routes for all sleeper services to/from London (on six nights a week) but that didn't match the "visions" of the top echelons of the EPS management team and a miss-match was specified that was always doomed to failure. Neither the project, nor those top echelons, long survived privatisation. Since then the growth of low-cost airlines has changed the market in a way that would probably have doomed even those potentially viable routes and it is noteworthy that almost all of the TEN network that was established in the early 1970s after the collapse of CIWL disappeared around the time of the millennium, although a few routes have been reestablished more recently.

[sncf231e]

On 14/02/2022 at 15:53, sncf231e said:

 

I am a bit puzzled then why there seems to be not much interest in CIWL modelling in England. I cannot imagine that this only has to do with the OO/HO scale difference. 

Are there any good reasons I don't know?

Regards

Fred (interested in CIWL and models of CIWL)

 

Today some ordered CIWL Pullman cars arrived; these are 0 gauge and made to 7 mm, so no scale difference.

Regards

Fred

[TT-Pete]

https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/orient-express-mystery-solved/index.html

[AyJay]

Just popping my head up to say that I have some vague recollection that my first train set was these carriages with a steam locomotive. That was about 60 years ago. They are very grand looking carriages, or is that “cars” though.

That’s my pennysworth, I’ll go now.

[jaym481]

I've recently branched out to Continental trains a bit, particularly German pre-WW1. I also took an interest in CIWL models, as I came upon an old Liliput teak set (incredible detail, incandescent lighting(!) and awful running due to the lighting pickups), and also obtained locally a full train of Jouef blue cars, comprising 6 WL (the seller said 4 Y cars and 2 Z cars - not sure), a restaurant, a blue and cream Pullman and three steel sided bogie fourgons. I've been trying to figure out the eras of the liveries, and the best I can figure out using the internet and a lone coffee-table book on the Orient Express history is that the natural teak colour gave way to blue sometime after WW1. One thing that intrigues me is the format of the coach numbers. The early teaks all seem to have the same format "No. xxxx A" but I'm not sure if the letter A was the only such in use. This format also appears on models of the steel coaches of the '20s and '30s. The blue Jouef coaches I have use two variations on the WL cars - the "Z" cars have simply a 4 digit number at each end of the car just above the solebar, and the ones attributed a Y models have a multi digit number in a very small font below the central coat of arms. 

 

Anyway, if anyone can point me to some internet resources which might help (I have already gone through Fred's (sncf231e) document on CIWL models) and a couple of websites in, mostly, English that came up with a basic search; assistance would be greatly appreciated. I can read French, and of course there's the ever-popular Google translate if there are resources in other languages.

 

Book recommendations also welcome, and hopefully anything recommended will be available here in Canada.

 

Thanks,

Jay

[sncf231e]

12 hours ago, jaym481 said:

Book recommendations also welcome, and hopefully anything recommended will be available here in Canada.

 

Thanks,

Jay

Just a few weeks ago a new book on CIWL cars (but only the metal cars) was issued: https://trains.lrpresse.com/A-19676-trains-d-exception.aspx. It is still available.

The bible for CIWL cars (metal and teak) issued by La Vie du Rail is not available anymore and is very expensive second hand (but you might find it maybe in Canada): https://www.amazon.com/les-wagons-lits/dp/2915034974

 

Did you already find this French forum: https://forum.e-train.fr/index.php ? It has some interesting threads on CIWL.

 

On car numbers: all cars had a 1-4 digit number; in 1905 car number 1000 was built and all next cars had a 4 digit number.

 

The first metal CIWL car was build in 1922 and painted blue, all following metal cars were blue (or blue(or brown)/creme for Pullman cars); all cars before that were teak and in general teak color. Some teak cars which ran in consists with metal cars also were painted blue.

 

Regards

Fred

 

Edited August 2, 2022 by sncf231e

[sncf231e]

1 hour ago, jaym481 said:

 The blue Jouef coaches I have use two variations on the WL cars - the "Z" cars have simply a 4 digit number at each end of the car just above the solebar, and the ones attributed a Y models have a multi digit number in a very small font below the central coat of arms. 

The Y models also have the original 4 digit number but on the solebar (very small and stroked through); the multi digit number is a so called computer number which was introduced somewhere in the seventies for all continental European railways. I do not know what type Z cars you have; Jouef made type F cars and type Y.

Regards

Fred

[jaym481]

2 hours ago, sncf231e said:

The Y models also have the original 4 digit number but on the solebar (very small and stroked through); the multi digit number is a so called computer number which was introduced somewhere in the seventies for all continental European railways. I do not know what type Z cars you have; Jouef made type F cars and type Y.

Regards

Fred

Thank you Fred, and thank you for the book recommendations. I'll see if I can find them here.

 

Regarding the car types, I was going by what the seller said, and he wasn't sure as it was an estate of one of our club members. The club is oriented to British model railways, so the expertise in Continental is thin on the ground. Here are some pictures to the two different types: