Articulated Restaurant Cars loaned to the LNER?

[jwealleans]

I have a very sketchy awarenes of GW carriages and no in-depth literature, so I'm looking for some more detailed knowledge on something I came across a while ago.

 

I have an LNER Special Traffic Notice for July 1933 (specifically, "LNER (NE area Southern division) Excursion & Special Train Arrangements July 21st to 27th 1933".   Apart from a school exucrsion from my home town, this entry caught my eye:

 

Saturday 22nd July

 

No. 209.  Hull to King's Cross - Excursion

 

No. 209 - Stock - TOV (Alexandra Laundry party), G. W. Articulated Restaurant Car (30 seats, Alexandra Laundry party; 60 Pioneer Spiritualist party) ; TOV (Pioneer Spiritualist party) ;  2 TKL ; 2 BTKL.

 

We have a GW Restaurant pair leaving Hull on a day excursion to Kings Cross, so presumably returning to Hull afterwards.   There are no notes on how the stock arrived in Hull (usually foreign stock is specified along with the service or times at which is arrives).   The appearance is of stock which the LNER had use of, whether by loan or hire.

 

Questions, therefore: does the seating capacity match the GW diagrams and are there any records of this stock being loaned out?   I gather from Harris that the GW was looking at rebuilding these vehicles by this time and did so a couple of years later.    Were they idle and so hired out to bring in some revenue?

 

Colour me intrigued.

 

 

 

Edited January 9 by jwealleans

[rovex]

I don't have the books with me but so far as I recall the GWR articulated restaurant cars were a three car set.

[Mol_PMB]

Could GW mean something else in this context? Gangwayed? A depot allocation? 

[jwealleans]

2 minutes ago, Mol_PMB said:

Could GW mean something else in this context?

 

No, it's quite clear, I think.   This is quite a substantial document and there are no other G.W. references.   The LNER used their own stock codes, so in the example above the two TOVs are Third Open Vestibuled (= corridor) and the others are compartment Thirds or Brake Thirds with Lavs.   There are references to 'L.M.' for the LMS elsewhere as well.

[jwealleans]

45 minutes ago, rovex said:

the GWR articulated restaurant cars were a three car set.

 I did say my knowledge was sketchy......

[WillCav]

The only Articulated GW set I found was the H30/31/32 combo.

 

The outer coaches had 42 first class (H30) and 56 third class seats (H32) with the kitchen car between.

 

Will

[30851]

6 hours ago, jwealleans said:

 I did say my knowledge was sketchy......

 

To me this sounds like a triplet not a pair of coaches. 90 people would be hard to fit in two coaches along with the Restaurant facilities.

 

No. 209 - Stock - TOV (Alexandra Laundry party), G. W. Articulated Restaurant Car (30 seats, Alexandra Laundry party; 60 Pioneer Spiritualist party) ; TOV (Pioneer Spiritualist party) ;  2 TKL ; 2 BTKL

 

 

Rob

[billbedford]

1933? wasn't this the period the ex-GC restaurant cars were withdrawn pending rebuilding to kitchen cars?

[jwealleans]

That's quite possible, Bill.  I'll look into that.

 

We've been looking at a few of these STNs and photographs of excursions and the sheer amount of catering provided is remarkable.   We're working round to the conclusion that it's quite plausible that the LNER hired these sets in, especially as they'd apparently been declassed and allocated to excursion traffic by the GW by then.   If some of the domestic catering vehicles were OOU for any reason then there might well be a need to look elsewhere for stand-ins.

[Penrhos1920]

Some info on GWR articulated restaurant cars here GWR coaches.org

 

The triplet coaches had 42 first and 56 third class diners.

 

I doubt that LNER borrowed GWR coaches as they were wider, 9’ over the body waist and 9’ 5 over the door handles.

[jwealleans]

1 hour ago, Penrhos1920 said:

I doubt that LNER borrowed GWR coaches as they were wider, 9’ over the body waist and 9’ 5 over the door handles.

 

Happy to be corrected on that, but that leaves open the question of what is being referenced here.

 

[billbedford]

4 hours ago, Penrhos1920 said:

I doubt that LNER borrowed GWR coaches as they were wider, 9’ over the body waist and 9’ 5 over the door handles.

 

But GW stock worked the Newcastle - S Wales trains on alternate days. Did the GW keep special stock for these workings?

 

LNER stock was 9ft 3in over handles. 

[rovex]

I'm not aware that the articulated stock was overly wide. I understood it to be a variation of the later Collett 57 ft bow ended stock.

The GWR did have some wide stock (notably the Cornish Riviera and Centenary coaches which were banned from parts of the GWRs own network.

But I've never heard of one of the big four loaning stock to one of the others! 

[jwealleans]

1 hour ago, rovex said:

I've never heard of one of the big four loaning stock to one of the others! 

 

Happened all the time.   When banana traffic moved from Hull to Southampton the SR hired 200 banana vans from the LNER rather than build their own.  There were a number of special wagons built in the 1930s to Government spec as war preparations; some went to LMS stock, some LNER but they were effectively shared.

 

The Common User agreements around the start of WW1 amount to a permanent sharing arrangement.   For carriages I agree it would be less common (although as Bill has mentioned there were inter-company workings where each company supplied a set on alternate days) but there's no reason to suppose it wouldn't happen.

[rovex]

10 minutes ago, jwealleans said:

 

Happened all the time.   When banana traffic moved from Hull to Southampton the SR hired 200 banana vans from the LNER rather than build their own.  There were a number of special wagons built in the 1930s to Government spec as war preparations; some went to LMS stock, some LNER but they were effectively shared.

 

The Common User agreements around the start of WW1 amount to a permanent sharing arrangement.   For carriages I agree it would be less common (although as Bill has mentioned there were inter-company workings where each company supplied a set on alternate days) but there's no reason to suppose it wouldn't happen.

Yes I'm aware of goods stock, but never heard of it in relation to passenger carrying stock

[billbedford]

The LNER hired one of the GW diesel railcars to test the concept. 

[billbedford]

... and it is always possible that somewhere in the stores at Swindon there was a box of flatter commode handles that would bring coaches that went "foreign" into the required width spec. 

[Coach bogie]

As far as width is concerned the full GWR articulated train made it to Teesside and Darlington in 1925 for the S&D Centenary so it would appear clearance on the LNER was not an issue.

 

By 1933 only two of the dining sets had a diagram working. The others being used a a spare or general working.

 

At this time there was a greater use in excursion trains. By 1935 some of the dining sets had been reconfigurated to make an all third and all first set, though David Geen has data that shows this happened earlier, in 1931. Information is sketchy but it is highly likely the all first was eventually downgraded to all third.

 

It does appear unusual that the LNER would need to 'hire' dining stock. GWR stock would have been on LNER metals at the time. Several inter regional trains were cycled GWR stock one day, LNER the next. As it is a weekend, there could have been stock available awaiting the next Monday working. It is the articulated set that is so odd as to why it would be worked off system.

 

Needs a trip to Kew records to look up accounts rather than workings. The GWR invoiced everything. (when researching TPO stock, the accounts ledger gave far more information than the stock register!)

 

Best I can offer.

 

Mike Wiltshire

[Tom Burnham]

Coupling would have involved slightly more fuss than usual as the LNER generally used Pullman gangways and buckeye couplings for corridor stock while the GWR retained British Standard gangways and screw couplings.  You'd need adapters for the gangways and to drop the buckeye hooks.

[Clearwater]

Wasn’t there a 1930s service from Swansea to Hull, the port to port route?  May be slightly misremembering.

 

It may also be a simple typo….

[Clearwater]

From a quick skim, please  see below from Becket GWR carriage workings.  Looks like a carriage a day was detached and would reach Hull with the stock being provided on alternative days by the different companies.  May be some other services that had similar routes.

 

David

[The Johnster]

On 15/01/2024 at 22:20, Clearwater said:

Wasn’t there a 1930s service from Swansea to Hull, the port to port route?  May be slightly misremembering.

 

It may also be a simple typo….

 

There may well have been.  I have a family connection to the Port to Port; my great-uncle Ted spent WW1 in the catering corps at Aldershot*, and was demobbed (though I don't think that was the term used then) to be a dining car steward on it from 1919 to 1925, at which time the train ran from Barry to North Shields via Banbury and Sheffield.  GW and NER stock was used on alternate days and the working was 'double home' for the catering staff, who would work their Restaurant Car through and spend the night in lodgings in Newcastle while the Newcastle crew did the same in Cardiff.  The stock was stabled at Canton and Gosforth. 

 

I believe the train was re-routed to run from Swansea at a later date, terminating at Newcastle, but am happy to be corrected on that point.  There was still such a service up to the early 60s, and in the 70s it's successor, the 08.35 Cardiff-Newcastle, still boasted a full English breakfast, luncheon, and silver service High Tea.

 

 

*Which didn't prevent him from regaling rugrat Johnster with tales of how he'd personally blown up Hill 60, shot down the Red Baron, and designed the original Tank on the back of a pack of Woodbines and sent it in to Marshall Haig...  The double home nature of the working led to trouble, as he bigmously married his lodging's landlady; the day she turned up at Great Aunt Julie's front door with a couple of offspring in tow to be sent away with a flea in her ear is Richards family legend and mythology, poor woman.  That was the end of Ted's railway career with a vengeance, and he took up the respectable trade of having a professional bad back for the rest of his life and became what was known as a 'bookie's runner'. 

 

To explain to those born later than the Silurian Era, for many years (up to about 1960, not sure exactly) betting on horse racing was only allowed at the racecourse and only for races at that meeting that day.  There were no betting shops.  So, there was a fairly sizeable and 'differently legal' industry in off-course betting from unlicenced bookies, usually operating out of pubs and using the 'sporting' papers.  These people employed 'runners' to collect the bets and distribute any winnings.  IIRC off-track dog betting was done in the same way, the origin of the phrase 'going to see a man about a dog'.  Ted's railway contacts were useful to him in this endeavour, and business conducted at Cardiff General after watching the Red Dragon's usually volcanic departure, while I was left in the care of the crew of the down side pilot, is one of the foundations of my life-long interest in railways.

[billbedford]

On 15/01/2024 at 22:08, Tom Burnham said:

Coupling would have involved slightly more fuss than usual as the LNER generally used Pullman gangways and buckeye couplings for corridor stock while the GWR retained British Standard gangways and screw couplings.  You'd need adapters for the gangways and to drop the buckeye hooks.

 

Yes, but the second-line stock at the time was made up of ex-NER stock which all had BS gangways. 

[billbedford]

17 hours ago, The Johnster said:

There may well have been.  I have a family connection to the Port to Port; my great-uncle Ted spent WW1 in the catering corps at Aldershot*, and was demobbed (though I don't think that was the term used then) to be a dining car steward on it from 1919 to 1925, at which time the train ran from Barry to North Shields via Banbury and Sheffield.  GW and NER stock was used on alternate days and the working was 'double home' for the catering staff, who would work their Restaurant Car through and spend the night in lodgings in Newcastle while the Newcastle crew did the same in Cardiff.  The stock was stabled at Canton and Gosforth. 

 

I believe the train was re-routed to run from Swansea at a later date, terminating at Newcastle, but am happy to be corrected on that point.  There was still such a service up to the early 60s, and in the 70s it's successor, the 08.35 Cardiff-Newcastle, still boasted a full English breakfast, luncheon, and silver service High Tea.

 

The S. Wales North East trains were originally run by the GW and GCR, with the GCR stock lasting in this service until 1932. They were originally via Leicester, Banbury and Gloucester but after nationalisation, they were re-routed over the Midland line via Sheffield, Derby and Birmingham. 

Edited January 18 by billbedford