F stock single car operation?

[diesel85tom]

Ive been looking at 3 harrow models F stock cars that I have two of which have driving cabs at both ends, I'm aware that there were driving trailer's but were they ever used in single car formation like on the acton shuttle for example? Also what other formations's did they run in?

 

Any information is appreciated.

 

Cheers Tom

[johnb]

I saw them on the Met from Baker St northwards and only ever saw them in 8-car formations. In those days, 1950s, the Met arrangements were 6 and 8 car O/P stock, 6 and 8 car T stock, Met elec locos with 6 Dreadnoughts, though I did see once a Met loco with 7 Dreadnoughts, and the 8 car Fs.

 

John

 

 

edited for typos

[diesel85tom]

Thanks john, im guessing that the 8 car trains were probably made up of 4 car sets with 2x driver motors and 2x trailer's. Maybe the driving trailer's were used in the earlier days when then probably did run shorter trains on off peak services.

I have a few books to go through so hopefully I will find some more information there. . Tom

[johnb]

Hi Tom

 

As far as I can recall the 8-car F sets were formed of 2 x 4 as MTTM+MTTM, but we are talking rather more than just a few years back (ouch!) when I was a mere sprout!!!

 

The only time I saw short formations on the Met was after the A stock appeared and 4-car As ran in the off peak for a few years.

 

Re the Fs in short formations, didn't some run as 4s for a while on the ELL though?

 

There were very good for crowd shifting as with their 4 doors per car they were quick to load and unload, so probably used mainly in the rush hours..

 

Have you found District Dave's site and forum that is a real treasure trove on LT and earlier information?

 

John

[Xerces Fobe2]

Tom I can understand why you my think that they ran as single cars as the the drivng cars have windows at the inner ends however these are actually in the passenger area and are nor cabs. The D stock on the District Line after refurbishment has the same configuration.

I too have a single F car driving car body and has along similar lines alas I think it will become a static exhibit!

A 3 car F stock train would still be an interesting model to own and run.

[SRman]

Early formations were M-T-T-T-M + DT-T-M, later reformed to that listed above.

To the best of my knowledge the only time any F stock ran as a singe car was on my own layout before I built any more of the Harrow/Radley kits!

 

There were double-ended and single-ended driving motors.

Because it has taken me so long to build the kits into a train (still only half a train at the moment), I chose to build the double-ended motor first so it would at least look feasible on its own. Sorry about the quality of the photos - they are quite old now and show my previous layout.

 

[Gwiwer]

I know of no instance where F-stock ran as single cars in service and agree with Jeff regarding the normal operational formations.

 

The Acton Town - South Acton shuttle referred to above was operated by specially-converted Q23-stock cars which could not be used anywhere else.  

[SRman]

Forgot to mention: Some of the F stock motors were double-motored too when originally built. The extra motor bogies were later put on the Driving Trailers to convert them and the double-motored cars to single-motor cars.

(Double-motored means, in this case, two motor bogies with two traction motors each; single-motored means one motor bogie with two traction motors.)

[GoingUnderground]

The F Stock ended its life on the Uxbridge branch, being brought into service for the morning and evening peaks, where I rode on it on the way home from school. Because it ran in the peak period in those days on the Met they were always in an 8 car formation. For some reason I always preferred the F Stock to O/P stock which served Uxbridge in those pre-A62 stock days..

 

Part 1 of the 1950 edition of Ian Allan's "ABC of London Transport Railways" states that on the District F Stock ran in 7 car DblDM-T-T-SglDM-T-T-DblDM. It adds that it was generally only used in the peak periods on the District which implies that by that time they were never run as 4 car sets off peak. There were 26 Double Ended DMs, which would have allowed for 13 trains, but there were only enough trailers, 48, for 12 trains in that formation. The Double Ended DMs had 4 motors whilst the Single Ended ones had 2. replacing a Double ended DM with a Single would have left the train down on traction power, so it looks to me very unlikely that the Double Ended MDs would ever have run on their own on the District, and once on the Met would have stayed in 8 car formation.

[SRman]

In their early days they were deemed "too powerful" and were constantly catching up to the older stock ahead of them, hence the "watering down" of the formations and number of traction motors in a unit. O and P stocks suffered similarly so many two-car units were augmented to three cars.

If memory serves me correctly, single four-car units ran on the East London Line towards the ends of the F Stock's lives.

[L49]

I have always assumed that the double ended DMs were included to allow for more operational flexibility rather than following the District precedent of having handed A and D end DMs, especially as the F stock was not compatible with anything which came before it, or indeed after due to the different coupling heights. Having DMs which could be easily attached either at the A or D end of a set would have been infinitely useful in the case of a failure and also for splitting sets during the off peak.

[bécasse]

Until 1938, the F-stock trains were formed into 5- and 3-car sets, the 5-car sets having two motor cars and the 3-car sets having a control trailer and one motor car. The control trailers were converted to motor cars in the 1938 conversion programme using motors and other equipment from the ex-District "Southend" locomotives and the trains subsequently worked as 2 x 4-car sets although there was definitely some use of single 4-car sets off-peak - and, of course, the East London line was worked by 4-car sets on- and off-peak when the F stock replaced H stock there in the early 1950s (these sets came from the Neasden allocation so they could be at New Cross for a while and then go back to Uxbridge Line use and vice versa). However, at this period, LT practice was not to equip intermediate driving cars with Loudaphone equipment unless the sets concerned were used to form short trains (which were actually quite common then after the evening peak and on Sundays), and consequently only some of the F-stock sets could work as 4-car trains (including, of course, all those allocated on any day to the ELL).

 

Those motor-cars which were delivered double-ended seem to have been so equipped to aid long term flexibility of the fleet but the precise reasoning for that (and the double motoring of some cars) seems to have been lost in the fog of the immediate post-WWI era.

 

Note that until 1940 some trailers, and the control trailers (including after their 1938 conversion to motor cars), included 1st class accommodation.

 

On the District Line, the F-stock seems to have been particularly associated with trains which non-stopped certain stations, although these continued for perhaps another decade after the F-stock was transferred to Neasden for Metropolitan (and East London) Line service.

 

F-stock trains were known to several generations of Underground staff as "Tanks".

 

On the East London Line, passengers considered the F-stock to be "very modern" despite its age* and the substitution of Q-stock after 10 years was thought by many to be a retrograde step despite the fact that even the oldest Q-stock vehicles were several years younger than the F-stock. (*Perhaps unsurprisingly, the H-stock it replaced still had hand-worked doors, habitually left open except when passengers stood in the vestibules during the peaks.)

[diesel85tom]

Its interesting that they were overpowered in the beginning. There is a picture in the piers connor book (going green) of a 3 car f stock train at south eailing. Im guessing they tried all possibilities over the years.

 

Here is a photo of my models that I mentioned first off.

 

The 2 cars to the left have a single cab at 1 end and the 1 to the right is double ended. For some reason I thought I had 2. I may order a trailer car from radleys so I can make a 4 car set. Although I quite like the dark coloured car that I have which leads me on to another question, F stock liveries?

 

 

Tom

[Lord of Narnia]

It wasn't unknown for 7 car trains to operate on the Met as the stock allocation was tight.

 

When converted to air doors the rear cab windows were removed and panelled over (like the G stock) to mount the guard panel on. The lights and shutters were also removed. As mentioned some double equipped cars were decreased to single equipped cars and these had the guards door and cab removed and replaced with 4 seats and window. The window had no quarter light but retained the rainstirp over this window!

 

I love the F stock and am working on a 4 car set. Enjoy.

[SRman]

The "Underground Surface Stock Plan Book" carries some livery details but some of it appears to be guesswork too. The early livery included the red and a colour referred to as 'lake' on the raised beading or trim and doors, which appears black in monochrome photos but was suggested as being a very dark crimson or maroon that got darker with age and weathering.

 

Roof colour, as with any underground stock, very soon became "tunnel colour" - dark slate greys give a good impression, or I use Humbrol #66. The correct colour was suggested as being either a light grey or a brown/bauxite colour.

 

Later they were just painted the standard LT train red. While this faded to a lighter shade, as evidenced by many colour photos, they never wore bus red as that was a 1970s 'improvement' and the last 'Tanks' ran in 1963.

[bécasse]

J.P.Thomas' "Handling London's Underground Traffic", published in 1928 by the Underground Group, contains quite a lot of interesting information on the F stock (then almost new) and the environment in which they worked on the then District Railway.

 

One of the most interesting things in the book is a reproduction of one page of the District Railway working timetable covering a small part of the WB Monday-Friday evening peak hour. Among the interesting non-F-stock trains shown are train 82, 3-cars 6.11 pm South Acton to South Harrow and train 92, 4-cars 6.23 pm South Acton to Hounslow West. The F-stock trains can be identified by the letter N following the number of cars in the train and the most interesting is train 60, 8N-cars 5.11 pm East Ham (ex-depot) to Acton Town where the train divides with the front 5N-cars continuing to Hounslow West (6.21 pm) as train 60 and the rear 3N-cars running to Uxbridge (6.38 pm) as train 60a.

[Xerces Fobe2]

Modellers Licence run it with the a mixed train of Q Stock then most people would be non the wiser!

[Lord of Narnia]

Why not, although pushing the boundaries a bit! If you could get hold of another trailer you would have a typical post 1938 4 car unit of F stock which what I'm planning.

[SRman]

I somehow ended up with two double-ended motor kits but I also managed to land an extra trailer from eBay, so can combine bits to make a single-ended motor out of one of the double-ended ones, so my planned four-car set will be a dbleDM-T-T-snglDM.

 

I agree with bécass's comment that suggests the F stock looked much more modern than the Q stock (variously G, H, K, L, M, and N stocks) that followed. Perhaps it was the elliptIcal roofs, perhaps it was the 'modern' interior style; who knows for sure? Certainly those elliptical end windows were very distinctive.

[Xerces Fobe2]

Why not assign your F Stock double ended car to Departmental duties acting as a locomotive with some engineering wagons as these cars as built ,were overpowered as mentioned above.

 

I have been looking at the my  F Stock double ended car and may use it as single car shuttle on my layout although I will have to obtain/make the chassis and bogies first!

[diesel85tom]

Why not assign your F Stock double ended car to Departmental duties acting as a locomotive witce engineering wagons as these cars as built ,were overpowered as mentioned above.

 

I have been looking at the my  F Stock double ended car and may use it as single car shuttle on my layout although I will have to obtain/make the chassis and bogies first!

 

Well I think I will run a 3 car set as Double DM+T+DT painted in the lighter red and leave the the dark coloured motor car as a future project, i may use the chassis fot the trailer car so all i need to order is a resin top from radleys.

 

XF will you be showing your layout at acton this year?

[roythebus]

Some of the older motormen I worked with at PG in the early 1970s worked on the Tanks. They reckoned they were "quite quick2 compared to all the other stock. They were called Tanks because they were all-steel construction, built like tanks!

 

I remember seeing them on the ELL in the early 1960s but never went on one.

[Xerces Fobe2]

Well I think I will run a 3 car set as Double DM+T+DT painted in the lighter red and leave the the dark coloured motor car as a future project, i may use the chassis fot the trailer car so all i need to order is a resin top from radleys.

XF will you be showing your layout at acton this year?

Indeed Croxley WRD will be at Acton work is proceeding on the extension which we plan to debut at the Show!