1950s/60s suburban carriage formations

[Sloegin]

Hello

I'm new to this forum and am looking for help on a subject that has undoubtedly been discussed before but try as I might I can't find precisely the information I'm looking for.

I currently have a few Bachmann suburban mk1's and am looking to form a complete train, one Midland region and one Eastern region from late 50's or early 60's, both representing a typical working out of London.

Can anyone help with an example of the number of carriages, types (i.e. seconds, composites etc) and how different makes (br mk1's, gresleys etc etc) would be included in a typical rake. Was it a free for all with any suitable carriages or was there more of a plan when it came to putting together some of the heavy suburban trains. What would a realistic suburban train using rtr stock consist of, and if suitable locomotives could be included that would be a great help.

 

Thanks in advance.

[chrisf]

Welcome aboard, Sloegin!

 

Some questions have no simple answer and this is one of them.  The trite "it depends" will not help you very much so I will try to be a bit more constructive than that.  One suggestion I will make is to look at photographs.  At the time which interests you it was a lot easier for cameramen to get near the trains and the days of being hassled by clueless security goons on stations were very much in the future.  Generations to come will not thank us for the obstacles we face in recording today's railway. 

 

The Eastern out of Kings Cross relied on venerable Quad-Arts - four-coach wooden coaches sharing five bogies - for inner suburban duties until the mid 50s when the BR standard suburbans modelled by Bachmann were built.  These coaches arrived in nice neat sets of five comprising brake third, three thirds, brake third painted crimson aka carmine also aka blood.  As time went on it was found that these sets had fewer seats than the Quad-Arts [but more leg room!] which caused problems in the rush hours.  The decision was therefore taken  - can't remember exactly when off the top of my head - to reform the sets with one brake third in the middle and two thirds either side.  Remember that third class was abolished in 1956 and after that we refer to second class.  Remember also that coaches were not sent to works in sets but individually and after 1959 you could often find three different liveries in the same set.

 

The outer suburban services, ie those going beyond Welwyn Garden City, had first class accommodation and toilets.  BR built some lavatory open thirds and semi-corridor composites, neither of which Bachmann make.  These appear not to have been kept in nice neat sets but intermingled with similar vehicles of LNER origin. 

 

I do not pretend to know how things were done at Liverpool Street except that electrification was being implemented in stages and if there were any BR suburbans there they would not have stayed long.  Fenchurch Street and the Tilbury Line were put in the Eastern Region after nationalisation and ended up with a right mixture of Eastern and Midland stock.

 

The  Midland out of St Pancras received eight each of brake third, third and "semi-open non-gangwayed third" which was the same as a third but with fewer seats so more standing room.  These were for the peak services from St Albans and beyond to Moorgate over the Widened Lines and had wider spaced roof ventilators as clearances were tight.  I know not whether any other BR suburbans were allocated to St Pancras and to be honest have not looked!

 

Out of Euston ran outer suburban trains to Watford, Tring and Bletchley.  These were run by "Euston - Watford" sets, typically eight coaches and with a right mixture of stock, mostly LMS in origin.   As long as the seating capacity was right no-one seemed to mind what was in the sets.

 

Finally, Marylebone.  BR moved it from the Eastern to the London Midland via a brief spell in the Western which appeared to make little difference.  Coaching stock was even more of a pick'n'mix than Euston and it took a whole before all the ex-LNER coaches were replaced by ex-LMS.

 

Someone else can tackle locos!

 

HTH

 

Chris

[petethemole]

BR suburbans were used on the Bedford services out of St Pancras in the late 50s. I'm not sure whether they completely replaced ex-LMS stock. I was just a lad (only 10-11 when the class 127s came in) but I recall the different interiors.

 

Condemned LMS suburban stock was being stored on the Bedford-Northampton line in 1961. The down line was one long siding and the service was worked as a single track using the up line.

 

Pete

[Sloegin]

Welcome aboard, Sloegin!

 

Some questions have no simple answer and this is one of them.  The trite "it depends" will not help you very much so I will try to be a bit more constructive than that.  One suggestion I will make is to look at photographs.  At the time which interests you it was a lot easier for cameramen to get near the trains and the days of being hassled by clueless security goons on stations were very much in the future.  Generations to come will not thank us for the obstacles we face in recording today's railway. 

 

Many many thanks for your quick reply chrisf, and a fantastic reply at that! I realised that it would not be a simple answer and I have tried to look at photographs but the trouble can be that they are almost always principally of the locomotive and a non-expert can sometimes struggle with a grainy photograph to work out exactly what the carriages are behind it, especially as they disappear into the distance or out of shot.

 

It sounds like I have a good excuse to add a couple of the recent Hornby Gresley Lavatory Composites into the eastern mix for an outer suburban, added to a couple of Bachmann thirds and a couple of brake thirds to make a six coach train if that sounds a reasonable combination? 

 

For the Midland set it sounds like I can form it of Bachmann thirds with a brake third at each end, again a four to six coach train if appropriate.

 

Bachmann are slightly annoying in their choice of numbering for their later weathered suburban mk1's as they produce one or two numbered for the eastern and midland region but the only brake third they produce is for the western region making it difficult to form a set of appropriately numbered weathered coaches. Maybe it's to encourage us to buy the older ones and have a go at weathering them ourselves!! Presumably coaches were re-lettered soon after they changed region so it wouldn't look correct to mix-and-match the coaches.

 

Thanks again for this information. There is a world of information out there but as someone who is learning as I go and do not have anyone to ask directly this forum is a gold mine for clearing up uncertainties. Until you know all the different types of pre-BR coaches in addition to BR built varieties a photo can only help so far unless extremely well captioned. Unfortunately I wasn't around to see the real thing from the period I am starting to model and so a generous reply like the one from chrisf is an enormous help.

[Fenman]

The North Norfolk Railway is currently recreating a 4-car MK1 set as it would have run from King's Cross - more background here.

 

Paul

[Sloegin]

The North Norfolk Railway is currently recreating a 4-car MK1 set as it would have run from King's Cross - more background here.

 

Paul

Very interesting Fenman, but one thing in the information (which I thought I had read in another link on this forum too) has added to my confusion. The article states that the eastern region ran four of the six types of br suburban mk1's, but the straight forward composite is not one of them, only the lavatory composite. Why then do Bachmann produce a model (34-703) of a composite with eastern region designation. Is this incorrect or did the eastern region eventually run composites as well?

[chrisf]

Thanks for the kind words, Sloegin.

 

By my elbow I have the Ian Allan abc of British Railways Coaches, said to be correct to 1st January 1962.  I've has a quick peek inside and it shows no composites allocated to the Eastern.  It is possible that some were reallocated later on.  Many suburbans for which other regions had no further use ended up in rail blue working out of Kings Cross and some of the long underframe ones allocated to the Western found themselves working out of Waterloo before the end of Southern steam.  Someone somewhere will know exactly which coaches were reallocated between regions but I don't - sorry!

 

I've never measured one but it would not surprise me if the Bachmann suburban composite is in fact the second with first class markings.  The real seconds had nine compartments of equal width - 6 ft 2.75 inches since you ask - but the first and second class compartments in the composite were 6ft 6 inches and 6ft 1 in wide respectively.  Many of us would barely notice the discrepancy and it would be a pig of a job to cut and shut them to get the right widths.  As for why Bachmann sell what they do, that is a Good Question!!!  Take my word for it that renumbering with transfers is not difficult.

 

Now someone who knows more about the Midland than I do, which must be nearly everybody, can comment on what follows.  From photographs I deduce that many non-corridor sets were formed of three coaches with the brake in the middle and two such sets could be coupled for the rush hour.  I'm sure petethemole is right in saying that BR suburbans were used on Bedford services but I doubt that complete sets were used.  New coaches tended to be sprinkled among the stock and my perception is that matching sets were the exception rather than the rule.

 

Chris

[robertcwp]

As Bachmann do not produce the lavatory stock, the focus would need to be on inner-suburban workings.  Late 1950s and early 1960s formations on the King's Cross suburban services were typically BS, S, S, S, BS, the 5-coach limit being dictated by the short platforms at that time at Moorgate (rebuilt mid-1960s, increasing the limit to six).

 

Here is an example:

 

D5310_Ganwick_1959 by robertcwp, on Flickr

[steve22]

Hi there Sloegin and welcome among us.  I came on here to say 'Hi' but I've also learned a great deal about coaching stock; location, composition, and even their future - great stuff!       

[Sloegin]

Hi there Sloegin and welcome among us.  I came on here to say 'Hi' but I've also learned a great deal about coaching stock; location, composition, and even their future - great stuff!       

Thanks for the welcome. Thanks also to robertcwp for the Kings Cross suburban formation. I can start planning what to buy for a realistic formation now.