Can any fellow Southern followers help me.
having recently purchased an O gauge Westdale Restriction 4 Maunsell 'high window' 1929 composite coach on Ebay for a very reasonable price and having now successfully built it, it is now primed and ready for painting and numbering.
I am looking to run it as a loose CK alongside a 3 car Bulleid set that I have previously built.
However having done my research (rather late in the day), David Gould's excellent Maunsell Carriage Stock book indicates that in the period I am modelling (1958 - 1961) there was only one Restriction 4 Maunsell CK coach that was running as a loose vehicle and not as part of a set at that time, and that was coach S5586S.
Here is my dilemma - S5586S was one of four identical CKs built as part of a batch of coaches (diag 2303) specifically for inter Regional services in 1929 which were used on Bournemouth - Birkenhead services. These CKs were externally identical to Maunsell's other high window composites (diag 2301) but internally they differed as they were the only Maunsell composites to have three first class compartments and four third class compartments (the normal layout was 4 first class and 3 third class). The middle compartment in these 4 coaches was simply narrowed to normal 3rd class dimensions by having thicker partitions. This variation was so that the seating layoutin these vehicles would match the capacity of LMS and GWR stock that used to share the running on these inter regional services
As S5586S seems to be the only loose Maunsell in the period I am modelling, I am trying to find out if it's non standard internal layout was still retained by the time it became a loose coach in 1959 or if it had been converted into the standard internal layout to match the rest of the SR's Maunsell composite coach fleet once it's inter Regional duties had ended and it had taken up more mundane duties. Logic would dictate that four non standard coaches would cause headaches for the seat booking clerks once these coaches integrated into the wider SR fleet - therefore it would seem unlikely that in its latter years it would retain its non standard layout.
The coach remained in service until November 1961 but neither Gould, nor Mike King in his publication indicates whether it or it's 3 fellow diag 2303 colleagues where subsequently converted into the standard diagram 2301 layout.
Would anybody have any further knowledge on the latter days of these 4 coaches
Bob Hoskins
