Pairing coach stock

[trainboy]

Hi all,

I have a question on running mixed coaching stock. Did the Cravens rail coaches ever run with other coach types such as the Bredin or Park Royals?
thanks,

Brendan

[jhb171achill]

Yes, absolutely. In fact, from new until the late 1980s, they almost ALWAYS did; other than the post-1972 Mk 2s, trains of a single uniform type of carriage were almost totally unknown.

Almost ALL trains were a random mix of:

Bredins (until last one withdrawn c.1975/6)

Cravens

Laminates (of many different types)

Rebuilt / unrebuilt 1951-53 CIE stock

Park Royals (several variations)

Ex-GNR stock like K15s

Remaining old wooden GSWR bogie stock (until last withdrawn in 1974; almost no two alike among several dozen).

VANS:

4-wheel luggage

4-wheel generator

6-wheel generator

”Dutch” generator

 Ex-BR generator (several variations)

 

The extent of this variation is such that a 1960s-80s train of more than two carriages simply does not look realistic if all the carriages are the same.

[flange lubricator]

15 hours ago, trainboy said:

Hi all,

I have a question on running mixed coaching stock. Did the Cravens rail coaches ever run with other coach types such as the Bredin or Park Royals?
thanks,

Brendan

Prior to the mid eighties Craven coaches always ran mixed with other coaching stock with the cravens normally marshalled together within that formation .

This picture by Jonathan Allen from flicker illustrates the point a very typical train containing two cravens to the rear of the train with various other coaching stock mixed in .

The make up of the train is behind the loco is(open to correction ) a Park royal ,a 1356-1371 std open , a 1429-1448 laminate , a 1904-1908 brake standard , 2 Cravens , a 24xx buffet car and a Dutch van 3157-3166 steam heating/gen  van at the rear.  The two cravens and the  Buffet Car are most likely TL (220v supply ) coaches and necessitate being marshalled next to the Dutch van while the older coaches towards the front are possibly battery dynamo powered systems .

 

Edited January 18, 2023 by flange lubricator

[jhb171achill]

One of the longest trains I ever saw in Ireland, possibly THE longest, was about 1975. It had twelve or thirteen bogies with a 6-wheel heating van at one end and a Dutch or BR van at the other. Just three coaches were Cravens, another three were Park Royals, and the others were a dining car and laminates of two or three different types….. all were mixed up.

[Gabhal Luimnigh]

Very interesting info 

[trainboy]

Thanks so much for the info.  This makes running an Irish train from that era so much more fun. 

[jhb171achill]

On 18/1/2023 at 8:42 PM, trainboy said:

Thanks so much for the info.  This makes running an Irish train from that era so much more fun. 

It does - and if you add in the period 1969-63, you’ve steam locos running alongside many types of diesels - A, B101, B121, B141 (brand new), plus - of course - AEC railcars on most main line services - like ICRs today.

As for wagons, barely two alike in any train….

Plus, concurrently, in 1963, six different carriage liveries, three (filthy) steam loco liveries, and four for diesels….

Now, if THAT isn’t variety, I don’t know what is!

Edited January 20, 2023 by jhb171achill

[skinner75]

Around the 2min35 mark of this cine transfer from 1980, put up by Tom Ryan, there is an example of a 'mixed' selection of coaches:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xU9lcXpkrtY

Edited January 25, 2023 by skinner75

[exciecoachbuilder]

2 hours ago, skinner75 said:

Around the 2min35 mark of this cine transfer from 1980, put up by Tom Ryan, there is an example of a 'mixed' selection of coaches:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xU9lcXpkrtY

2 hours ago, skinner75 said:

Around the 2min35 mark of this cine transfer from 1980, put up by Tom Ryan, there is an example of a 'mixed' selection of coaches:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xU9lcXpkrtY

A great video, Tom Ryan is railway royality at this stage. Also, I am  interested in the coach at 2.55, it's looks like a laminate rebuild, but there was never any first class rebuilds. Maybe it's a corridor carriage, but I remember the toilets (on the coaches that I remember working on) were always in centre of the coach. There wasn't many first class 'older'coaches back in 1980 either. 

 

[jhb171achill]

2 hours ago, skinner75 said:

Around the 2min35 mark of this cine transfer from 1980, put up by Tom Ryan, there is an example of a 'mixed' selection of coaches:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xU9lcXpkrtY

Exactly - that’s pretty normal for those times!

[jhb171achill]

32 minutes ago, exciecoachbuilder said:

 

The all-first appears to be one of - from memory - one of two built about 1962, the last timber-framed coaches ever built in Inchicore.

Regarding older wooden bodied stock, yes, all gone by 1980, as were the last Bredins. The last of the steam-era timber framed, wooden panelled stock appears to have been withdrawn in 1972-4, all of it ex-GSWR. Last Bredins about 1976 or so.

[flange lubricator]

3 hours ago, exciecoachbuilder said:

 

The coaches I think you are looking at are possibly  cafeteria car 2412, full first 1145 and BR MK 1 GSV , in fact this footage is dated June 1980 , sadly both these coaches possibly the set in the film were involved in the Buttervant accident on Aug 1980 sadly in which 2412 and 1145 were completely destroyed 

Edited January 25, 2023 by flange lubricator

[exciecoachbuilder]

5 minutes ago, flange lubricator said:

The coaches I think you are looking at are possibly  cafeteria car 2412, full first 1145 and BR MK 1 GSV , in fact this footage in dated June 1980 , sadly both these coaches possibly the set in the film were involved in the Buttervant accident on Aug 1980 sadly in which 2412 and 1145 were completely destroyed 

Thank you very much, 1145 is the coach that I was looking at. Working in the carriage shop, I don't recall many first full carriages being brought in for repair. I think I remember mk2 first full coaches. Also I have a vague memory of an older coach being fitted with mk2 first class seats, maybe it was an experiment? They seemed to do a lot of experiments with different coaches back then. A silk purse out of a sows ear basically. But thanks for that flange lubricator. Paul.

[flange lubricator]

31 minutes ago, exciecoachbuilder said:

Thank you very much, 1145 is the coach that I was looking at. Working in the carriage shop, I don't recall many first full carriages being brought in for repair. I think I remember mk2 first full coaches. Also I have a vague memory of an older coach being fitted with mk2 first class seats, maybe it was an experiment? They seemed to do a lot of experiments with different coaches back then. A silk purse out of a sows ear basically. But thanks for that flange lubricator. Paul.

There were two of those Inchicore built full firsts 1145,1146 built 1964 the second on 1146 was destroyed in a terrorist incident in Belfast in 1979 ?

Edited January 25, 2023 by flange lubricator

[jhb171achill]

1 hour ago, flange lubricator said:

There was two of those Inchicore built full firsts 1145,1146 built 1964 

That’s exactly the two I was thinking about.

Edited January 25, 2023 by jhb171achill

[Colin R]

On 20/1/2023 at 8:31 AM, jhb171achill said:

It does - and if you add in the period 1969-63, you’ve steam locos running alongside many types of diesels - A, B101, B121, B141 (brand new), plus - of course - AEC railcars on most main line services - like ICRs today.

As for wagons, barely two alike in any train….

Plus, concurrently, in 1963, six different carriage liveries, three (filthy) steam loco liveries, and four for diesels….

Now, if THAT isn’t variety, I don’t know what is!

I think that is around the period which I hope to model, but with a bit of modeller licence to boot. While we are on the subject of coaches (could we say on horse racing days) would it have been possible to have run various specials from different railways, so could something from Belfast come south such as an NCC or GNRi special or even something more exotic from the B&NCR even? 

I know that rule one will apply to the layout but sometimes its nice just to have a prototype excuse for running something.

Colin   

[jhb171achill]

By far the most interesting period, indeed; the twilight of the "grey'n'green" era.

BCDR trains would have wandered beyo0nd fairly close-by GNR locations, and certainly not onto the GSR / CIE. By the time you're looking at, the NCC has become the UTA. Under either, you wouldn't have got trains running to CIE territory either.

However, the GNR is a different matter. GNR coaches made it to Cork on the "Enterprise" for a short time in the early 50s. By the time the GNR was broken up in late 1958, EX Great Northern locos, wagons, and rolling stock appeared in all sorts of places across CIE, especially the ex-DSER section. Well into the 1960s, it was possible to see wagons still in GNR livery (especially opens) with the large "G  N" on the side - though with a "CIE" stencil perhaps, and an "N" added after the wagon number. One GNR coach managed to last until 1967 still in brown livery - I've a note of which one somewhere - it was an open brake 3rd. A GNR clerestorey coach, again still in brown livery, was used on passenger services on both the West Cork system and the Loughrea branch, in both cases very briefly, around 1960.

GNR locos, including a (dirty!) blue "U" class 4.4.0, were regulars on the Dun Laoghaire Pier shuttle from 1959 to about 1962.

While full trains didn't run in the circumstances mentioned above, it was by no means unusual to see individual carriages and / or passenger vans operating to all sorts of weird places - carrying pigeons to be released. I kinow of one case of a UTA van of some sort ending up in Baltimore with pigeons - literally as far from home as it could be, which was presumably exactly the point of the pigeon people.

By B&NCR I presume you meant BCDR? The B&NCR was the same as the NCC. The (English) Midland Rly. (NCC) took over the Belfast & Northern Counties; it then was taken over in Britain by the LMS, so the NCC became the LMS NCC instead of the MR NCC. That became part of the UTA in 1949, then NIR. The BCDR, on the other hand (Belfast & Co Down Rly) was a separate company, physically unconnected to the BNCR / NCC except through belfast dock sidings. The BNCR was north and north-west of Belfast; the BCDR south east of Belfast. So it was nothing to do with either BNCR or NCC - however, it, too, became part of the UTA in 1949, before they closed almost all of it 18 months later!

Special trains into Dublin from northern places would have been GNR, and even after the UTA and CIE ate the GNR in 1958, you might say the UTA's ex-GNR stock.

However; as you say, "Rule 1"!

Edited January 25, 2023 by jhb171achill

[Colin R]

Thanks JHB for some reason I always get those two railways mixed up the Belfast & Northern Counties and Belfast & Co Down, I won't even get into  the issue of horse boxes as I am sure that will be another thread that should be started elsewhere.   

 

Colin

[Horsetan]

It does seem as though coach rakes were more a matter of "whatever stock was available to form a train"

[jhb171achill]

5 minutes ago, Horsetan said:

It does seem as though coach rakes were more a matter of "whatever stock was available to form a train"

That is precisely the way it was - not just on CIE, but on all railways. Add to that the fact that there was no such thing as standardisation. Many coaches were built as one-offs, or perhaps there were two, six or eight of them - so in many cases even if the traffic department had the pick of the whole fleet to make up every train, there simply did not exist enough of the exact same type to make up a single train, let alone (as now) every signle train on any given route.

[Colin R]

I would think that there must have been a rule of thumb to this over time, such as lets imagine a morning train from say Cork to Dublin needs to have 50 1st class sets, 100 2nd class and 250 + 3rd class seats these numbers will have been known for years previously on the same day before by the booking clerk at Cork, this information would find its way to the operations department who would then instruction the staff to put together the train from what current stock there was in the carriage yard at Cork. I suspect that each coach would have been known for how many seats it had so it might be possible that they only needed six carriages to start with. But allowing for intermediate stations and passengers they may have added an extra two coaches on the end. Again it would have been more than possible for a train set that just arrives at Cork to be broken up and reformed for another service later in the day.   

[jhb171achill]

Yes, pretty much. Bear in mind that there was not necessarily any direct communication between the ticket offices and the traffic department; and even if there was some fella taking a message up the platform, there might not be a suitable spare coach. There was no online booking system. There were no computers. It was a case of trial, error and experience.

Many sets were made up with a rough idea of what was needed, yes. And indeed they might add on an extra vehicle just in case; less hassle if it was busy.

If they DID add an extra vehicle, it could end up being just about anything. First time I ever travelled to Ballina, the train was a laminate, a Park Royal and a 4-wheeled tin van. At Claremorris, a spare laminate - of a different type - was sitting in a siding. Had an extra been needed (unlikely, in those days, for Ballina) that's what would have been stuck on.