LBSC EMU livery question

Well, you've got my vote on this one...

...and most of the electrified suburban stations still had proper little goods yards for the coal and the paraffin and the parcels and the bananas...

...and the word "Waterloo" was spoken with reverence...

...and tickets were objects of veneration, not just scraps to be thrown away. All arriving passengers were met (except at halts), and *all* tickets were collected, sorted into order of originating station, and sent to Headquarters for filing (and presumably totting-up to check the takings at each station). I know, because as a 7-year old, I used to get 1d per session from the porters at Worcester Park to do the sorting!

...and you could look at the lion on the side of proper green trains and the words "British Railways", and your heart would swell because you were

*British*, nothing more to be said. And then you would look away from lion and over to the porters' mess-room where the station cat lay snoozing. Every station had a cat on the official wages book to keep down the rodents... (Tom and Jerry spring to mind at this point, dunno why!)

Sigh!

The last remnant of the "old days" seems to be when a line closes and the stationmaster appears resplendent in top hat to see off the last train. I saw this on the Wimbledon to West Croydon branch a few years ago when I rode the last train before closure for conversion to the Tramlink.

Cheers, Steve

Amen - I am still having trouble adjusting to this new 'post professional society' the natives have adopted.

Regards

Mike

I am having a lot of difficulty with the Southern units - the official name does not specify make or model, it merely gives the information the railway itself would need to know (how big, what facilities and what kind of brakes), so stuff with the same official name could look totally different. What we could do with a proper set of 'lot numbers' or something similar to differentiate the vehicles (there agin they were re-built and re-mixed as well so perhaps its a hopeless quest).

Regards

Mike

Let us know when you've done it!

Even today, on the standardised post-privatisation Southern, I can look out of my office window at the London Bridge-Blackfriars-Charing Cross chord, and I have so far counted six entirely different liveries on the class 319's working the Thameslink service.

Cheers, Steve

The umber colour that Carter states that all coaches were painted in post

1915, was very dark. A photo taken on a pre-panchromatic film might very well show this as black.

Many thanks - Drawing ammended (this sketch was originally intended to appear half its present size as part of a discussion on pantographs, so its a bit thick and clumsy)

Many thanks for that - I will ammend the drawing accordingly (I have a photo of a driving trailer that shows the external illumination device and destination board) The brake pipe on the photo I used to make the drawing (a scan of a page from a book, pretty low resolution) looks rather fat for an air brake, however as I say its a pretty poor photo I was working from.

Thanks again

Mike

I've never heard that. Whilst the 6PULs, 6PANs, 4CORs and 4RESes were reformed into a number of short lived units late in their life (including creating ten 6COR units in 1965 as others have mentioned), I have never seen it said that the PULs started life classified as COR. Do you have a source for that ?

The 1898-1948 Southern EMU book which covers the family says that the

6CORs were seldom used, but did see use in 1967 on summer relief trains on the Kent Coast.

Nick

A couple of notes from Carter about pipes:

In 1920,

Westinghouse brake pipes operating brake blocks were painted black. Pipes not operating brake blocks were painted vermillion red.

There were additional colours for push/pull, railmotors, overhead electrics and slip coaches.

In message , Nick Leverton writes

I notice that nobody has mentioned the 6CITY units yet.

In message , Christopher A. Lee writes

or even 8-car trains made up of a mixture of BIL, HAL and LAV stock.

mentioned),

Yes in deed, and that is in conflict with what someone has put up on the SEMG web site (apparently), having known some of the people involved with the SEG I would not necessarily take what they say as correct without knowing the source behind it, AIUI the author of the above mentioned book had access to people and paperwork who worked with the said stock - ATM I don't know if the person behind the information on the SEMG web site is a railway professional or just a keen enthusiast.

Whaddya mean "(apparently)"? You can go to this page and look for yourself, can't you?

And if it is just a keen enthusiast behind the information, I sincerely hope you will sort him out in your usual diplomatic manner.

Now, turning to something related, I am fairly sure, but not certain, that as steam came to an end, as well as the 900 set, there was set formed of ex-4-COR (or family) carriages numbered 600 or 601. There is no mention of such a set on the SEMG site. Does anyone else recall such a beast?

Cheers, Steve

There were *no* such things, and you are a very, very bad person for mentioning such things.

There were, however, some 6-CIT units, although, just to be absolutely clear, I was *not* around at the time, so I do *not* have any personal evidence for this, nor do I have any statements attested by at least six railway professionals in front of a commissioner of oaths. There, now I've mentioned them!

Cheers, Steve

In message , Steve W writes

Looking at Colin J Marsden "Southern Electric Multiple Units 1898-1948" (Ian Allan, 1983) on pages 63 and 64 there are pictures of 6TC set number 601. This set was used on the Oxted line for a short beriod from early 1966 until being transferred to the Clapham Junction-Kensington Olympia service. The set was withdrawn after a collision. There is a distinct lack of further information here.

In message , Steve W writes

Yeah, yeah. I got that out of "Southern Electric Multiple Units

1898-1948" by Colin J Marsden (Ian Allan, 1983) which is well-known for containing rather a lot of mistakes, which do not reflect at all well on either the author or the publisher.

For example, talking about the 2-BIL units he says: "The livery applied to all units when constructed was standard BR green." This can't refer to the Barry Railway, as that no longer existed in 1935 (and didn't use green livery anyway) and it certainly can't refer to British Railways as that was totally unthought of in 1935.

Thanks again - I'll ammend the drawing accordingly

Hang on a minute - Barry Railway - BIL-2 sets - Did the Barry Railway have an electrified line? If they did I have never heard of it, looking at my notes I am not sure where it might have been.

I was under the impression the GWR did not have any electrified lines.

Any info on this welcome

Mike

Thank you Jane, that is excellent info. It's good to know my memory is not totally gone to pot!

Yes, in 1966 I was commuting into Clapham Junction every day, and I used to be fascinated by the CJ-Olympia service. I can't remember what was used to haul the service, it could have been 2MT tanks or class 33 diesels.

In the pictures to which you refer, are the end gangways still in use, or have they been removed? This is another possibility for the idea that the

4-COR's had no end connections.

Cheers, Steve