Hi folks
 

Hello.

My name's James. Travelling by train has occupied a special part of my psyche for a long time. For many years I've had a recurring dream in various different flavours at least twice a week, in which I'm travelling by train, often turning up at some unfamiliar station and trying to work out which train to take from which platform to get closer to home.

I think the seed was planted when, thirty years ago, I started travelling between Huddersfield Polytechnic and Hartlepool every weekend, by British Rail. I was fascinated to enter this obscure world of interconnecting rails in one town, and emerge from it in another. More recently, when I lived in London, I'd often travel between London Bridge and Charing Cross, over Borough Market, across the rooftops and across the river, and that was a joy.

But it was only after travelling on the Great Central Railway on Saturday, on a journey which was a gift from my charming other half, that I decided to dip a toe into the waters of Railway Enthusiasm. I'm by no means a railway anorak, never had a great interest in the 'hardware' really, know next to nothing about the various types of trains and carriages.

But I'm particularly interested to know one thing, and I'm sure many people here will know. On my travels on the aforementioned heritage railway line on Saturday, I had the great pleasure of travelling in an old-fashioned railway compartment (I'll try to attach two pics).

When were these phased out? I remember travelling on one from Huddersfield to Leeds sometime in late 1979, but even then it was a very rare treat. Any idea when this particular one might have been manufactured, or last used?

Thanks!
James

hi
 

hi lonegroover welcome to forum!


Squeaky88 :)

Hello James and welcome to the Railway Forum. You don't need to be an anorak or know about the hardware to enjoy the railways. There are many people who just enjoy travelling by train be it steam, electric or diesel.

Hello James welcome to the Forum,

Hi James and welcome to the forum. Without knowing the running number of the coach in which you travelled it is impossible to be specific about service dates.
From your photos I would say that it is a British Railways Mark 1 coach. These were built between 1951 and 1963 and some remained in regular service with British Rail well into the 1990's.
Some are still in mainline service with charter operators whilst others see use on heritage lines such as the Great Central.
Hope this helps.

Hello James and welcome to the forum, enjoy and all the best.

Welcome to the Forum James. Good to see someone else from the Derby Area. Look froward to your posts.

Best wishes,

John H-T.

Helloa nd welcome to the forum James.

Hello and welcome to the forum James, enjoy
Regards
Alan

Hi James and welcome to the Forum. As John has said, the carriage you were in was a BR Mk.I. You were lucky to be in a first class compartment. These were among the most comfortable places to be on a train in the post-war years, but even the 2nd class compartments were very popular as well. Compartment stock (with the side corridor) was very popular with the travelling public as it offered a degree of privacy, but was less popular with the operators and was phased out during the 1980s and 1990s. All you will see on modern trains is open saloons. The preserved railways run both kinds of carriage and the visitors always fill up the compartments first!

Thanks to everyone for the welcome, and thanks for the information. Very interested to learn that the compartment endured into the 1990s in particular. Hadn't seen one myself for about 30 years, so it was a great pleasure to travel in one on Saturday.

I think the slam-door carriages I used to commute to London Bridge in from East Dulwich (and sometimes across the river to Charing Cross) in the mid-90s may have been open saloon Mk 1s, not sure about that though.

Cheers!

The trains you used from East Dulwich would have been what were known as EPB stock (meaning Electro Pneumatic Brake). These became the standard suburban units of the Southern Region of British Railways, and came in two types – the earlier ones based on Mr Bulleid's 1940s bodyshell design and the later ones to BR Mk.I design. The two were completely compatible however, and came in both 2-car and 4-car versions. Within the carriages there were both open saloons and all-compartment types. The compartment carriages became unpopular after some unsavoury incidents in the 1980s and the units were reformed so that some had more compartments and some had none; those with compartment carriages in the make-up were confined to rush-hours only and they became the first to be withdrawn when the new generation of sliding-door trains came in from about 1992. The final EPB trains ran in 1995.

Hi boilersuit,

Thanks for that. I only started travelling by train from Dulwich in August 1995, so perhaps I missed the EPB stock. I do remember slam door trains running after that, at leat up to '97, without what I'll naively term "central locking" - occasionally people would board the train as it was pulling away from the station, much to the obvious irritation of the guard.

Hi James, welcome to the forum.

Tony