Hi folks

[lonegroover]

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!

[boilersuit]

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none; those with compartment carriages in the make-up were confined to rush-hours only and they became the first to be withdrawn when the new generation of sliding-door trains came in from about 1992.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.

[lonegroover]

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.

[TRP]

Hi James, welcome to the forum.

Tony