Surplus rolling stock after Beeching

[RichmondCommu]

The GWR railcars were obsolete designs from the 1930s; the last one was built in 1942. It is doubtful that 1950s engines could have been used without a major redesign.

I concur. However my point was building auto-cars after the development and production of diesel powered railcars was a backward step, especially considering that the country was skint and could hardly afford to waste money.

 

[RichmondCommu]

At the time, one advantage of steam was that, for busy services, it was easy to add another coach without needing an extra "motive power unit". Some of the GWR railcars were geared to haul trailing coaches - but a consequence was that they were limited to 40 mph - not helpful if part of their journey used sections of the "main line".

I've seen a picture of a GWR railcar 'twinset' with a carriage in the middle so that should have helped to offset any lack of power. However going forward all that was required was the development of a more powerful engine to power a new design of railcar.

 

[Taunton]

The GWR railcars (only the earlier ones with rounded fronts were built at Swindon, the later ones with more angled fronts were subcontracted to Gloucester RCW) had engines and transmission by AEC, the bus builders, and they got just what engines AEC were doing at the time. The same approach applied to the later BR units, in fact the GWR cars were essentially prototypes of the BR ones), and AEC had introduced more powerful engines by then, the standard 150hp ones.

The AEC works was at Southall, alongside the line where they had quite a private siding network. They were a longstanding good customer of the GWR.

 

[ChiefPlanner]

Ah, that was Swindon They were also building pannier tanks until then as well (last of the 16xx), some time after volume production of Class 08 diesel shunters started. They later convinced themselves to build the D95xx centre cab diesels, which started to be disposed even before the last ones were built, although they seemed to find a ready market with industrial users.


Swindon's last build of 9F's included the famous last one - (life of 5 years or so) - to replace worn out ex GWR 2-8-0 tender engines .....the BRB balked at that but let it go. Frankly it was a "keep Swindon works going" initiative. Says a lot really.

 

[341o2]

Vast numbers of older stock - retained for summer only / odd football specials etc were specifically targeted by the Beeching reccomendations and cut up.

One of the first actions was to ban pre nationalisation stock on inter regional services - so the older vehicles were kept locally. Then they banned wooden only coaches.

This resulted in a very good friend of mine as a young rolling stock controller making up an entire pre 1948 set at Ferme Park which had one return trip Hitchin to King Cross - Monday to Friday only. This glorious caravan of LMS / GW/ LNE stock lasted for about 3 months in 1966 until someone "who mattered" spotted it one evening , casuing instant condemnation of the whole set. He managed to keep some LNER sleepers in service for a couple of years , one regular passenger insisted on them , so they looked after his needs - until other passengers complained about musty , old carriages on long distance trains. Pre computer age , you could get away with some things.

This reminds me of "lost" wagons in the pre computer era and before it closed in 1948, apparently the Corris thrice weekly train ran on days it was not supposed to because it suited a member of staff who was a keen angler

 

[coppercapped]

The GWR railcars (only the earlier ones with rounded fronts were built at Swindon, the later ones with more angled fronts were subcontracted to Gloucester RCW) had engines and transmission by AEC, the bus builders, and they got just what engines AEC were doing at the time. The same approach applied to the later BR units, in fact the GWR cars were essentially prototypes of the BR ones), and AEC had introduced more powerful engines by then, the standard 150hp ones.

The AEC works was at Southall, alongside the line where they had quite a private siding network. They were a longstanding good customer of the GWR.

This was really the point I was trying to make. There was no good reason why development of the GWR railcars could not have continued during the early days of the Railway Executive. I was not suggesting that BR should have built more carbon-copy versions of the GWR designs - all sorts of things had changed between 1942 and 1948.

But because the Railway Executive had set its face against diesels there was a seven year gap between the formation of BR and the arrival of the first of the 'Derby Lightweights'. Even building a dozen or so a year to develop the design, manufacturing and operational experience in that period would have saved huge amounts of grief later.

And to get back on topic, most of the coaching stock that was scrapped had little or nothing to do with the day-to-day operation of the lines that were closed but all do do with the coaches which were used only a dozen times a year for holiday specials and the like.

 

[70014IronDuke]

But the routes closed had little traffic and possibly needed relatively few coaches. Did the closures actually release many coaches ?

Good point. Take the much lamented loss of the GC main line, which from 1960 ran from Marylebone to Nottingham Vic, a distance of around 120 miles.

From 1960 until closure, the 'core' services were three trains each way per day - and one of those was a 4-car DMU surplus outside the peak hours on the Aylesbury route. So that left just two diagrams of about 5-6 carriages each. A massive closure in route-miles (and track miles) released, what, 12, perhaps 13 carriages?

 

[70014IronDuke]

This is something occurred to me recently and set me pondering.
...
So, surely, that means that BR would now be awash with vehicles (and I suppose locomotives thinking about it) that no longer had a railway to run on!

Was this the case? If so what did BR do? Did they park up hundreds of vehicles in sidings (perhaps where the surplus vehicles for summer only specials came from?) or was there a miniature culling of this brand new rolling stock with some of it sent for scrap? Or did it simply make it easier to complete the replacement of Big Four era stock through cascades?

Any thoughts and information gratefully received!

It was nothing like the same scale, but a similar "surplus to requirments before their designed physical - and economic - life-times" phenomenon occured with the early Mk II non-aircon and again even with aircon stock.

Not due to any significant line closures, but to the rapid advance of technology and passenger expectations. (Or what managers believed were passenger expectations.)

So you had very nice MkIIa-MkIIb and MkIIc 100 mph stock on smooth-riding B4 bogeis made obsolete by MkIID and onwards, which in turn was within 12-15 years made obsolete by HSTs and other MK III stock.
MkIIC was even designed to be retrofitted for aircon .... it was just never done, overtaken by the arrival of Mk IIIs.

 

[randyrippley]

I concur. However my point was building auto-cars after the development and production of diesel powered railcars was a backward step, especially considering that the country was skint and could hardly afford to waste money.

And therein lies a point you've all overlooked: coal was available from the UK, while oil required foreign exchange, of which we had little spare in the 1950s due to the need to pay back war debt.
Building autocars may have been technically stupid, but at least the fuel to run them was available.

 

[ChiefPlanner]

Rolling stock working became much , much more efficient - less of this dragging every arrival almost at Paddington to OOC , or St Pancras to Cricklewood CS - terminal platform turnarounds became the norm with increasing dieselisation , even if they were an overgenerous 90 mins or so.

 

[coppercapped]

It was nothing like the same scale, but a similar "surplus to requirments before their designed physical - and economic - life-times" phenomenon occured with the early Mk II non-aircon and again even with aircon stock.

Not due to any significant line closures, but to the rapid advance of technology and passenger expectations. (Or what managers believed were passenger expectations.)

So you had very nice MkIIa-MkIIb and MkIIc 100 mph stock on smooth-riding B4 bogeis made obsolete by MkIID and onwards, which in turn was within 12-15 years made obsolete by HSTs and other MK III stock.
MkIIC was even designed to be retrofitted for aircon .... it was just never done, overtaken by the arrival of Mk IIIs.

According to Michael Harris' book British Rail Mk 2 coaches The design that launched Inter-City, Mallard Venture, 1999, there were several reasons why the early Mk 2 designs were withdrawn. The first ones used asbestos as an insulator on the internal bodysides, ends and roof. This was dropped for the Mk 2A coaches. The Mk 2B coaches suffered from body side distortion, it was found that some welds that were made in Swindon's prototype Mk 2 were not included. All later builds included gusset plates to stiffen the structure. And generally all the varieties up and including the Mk 2D suffered from a range of defects, from weak designs of ashtrays to troublesome electrics and ventilation systems. To replace a water tank if it had suffered frost damage required half the lavatory to be dismantled.

So it is not surprising the early models were removed from service as soon as possible. The later models were anyway intended to be only a stop gap until the arrival of the 75ft Mark 3 coach, work on which started in 1967.

 

[randyrippley]

There are several anecdotal tales on the web to the effect that the early Mk2 coaches suffered premature corrosion due to lack of primer on the metal.....this has variously been attributed to incompetent quality checks, and trade union bloody mindedness preventing the paint shop staff from being properly managed.

But surely the real reason for the premature scrapping of the early Mk2 fleet was sectorisation: with the build of the dedicated Provincial 14x & 15x DMU fleet there was no longer a need for the planned cascade of coaches retired from InterCity to more menial duties.

 

[edwin_m]

This was really the point I was trying to make. There was no good reason why development of the GWR railcars could not have continued during the early days of the Railway Executive. I was not suggesting that BR should have built more carbon-copy versions of the GWR designs - all sorts of things had changed between 1942 and 1948.

But because the Railway Executive had set its face against diesels there was a seven year gap between the formation of BR and the arrival of the first of the 'Derby Lightweights'. Even building a dozen or so a year to develop the design, manufacturing and operational experience in that period would have saved huge amounts of grief later.

As with locomotives, was this to some extent about using British coal instead of imported oil at a time when foreign exchange was very limited? On the face of it a steam loco with autocoach does the same job as a DMU but powered by domestic fuel.

Also it's politically difficult to say "our policy is to stick with steam, but we'll build some diesels just in case." People tend to question the basic policy, and/or not want to spend money on something that is contradictory to what the policy is supposed to be.

 

[ChiefPlanner]

As with locomotives, was this to some extent about using British coal instead of imported oil at a time when foreign exchange was very limited? On the face of it a steam loco with autocoach does the same job as a DMU but powered by domestic fuel.

Also it's politically difficult to say "our policy is to stick with steam, but we'll build some diesels just in case." People tend to question the basic policy, and/or not want to spend money on something that is contradictory to what the policy is supposed to be.

Steam was very much cheaper to build and relied on fairly plentiful domestic coal in austerity Britain. Diesels were about 3 times the cost (but much more efficient of course)

This did not stop however , the stupid idea of burning (imported) oil on several regions , where the idea of maintaining coal exports to earn money "export or die" , was just a little bit thwarted by the lack of $ to buy imported oil , which would be consumed in basically inefficient steam locomotives.

Bit like burning USA sourced biomass today - but there we are ....

 

[coppercapped]

In response to randyrippley (post 39), edwin_m (post 43) and ChiefPlanner (post 44), there does seem to be a confusion about the availability of oil fuel after the war. I think several events have been conflated which give the impression of extended rationing and the situation has become an urban myth.

From July 1942 no petrol was available to the general public for personal use at all, only for ‘official’ uses. Rationed quantities became available again in June 1945 immediately after the end of the war in Europe. A couple of years later the winter of 1946-47 was long and cold - coal stocks froze, there were power cuts and blackouts; potato stocks froze and rotted and potatoes were rationed which had never happened during the war. In 1947 there was also a strike of transport and dock workers which meant that petrol was again no longer available to civilian users.

Petrol became available again in 1948 on ration; rationing finally ended in 1950. It was briefly re-introduced as a result of the Suez crisis in 1956 but lifted by mid-1957.

At the end of 1946 there were 1.770 million cars licensed for use on the road. This number rose to 1.979 million at the end of 1950 - when petrol rationing stopped - and to 3.109 million by the end of 1955.

Even allowing for the restricted mileage possible when rationing was in force these numbers show that there was never a significant shortage of oil fuel in the country after the war, and especially not for the very small quantities which would have been needed for railway purposes. I suspect that what had happened with the coal-to-oil burning fiasco was that the Ministry of Fuel and Power wanted to buy the oil directly from the producers and supply it to the railway companies and the Treasury had no dollars available for the transactions, oil being priced in dollars. However companies such as Shell, Esso, National Benzole and others obviously could pay for oil at this time as they sold it quite happily to the private motorist who could only pay in sterling.

I suspect an early application of spin…and it has become an urban myth.

 

[Clarence Yard]

The Hawksworth Auto-Trailers appeared primarily as a result of the steam rail motor conversions (and early auto trailers) coming towards the end of their lives. The locos that hauled them were far from life expired so the new coaches were authorised, although with branch line closures already happening, it was far from being a one for one replacement.

The railway executive had a hang up about diesels which had it's origins in the abortive oil conversion scheme in 1946/7 and seemed to be hoping for electrification. In the meantime steam would suffice for most duties. The move towards diesel shunters and DMUs would have been faster under the big four, there is little doubt. A great shame, in hindsight, but then even more diesel shunters might have been surplus in the late 1960's than they actually were!

Turning to the Mk2 fleet, I was involved in their maintenance on both ER and WR between the late 1970's and the early 1990's and the worst for corrosion were the Mk 2c fleet. Sectorisation really ended the first types as DMUs/EMUs took over. Derby used blue asbestos on nearly every early mk2 until mid 1966 but after that they were clear.

My favourite types were the 2a and 2b. Simple to maintain and no mucking about with VB. The work to put a/c into the 2d was ingenious but there were design compromises. Changing a water tank mean't dismantling the inside of the end of the vehicle. I remember taking a very senior member of the I/C charter team round a coach at the Oak and he was taken aback when he saw an airfix kit of parts strewn inside the vehicle. I told him it would be alright for the weekend. It was - the guys had over 20 years practise at it!

I cut my juvenile teeth on the 2d at the Cross. Putting them on Cleethorpes or Hulls with constant stop start work knocked seven bells out of the electrics with flat batts very common. So you had to jump start them off the static ETH at KX, not something for the faint hearted.

It was a shame the Mk2 fleet came up for what would have been their C1 or C2 classified repairs at a time when the CEM reduced overhaul programme came in. With sectorisation their future was fairly bleak but they gave good service in the end, unlike some of their mk 1 predecessors which went quite early, as surplus, in the late 1960's.

 

[edwin_m]

In response to randyrippley (post 39), edwin_m (post 43) and ChiefPlanner (post 44), there does seem to be a confusion about the availability of oil fuel after the war. I think several events have been conflated which give the impression of extended rationing and the situation has become an urban myth...

Not disagreeing with you, but I wonder if there was some difference between the situation with the railways, under public ownership, and the private motorist and the private companies that supplied them. I have no doubt the motorist had easy access to cheap fuel in the 1950s, otherwise the boom in car use wouldn't have happened. But wasn't the Government very unwilling to spend overseas, something to do with having vast quantities of war debt to pay off in dollars?

 

[coppercapped]

Not disagreeing with you, but I wonder if there was some difference between the situation with the railways, under public ownership, and the private motorist and the private companies that supplied them. I have no doubt the motorist had easy access to cheap fuel in the 1950s, otherwise the boom in car use wouldn't have happened. But wasn't the Government very unwilling to spend overseas, something to do with having vast quantities of war debt to pay off in dollars?

Quite! There is something not quite kosher about the 'no dollars' story. I don't think it was anything directly to do with nationalisation as the coal-to-oil change was planned earlier - around 1946 and the railways weren't nationalised until 1st January 1948. As the oil majors could supply petrol and gas-oil to the private motorist and industry from June 1945 until the dock and transport strike in 1947 and again from mid-1948 onwards they must have had a way to buy the crude oil and refined products. It puzzles me why the Ministry of Fuel and Power couldn't have simply bought what they wanted from Shell (other suppliers were available) for sterling just like a private motorist.

The war debt story is another long and involved saga...and certainly the Treasury had no dollars until the 1946 Anglo-American Loan Agreement for $3.75 billion; Canada chipped in an additional US$1.19 billion. (The current value would be about $60-65 billion). It was paid off in 2006. There is obviously some truth in the story - but there is more than meets the eye.

Maybe somebody realised that burning crude oil in a locomotive was an amazingly inefficient way of using oil and looked for an excuse to stop...?

 

[ChiefPlanner]

Quite! There is something not quite kosher about the 'no dollars' story. I don't think it was anything directly to do with nationalisation as the coal-to-oil change was planned earlier - around 1946 and the railways weren't nationalised until 1st January 1948. As the oil majors could supply petrol and gas-oil to the private motorist and industry from June 1945 until the dock and transport strike in 1947 and again from mid-1948 onwards they must have had a way to buy the crude oil and refined products. It puzzles me why the Ministry of Fuel and Power couldn't have simply bought what they wanted from Shell (other suppliers were available) for sterling just like a private motorist.

The war debt story is another long and involved saga...and certainly the Treasury had no dollars until the 1946 Anglo-American Loan Agreement for $3.75 billion; Canada chipped in an additional US$1.19 billion. (The current value would be about $60-65 billion). It was paid off in 2006. There is obviously some truth in the story - but there is more than meets the eye.

Maybe somebody realised that burning crude oil in a locomotive was an amazingly inefficient way of using oil and looked for an excuse to stop...?

I dare say there might well be some papers in the National Archives on this - but a period of reconstruction - the wastefulness of all these almost random oil fuelling faciilties in South Wales (on the doorstep of some of the best coal) was madness , you could understand say Norwich or North Devon where there was in any case a long haul for loco coal and some possible economies accordingly.

 

[MarlowDonkey]

At the end of 1946 there were 1.770 million cars licensed for use on the road. This number rose to 1.979 million at the end of 1950 - when petrol rationing stopped - and to 3.109 million by the end of 1955.

There were long waiting lists for new cars as most production was supposed to go for export. Supply difficulties had been overcome by the mid 1950s.

 

[30907]

The Hawksworth Auto-Trailers appeared primarily as a result of the steam rail motor conversions (and early auto trailers) coming towards the end of their lives. The locos that hauled them were far from life expired so the new coaches were authorised, although with branch line closures already happening, it was far from being a one for one replacement.

Another reason for the WR persevering with steam was flexibility: their panniers were used on trip freight and local passenger as well as shunting, so you would have needed a mix of diesel shunters, diesel railcars, and Type 1 diesels to replace them - as indeed happened. (350hp shunters were limited to 15-20mph, except for the 09s).
Of course, rethinking patterns of working before ordering replacement stock would have been wiser, but it's not surprising that the WR went down the like-for-like route.

 

[randyrippley]

In response to randyrippley (post 39), edwin_m (post 43) and ChiefPlanner (post 44), there does seem to be a confusion about the availability of oil fuel after the war. I think several events have been conflated which give the impression of extended rationing and the situation has become an urban myth.....................

You have to look at the bigger picture.
Post war the rail infrastructure was knackered, and without major infrastructure capital investment was incapable of supplying the countries transport needs. In comparison, the UK road network was still there and just needed lorries building. The only remaining builder of steam trucks was Sentinel, and they didn't have much in the way of assembly capacity, so any road transport had to be petrol or diesel. Given that the total amount of currency available for fuel imports was limited, it made sense to use what was available on road transport (for which there was no alternative fuel).
Given limited foreign currency resources, using them on the road network made sense as the payback would be bigger and quicker (in terms of getting the transport infrastructure up and running post war)

 

[coppercapped]

You have to look at the bigger picture.
Post war the rail infrastructure was knackered, and without major infrastructure capital investment was incapable of supplying the countries transport needs. In comparison, the UK road network was still there and just needed lorries building. The only remaining builder of steam trucks was Sentinel, and they didn't have much in the way of assembly capacity, so any road transport had to be petrol or diesel. Given that the total amount of currency available for fuel imports was limited, it made sense to use what was available on road transport (for which there was no alternative fuel).
Given limited foreign currency resources, using them on the road network made sense as the payback would be bigger and quicker (in terms of getting the transport infrastructure up and running post war)

I have looked at the bigger picture.

The transport needs were not being met because of the railways' knackered infrastructure[1], it was because the type of service offered by the railways - pick-up goods trains ambling from siding to marshalling yard to marshalling yard at 20mile/h to arrive at a siding at some indeterminate time in the future - no longer met the changes in structure and expectations of industry. 'Own-account' lorries meant the goods were loaded at the factory and driven straight to the customer - the arrival times were predictable and the goods weren't pilfered.

[1] And compared to the situation in continental Europe the British railways were in remarkably good shape.

 

[70014IronDuke]

According to Michael Harris' book British Rail Mk 2 coaches The design that launched Inter-City, Mallard Venture, 1999, there were several reasons why the early Mk 2 designs were withdrawn. The first ones used asbestos as an insulator on the internal bodysides, ends and roof. This was dropped for the Mk 2A coaches. The Mk 2B coaches suffered from body side distortion, it was found that some welds that were made in Swindon's prototype Mk 2 were not included. All later builds included gusset plates to stiffen the structure. And generally all the varieties up and including the Mk 2D suffered from a range of defects, from weak designs of ashtrays to troublesome electrics and ventilation systems. To replace a water tank if it had suffered frost damage required half the lavatory to be dismantled.

So it is not surprising the early models were removed from service as soon as possible. The later models were anyway intended to be only a stop gap until the arrival of the 75ft Mark 3 coach, work on which started in 1967.

I didn't know about these faults appearing. Thanks for bringing them up. But, I suspect in many cases they could have been overcome/dealt with (as were many of the problems on the Mk Is), but this does not detract from my main thrust. Fact is that 1965 MkII was obsolete from the point of view front rank Inter-City point of view within about 5 years, when air-con stock started to pour out from Derby. And then again, come 1976, HSTs were coming on line. Had the Mk II non aircon, and later aircon been needed, they would have patched them up for more service. (As, to a limited extent, they did, eg the early Glasgow-Edinburgh push-pull sets IIAs and IIBs, I think.)

Work started on the Mk IIIs in 1967? Really?

 

[Taunton]

Fact is that 1965 MkII was obsolete from the point of view front rank Inter-City point of view within about 5 years, when air-con stock started to pour out from Derby. And then again, come 1976, HSTs were coming on line. Had the Mk II non aircon, and later aircon been needed, they would have patched them up for more service. (As, to a limited extent, they did, eg the early Glasgow-Edinburgh push-pull sets IIAs and IIBs, I think.)

But the whole point of the strategy then, as regularly detailed in contemporary articles, was "The Cascade", that there was continuous production and upgrading, as happened, and new stock was put on the most worthwhile services, and then progressively moved downwards, apparently determined on a revenue per coach calculation, as time went on. Which worked. It even allowed the "good" Mk 1 stock (basically the last few years of its production when many of the key problems had been ironed out) to be displaced down to the longer dmu routes of the time.

The Glasgow-Edinburgh push-pulls (another dmu replacement) were original Mk 2, Not 2a/b. This was significant as the former were vacuum braked, the latter air, and as air brakes were needed for the performance there had to be a substantial refit programme, just for the vehicles involved, which was done at St Rollox carriage works, along with much other upgrading of them.

 

[PaxmanValenta]

This is something occurred to me recently and set me pondering.

During the 1950s (from a quick Wiki and back of napkin calculation) BR built well in excess of a 1,000 first generation DMU vehicles. I haven't been able to track down a figure but I'd guess at a not dissimilar number of Mark 1 hauled vehicles were built as well (possibly more even?). So BR must have built easily over 2,000 vehicles during the 1950s to operate the railway (as well as whatever was left over from the Big Four).

The Beeching Report comes out in 1963 (after a lot of this feverish building has been completed) and axes more than 2,000 stations and something like 5,000 route miles as well over the next decade(ish).

So, surely, that means that BR would now be awash with vehicles (and I suppose locomotives thinking about it) that no longer had a railway to run on!

Was this the case? If so what did BR do? Did they park up hundreds of vehicles in sidings (perhaps where the surplus vehicles for summer only specials came from?) or was there a miniature culling of this brand new rolling stock with some of it sent for scrap? Or did it simply make it easier to complete the replacement of Big Four era stock through cascades?

Any thoughts and information gratefully received!

I do remember as a kid in the 1980s huge numbers of mark 1 stock mostly SK coaches were parked up in the sidings at York and many other railway works like Derby etc. Even smaller depots like Newton Abbot had several Mark 1 vehicles lined up again, mostly SK's.
Several MK one's I also saw near Swindon and Mexbourgh in South Yorkshire windowless and being stripped down.

We are fortunate so many MK 1 stock were built as they are the invaluable work horses on our heritage railways! Ironic they are now riding on the railways today that Beeching made them redundant from in the 1960s!

 

[delt1c]

The Glasgow-Edinburgh push-pulls (another dmu replacement) were original Mk 2, Not 2a/b. This was significant as the former were vacuum braked, the latter air, and as air brakes were needed for the performance there had to be a substantial refit programme, just for the vehicles involved, which was done at St Rollox carriage works, along with much other upgrading of them.

Even if they had used Mk2a or,b's it would have required a major refit as the Edinburgh Glasgow push pulls had disc brakes fitted and there was a sticker on each carriage stating only to be used Edinburgh Glasgow. Until replaced by MkIII I never saw any of these coaches stray onto any other route.

 

[Taunton]

Even if they had used Mk2a or,b's it would have required a major refit as the Edinburgh Glasgow push pulls had disc brakes fitted and there was a sticker on each carriage stating only to be used Edinburgh Glasgow. Until replaced by MkIII I never saw any of these coaches stray onto any other route.

I did some notes on the Edinburgh-Glasgow push-pull of the 1970s here some years ago

http://www.railforums.co.uk/showthread.php?p=1574189&highlight=accents#post1574189

 

[randyrippley]

Even if they had used Mk2a or,b's it would have required a major refit as the Edinburgh Glasgow push pulls had disc brakes fitted and there was a sticker on each carriage stating only to be used Edinburgh Glasgow. Until replaced by MkIII I never saw any of these coaches stray onto any other route.

Many of them eventually went to Waterloo-Exeter.....were they reverted to standard or left as modified?

 

[theageofthetra]

Many of them eventually went to Waterloo-Exeter.....were they reverted to standard or left as modified?

Are these the ones which form part of the NR track monitoring train which lives at Hither Green?