Rolling stock, restoration and new build projects

Stranger things have happened: the original restoration of Duke of Gloucester, Tornado, the Welsh Highland Railway, reunification of the Great Central, and so on.

 

I would suggest that designing and building a new train of "heritage friendly coaches would probably cost in the 10's of millions. It would probably be cheaper to breed pigs with wings and train them to fly!

 

What would be the point? We aren't short of carriages, (Possibly short of operational carriages, but that is a different question).

I think "heritage friendly" is really a euphemism for "not heritage". You run the risk that you end up in the same position for carriages as the 5AT ended up for locomotives: viz, something that isn't the optimum if your aim is an efficient transport solution, but which also fails to tick the heritage box for those whose aim for a day out is a bit of nostalgia. You can feed that nostalgia with things that are new, as the success of a locomotive like Tornado has shown, but it has to be demonstrably linked to something of the age your clientele are trying to recreate. Which really leaves you in the position of - Mark 1 carriages, or new build Mark 1 carriages. What the comparative lack of interest in the 5AT shows is that there is very limited enthusiasm for something that doesn't fit the template of "it ran back in the good old days", however clever the underlying engineering might have been. I'd suggest trying to design a new "heritage friendly" carriage but designed to iron out the problems of genuine heritage carriages would hit the same stumbling block.

Tom

 

Think the only thing that might work would be to build some more Pullmans (pre mk1)
Having said that there are probably still a few later models on preserved railways and i dont see the TOC'S queueing up to buy them.

 

Actually, I don't think there are many late build Pullmans out there that aren't in use - I think most of the Met-Camm ones are in use by their owners (as indeed are reasonable examples of earlier types) and valued as such, and in any case there aren't that many of them. The next latest ones are the Golden Arrow ones which are metal panelled but timber framed - they could be rebuilt with new steel frames, as was done with the Trianon Bar car but there aren't many of them available either, and they, along with all the earlier types, would require new, more modern bogies.. I don't think there are many steel Brighton Belle cars available now, and they cost a lot to rebuild their underframes for loco haulage, After that, one goes down to the 1928 all-steel Met-Camm cars, but Belmont have acquired most of those, and then lastly there are assorted earlier wooden bodied cars which would require new bodies, new interiors and - most probably - new underframes!

There are, therefore, sound reasons why TOCs aren't queueing up to buy whatever Pullman cars are available!

 

But would they therefore pay to have some built ? better return /seat price than a mk 2. Having said that you can refit a mk3 paint it Nanking blue and call that a Pullman....

 

….. and a thing of wonder it is too, having had the pleasure of a tour to Kyle on board.