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General Service

A Guard’s compartment, 1913

Click on picture for bigger image.   Photo Ref Wtn/480

The interior of a brake end  carriage. The guard’s wooden seat is in the alcove, with the first-aid box alongside. Below it is the ‘valuables’ box where pouches etc. could be locked away.

The big black wheel at the left is the manual handbrake. Unusually, two automatic (fail-safe ) braking systems were fitted to this coach (known as Dual-fitted ). The lower dial at the right is the pressure gauge for the Westinghouse air brake . While above is the twin gauge for the vacuum brake . The dial at top left is the steam heating  temperature gauge.

No.6705 was 57ft long, one of 83 such carriages built to Diagram 307 of the elliptical-roof  ‘top light’  design which were built from 1913.

All West Coast Joint Stock  carriages were dual-braked  because the Caledonian Railway used air brakes and the LNWR vacuum brakes. Nevertheless, these were LNWR carriages. Some other companies over whose lines LNWR carriages ran used air brakes, for example the London Brighton and South Coast Railway; so carriages on the “Sunny South Special”  had to be dual-braked. And, of course, such carriages could be substituted for WCJS carriages in emergency.