Brown Trains. Nothing to do with the standard of service!
In 1890 – 1891 the London & North Western Railway built ten new trains of eight 4-wheel carriages in two batches of five for its Broad Street to Mansion House services. These eighty 28′ coaches were built as renewals of much older stock which had been used on the line since 1872, and in 1897 ten new Thirds with a 1′ shorter wheelbase were built on the capital account to strengthen the trains.
As built, the Mansion House sets were formed from Diagram 120 Firsts, Diagram 300 Seconds, Diagram 300 Thirds, Diagram 395 Brake Seconds and Diagram 395 Brake Thirds, and I intend to build Set No.7 in the pre-1897 eight carriage format. The photograph above shows Set No.7 c1904 with the additional Third.
The formation and running numbers of Set No.7 are all known:
Brake Second #96, Second #187, Second #165, First #266, First #118, Third #439, Third #825, Brake Third #272. These carriages were all gas lit and built on 18′ 0″ wheelbase steel channel underframes. In 1897, Third #2236 was added to the set and marshalled next to Brake Third #272.
Both the Brake Thirds and Brake Seconds had three compartments, and throughout the train there were only two compartment sizes; 6′ 10″ wide for Firsts, and 5′ 5″ for inferior classes. this explains the duplicate Diagram numbers for the Brake Seconds & Brake Thirds and the duplicate Diagram numbers for the Second & Third class carriages – to all intents and purposes they were identical, with the exception that in the all-Thirds, the compartment partitions were only to shoulder height.
These carriages were not painted in the famous L&NWR plum & spilt milk livery, but instead finished in varnished Burma teak which was considered by the company a better finish than paint to resist the continuous sulphurous atmosphere of the sub-surface lines. The stock was unlined and class designations were in the form of a large gilt numeral on the lower panel of the doors. The appearance of these sets soon earned them the soubriquet ‘The Brown Trains’.
16′ long roof boards were carried by the carriages, a little narrower than the 8″ wide roof boards carried by main line stock, and these carried the legend:
BROAD STREET, WILLESDEN, KENSINGTON & MANSION HOUSE. CHANGE AT WILLESDEN FOR MAIN LINE.
Trains destined for Bishospgate carried these boards on the 1st, 3rd, 5th & 7th carriages in the sets whereas the 2nd, 4th, 6th & 8th carriages carried boards lettered:
MANSION HOUSE, WAPPING, BASILICA FIELDS & BISHOPSGATE for BROAD STREET.
All the carriages had small 3′ boards on the sides above the windows lettered LONDON & NORTH WESTERN TRAIN in black on white.
The sets were gas lit as built, but in 1902 were converted to Stone’s electric lighting, each carriage was then fitted with dynamos and twin cell boxes. The lower footboards under the guard’s doors were removed at the same time as the conversions, but steam heating was never fitted.
With the electrification of the District Line in 1905, the majority of trains were hauled by the District Railway’s electric locomotives, with the exception of those few continuing on to the Extended Circle and Bishopsgate via Basilica Fields, until cessation of service in 1908.
At this time there are no kits for the Brown trains available commercially in 7mm. London Road Models have brass kits in 4mm, but I’m seriously considering producing artwork for etching as an aid to building them.
Basilica Fields 
December 31, 2010 at 11:48 pm
Well I have enlarged the image by a factor of two and I still cannot see how you know that is Set 7, so please tell us the secret.
Stone’s lighting system – it is difficult to find information for anything pre-BR, so maybe this reference will help you…
http://www.gotopcs.net/lilliput.htm
and if you want to see a picture of an early Liliput dynamo, this may be suitable..
regards, Graham
January 1, 2011 at 1:44 am
Click the image to enlarge it, then look just below the setp on the end of the carriage – you can just see the end of the set board and the number 7. This was confirmed to me by Philip Millard.
Thanks for the links. I assume Stone’s Lighting was developed by Sidney Stone who had a distinguished career at the LSWR, GER, Ashbury Carriage Co., Metropolitan Carriage & Wagon Co., and ended up as Assistant Locomotive Works Manager on the GCR. He wrote several articles on carriage construction in the Railway Engneer between 1892 and 1897, collating much of it to publish them in book format in 1903. Part Two was typeset but remained unpublished until Peter Kay collated the remaining text and published it in 1995. In his section on LNWR electric lighting Stone doesn’t mention the designer, but notes the LN&W, the Midland and GER had all tried the system but abandoned it. He doesn’t mention what was used instead.
Perhaps irrelevant for my needs as my set will be gas lit, c1890s.
January 1, 2011 at 9:23 pm
I have been waiting for the opportunity to ask this question and this topic is that time.
You are writing about an area of London with the intention of creating a New (Alternative) World which provides for a plethora of services which did not exist in the times of which you write. For added complexity, read ‘interest’, the era of your writings is really two separate periods, say 1885-95 and 1895-1905. Your notes on LNWR services over the Metropolitan District Railway indicate that the Brown Train could feature in either Act I or Act II of the East End Trilogy (Act III – not yet written – covers whatever changes you wish to make and allows for the possibility that Lady Bracknell ((she of three volume novels)) might just have travelled towards Bishopsgate by such a train). Now if the Brown Train could be in Act I then the set would be gas lit… and if that train had a role in Act II then the carriages would be lit by electricity…. rather a problem unless you have two “Set No. 7″s, one with gas cylinders and one with electric accumulators. The reply to my initial posting seems to give Set No. 7 a role which is constrained to Act I and hence gives rise to the question.
In what you have written to date, across all of the various topics, how does the reader decide which of the two periods is most appropriate to the subject in hand?
Cue stock list by period?
Regards, Graham
January 2, 2011 at 12:29 am
Good questions.
I think I’ve mentioned elsewhere that the period change takes place c1898, but that’s a very feather-edged date; a set cut-off would be very difficult to maintain because of the incomplete historical record between the various railway companies that exists in reality. Of course this means anachronisms are inevitable, but that’s a compromise I accepted fairly early on, and I’m now more interested in portraying a progression of services and the ringing in of stock changes over time.
The LNWR Set 7 fits neatly into Period I; with the addition of the shorter wheelbase Third it would also sit happily in the first half of Period II. With my ‘anachronisms are inevitable’ hat on, I’m not sure I want to build another complete rake with electric lighting just to cover 1902-6. Of course in 25 years time I might change my mind and do just that…
I don’t want to write out a list of stock by period, at least not yet awhile – that would pre-empt several planned entries, but over the next few days I’ll add a couple of Post Categories into which Period I and Period II posts can be organised and readily discerned.
January 2, 2011 at 12:33 pm
Ho-Ho! Are you saying that Bob and David were plagarising the historical world when they introduced the concept of Period I, II and III for Stanier coaches?
As the planned LNWR Set No. 7 is a Period I model then what happens to those LNWR services in Period II? Will you have a different style of LNWR carriage? Or maybe be no corresponding LNWR service in Period II (even though this entry records that the LNWR is imagined to have had a service throughout Period II)?
I understand your reticence to produce a stock list at this stage – your readers may then expect entries to accompany particular models. On the other hand, I applaud the idea of period categories for referencing individual entries.
thank you for the care with which the story develops, Graham
January 2, 2011 at 2:01 pm
Ha! Well I don’t know much about Stanier coaches – they’re some sort of futuristic mode of transport I presume? 😉
Yes, Set 7 is, strictly speaking, BF Period I only. Add Third #2236 to the rake and I can run Period II with a degree of authenticity. Perhaps when I get round to drawing the artwork – and Philip Millard has kindly sent me several A0 and A1 sized copies of the GAs – I’ll keep enough etches to one side just in case I get a pang of conscience sometime way off in the future to build a post-1902 electrically lit set…
Once I begin writing entries detailing individual builds of models, I’ll ensure that there are obvious links within the text back to the relevant
wafflerambling historical entries which have, by necessity, made up the bulk of the journal thus far.April 5, 2011 at 1:07 pm
Hi Adrian.
Somewhere els on this site I asked for brown train coach numbers, If I had opened my eyes I would have noticed that you have allready given them, Shame on me for not looking.
Alan.