Scottish Railway Preservation Society Collections pages

LNER Thompson Third Class Tourist Open coach No.13803

LNER Thompson Third Class Tourist Open coach No.13803
Restored and available for traffic, in grained teak livery. Photograph J.T. Ormiston.

SRPS Core Collection.
Acquired 1977 with grant support from the National Fund for Acquisitions.
In branch service, "scumbled" 'teak livery. Built 1947, LNER York. Diagram 330

Sir Nigel Gresley died in office in 1941, and was succeeded as Chief Mechanical Engineer by Edward Thompson, whose name is associated with post war LNER carriage construction. In two key respects, this carriage represents the new order. Internally, it is laid out as an open saloon rather than with traditional compartments. The other development is that its body is made of steel panels screwed to a timber frame. Up to this point, the company had always built its carriages with teak panels, finished with varnish, and to preserve this appearance when in a train with wooden bodied vehicles, the new carriages were painted ("scumbled") to imitate wood.

This coach is typical of what would have been used by ordinary main-line travellers in Scotland, during the 1940s and 1950s, a high standard of comfort and a post war improvement of the fleet employed on Anglo-Scottish services. The body was at one time the carriage cleaners' messroom at Bellahouston Carriage Sidings, Glasgow, and was recovered by SRPS and put back on to Gresley bogies.

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