Short change
One-coach trains, railmotors and railcars have always appealed to CHRIS LEIGH. He reckons they make great models, too, and here he offers a selection from around the country to suit even the smallest layout.
One-coach trains have always appealed to Chris Leigh. He offers a selection from around the country to suit even the smallest layout.
The one- coach train has a certain magic for me. One of my earliest memories is of just such a train in about 1952. My dad was a sales deliveryman for Mazawattee Tea. We lived in Kingston-upon-thames, over a corner shop, which had been turned into a tea warehouse. In those days there were no teabags, just quarter-pound packets and loose tea in foil-lined plywood tea-chests. They had sharp metal banding which could cut your legs if you weren’t careful when walking through the store. We had a red Trojan delivery van and I would go out with dad on his rounds. It was while waiting in the van, as dad delivered to a shop in West Drayton, that I watched the railway bridge over the street to see if anything came along. What appeared was a red and cream carriage, which seemed to be moving all by itself, without a locomotive. It was beyond the comprehension of a five-year-old. Years later, I realized that what I had seen was a GWR diesel railcar heading out of West Drayton station on either the Uxbridge Vine Street or Staines West branch line service.
PULL AND PUSH
As a 15-year-old, I would renew my acquaintance with the Staines West branch and West Drayton in my quest to find a trainspotting location that was as good as Weybridge but offered something different from Bulleid ‘Pacifics’. By that time we were living beside the Southern line near Staines, and my mother suggested that we should try ‘the old pull and push’ that went from the station in Moor Lane. My first impression of that station and the train is still crystal clear, 54 years on. The station was unusual in that it had been converted from a big old private house. It had brown lino flooring, bare boards and it smelled musty. Inside the booking hall there was an elegant staircase with a mahogany banister rail that curved round over the platform entrance. It had a gate at the bottom, with a ‘private’ sign, which gave access to the station master’s flat. There was a vase of flowers in a little alcove part-way up the stairs. The view through the open doorway to the platform was almost completely blocked by a dark green diesel railcar with cream lining, sitting at the platform with its engines burbling. It sounded remarkably like the AEC London buses, which waited between journeys, just outside the station. My ‘Abc’ Combined Volume revealed that the railcar, No. W55021,
was one of 16 single cars built by Pressed Steel and introduced in 1960. I was hooked! Single-track branches, bucolic terminus stations and single-coach trains - all in one go! Since then, one-coach trains have always caught my interest. That spread to my overseas interests, too, the first Canadian train I ever saw being Canadian Pacific’s Victoria to Courtenay service over the single-track Esquimalt & Nanaimo Railway, formed by a Budd RDC one-coach railcar. Any regrets? Yes - that I never got to see a GWR diesel railcar in service, though I did see the GWS one at Bridgnorth, still in BR green, and the KESR one in a field at Rolvenden, still in crimson and cream. I’ve since travelled on the GWS example at Didcot, and hope to live long enough to see the Kent & East Sussex one restored to service.