Left Hand or Right Hand coach - what does this mean

[Steamport Southport]

6 minutes ago, Siberian Snooper said:

What are the significant differences between a LH & RH coaches to diag D98 and E131, these are outside of my modelling period. I concede that the doors and windows of the guards area may be slightly different, but I would have thought it would be impossible to tell the differences of opposite sides of a composite, apart from the fact that the 1st Class ends would be next to each other, whereas a corridor coach would have the corridors on opposite sides, as per the "South Wales Sets".

 

 

 

Ventilators mainly and similar things such as brake and steam pipes and electric runs.

 

Covered quite comprehensively in the Hornby Collett thread at the time. The set on the previous page, behind the Prairie is one. I thought that is what we were discussing.

 

 

Jason

Edited May 8 by Steamport Southport

[Dunsignalling]

The idea was simply, where a train was  to be formed of a uniform coach style, that the corridors would all be on one side, and ventilators are always over the compartment side anyway, so their alignment is a given.

 

TBH, it's unlikely that building half a batch of manually assembled coaches as mirror images of the other half would have involved a significant cost penalty. 

 

Could all expresses from Paddington for specific destinations be guaranteed to depart from a "right hand" or "left hand" platform, though? 

 

I can see a logic in aligning the corridors on the south side to help protect interior fabrics from summer sunshine, and it would also assist in keeping compartments cool in hot weather. Conversely, though, I'd expect passengers on trains to Torbay, Plymouth, and Cornwall to demand a seaward view along the South Devon coastal strip.   

 

However, none of those three hypotheses would justify building handed non-corridor stock.... 

 

John

Edited May 8 by Dunsignalling

[Compound2632]

On 08/05/2024 at 13:30, billbedford said:

The story I've heard was that since the GW main line ran more or less east-west the corridors were arranged on the south-facing side so that the sun didn't fade the seating upholstery.

 

I believe similar logic applied on the WCML, at least in pre-grouping and early LMS days, when the principal Anglo-Scottish expresses ran mostly in the afternoon (10 am and 2 pm departures) so with the sun to the west. The train was arranged with the corridor on the west side not so much to preserve the upholstery* as to protect passengers from the glare of the afternoon and evening sun. 

 

*Probably made of better quality stuff than the GW was using, anyway.

 

I don't see how one could have a handed third, since they were generally symmetrical in plan, but handed composites were needed because it mattered where the first class end was in relation to the dining car, etc.

 

To complicate matters, when corridor carriages first became widespread on principal trains, they had to cater for first, second, and third, which added to the possible permutations of handedness! (Not, though, the case on the West Coast Anglo-Scottish trains, since the Caledonian was among the group of companies that abolished second class in 1893, consequently the WCJS was first and third only.)