Taking a personal horse drawn carriage with you was preferable to trying
to find one at the far end of the journey and in the 1830's people often
travelled in their own carriage, strapped down to a flat wagon. The Duke of
Wellington, never a fan of the railways, always travelled in his own coach on a
flat wagon right up to his death in 1852. As railway carriages improved the
passengers moved inside but the provision of 'carriage trucks' by the railways
suggests that, although the preserve of the rich, taking ones carriage along
remained a fairly common occurrence.
Private carriages and individual
privately owned motor vehicles usually travelled on purpose built stock,
'carriage trucks', attached to passenger trains. Passenger stations were often
equipped with a 'carriage shoot', a short length of track leading to a bank
suitable for end-loading. As horse drawn coaches were made to be light it is
probable that at quieter stations the carriage truck would be uncoupled from
the rear of the train and moved to the carriage shoot by men or horses,
allowing the train to continue on its way. More expensive private carriages
were transported in covered vans fitted with end doors and called CCT's (for
Covered Carriage Truck).
Photographs of models of an LNWR carriage truck
and a Midland Railway CCT will be found in the section on Goods Rolling Stock
Design - Specialised Rolling Stock.
During the run up to the Grouse
shooting season (12th August) entire trains of open carriage trucks and CCT's
were seen taking the coaches of the wealthy up to Scotland. Carriage trucks and
covered carriage trucks were usually rated to travel attached to passenger
trains but often appeared in goods trains as well.
Scheduled motor car
carrying services have been around for a long time, the GWR provided such a
service through the Severn Tunnel in the 1920's for example (although you had
to book 24 hours in advance to use it) and I believe the LMS pioneered the use
of redundant coach underframes fitted with a simple wooden floor for private
car traffic (although I would assume most such wagons were used for delivering
new cars to dealers or for inter-factory traffic).
As traffic in motor
cars increased in the 1930's more covered carriage truck (CCT) vehicles were
produced, some, such as the GWR Mogo van, were existing goods van designs with
end doors added but these were mainly used for transporting new cars to
dealers. Most private cars were transported in longer wheelbase vehicles
designed to run in passenger trains although most of the van type were
flat-sided rather than bowed to match the passenger coach side curves. I
believe a lot of private cars were actually moved in goods trains, rather than
attached to the passenger train carrying the owner.
For carrying
individual motor cars BR built a number of four wheeled open carriage trucks
for use in goods services and both four wheeled and bogie vehicles with end
doors for working with passenger stock. The standard British Railways four
wheeled CCT (as offered in N by Lima) could only carry two cars, in practice
this proved inefficient and they were seldom used for this traffic. After 1959
four and six wheeled stock was banned from passenger trains but the four
wheeled CCT's had proved generally useful as vans, they remained in use for
many years for parcels traffic.
In 1956 a new approach was adopted
which offered passenger and vehicle loading at a single depot. The passengers
traveled in separate coaches from the cars but the coaches and car vehicles
were assembled as a single rake and traveled through the system as a single
train. The first such service was established by British Railways Eastern
Region between London and Perth in 1955. CCT and larger bogie GUV end-door
vehicles were used for these early services, wearing standard maroon and yellow
livery, changing to blue and white in 1964.
The service was called
Motorail and operated between quite a number of terminals around the country. A
Motorail terminal does not require a great deal of space and adds some
operational interest to a layout. In the example shown below the design is
based on a Metcalf Models goods shed as this has good roof lights and visible
roof truss detail to add interest to the scene. One end of the shed is replaced
by an insert across the top, the colourful sinage at such a terminal makes it a
good visual focus, this can be handy near one end of a layout. The sketch
assumes that the entrance to the terminal is at platform height, so no ramp is
required inside the building. The sketch is based on a photograph of such a
terminal (actually Kensington Olympia) posted by Robin Carmody on his website
at http://www.elidor.freeserve.co.uk/index.htm however the sketch represents a
rather smaller version.
Fig___ Motorail Terminal in 1965
The van type vehicles proved to be difficult to work with as
the drivers had to make their way along the rake in poor lighting and opening
and closing the end doors required a lot of time and effort by staff. The GUV's
remained in use following the ban on the four wheeled CCT's but in the mid
1960's BR adopted a new kind of vehicle, basically a redundant coach
underframe, fitted with a wooden deck and low side rails supported on
stanchions. These were coded Carflat and as modern cars could not be chained
down the vehicles were secured using bright yellow wooden chocks. I understand
these chocks had spikes on the base and they were simply kicked into place
under the wheels (obviously the car hand brake would be applied as well). The
standard open BR Carflat (Motorail) converted from the BR Mk.1 coach running on
B1 bogies was 64ft 6in over headstocks, vacuum braked and weighed in at 21 tons
(unladen). They were limited to a maximum speed of 90 mph and fitted with the
standard coaching stock buckeye coupling. Prior to 1964 they would have a black
chassis with maroon bodywork, changing to rail blue bodywork in 1964. This
change presumably took a long time as in the early 1970's some of these
vehicles appeared to be all over 'rail grime' and many did not have the
Motorail side boards.
Fig ___ Motorail Carflat
The name Motorail
was officially adopted for the service in 1966 (although it seems to have been
in use before that date). Also in 1966 some of the BR owned air braked Cartic
Four car transporters were transferred to these services, suggesting a
substantial demand. The Cartic would require additional facilities as the
terminals to access the upper deck of the vehicle but I have not traced any
photographs or other illustrations.
Motorail proved moderately
successful and the network expanded with services from London to Edinburgh
Stirling, and Inverness in Scotland and between London and Fishguard and St.
Austel in the west. Services from provincial centres such as Birmingham to
Stirling and Newton Le Willows to Stirling were established in the 1960's. By
the late 1970's there were over thirty Motorail services operating, most
associated with over-night sleeping car services.
A typical Motorail
train might be five coaches with two or three carflats behind, each carrying
three or four motor cars. Several Motorail services operated overnight and for
these some of the coaches would be sleepers. On at least one such service the
train made its way almost to its destination (Glasgow I seem to remember) but
was then 'parked' in a siding to allow the passengers a full nights sleep,
finally moving to the station in the morning. Dining cars were attached to some
services, on others a pre-prepared meal on a tray was available if you paid a
supplement to the fare.
To access the car carrying coaches there was
usually an end-loading dock, these could either be the existing arrangements at
a station or they might be a purpose built terminal. Some redundant carriage
sidings at Olympia in London were converted into a two-track Motorail terminal
in 1961. This terminal remained in use until 1981 when it was knocked down and
the site became a car park for the Olympia centre. Carflats had fixed side
rails and could only be end-loaded. Where there was no suitable end-loading
facility a wagon could be adapted to permit side access to a platform and end
access to the flats or covered vans. As platforms are usually slightly lower
than the deck of the car carrying wagon a drop centred vehicles was used for
this. The cars were driven onto the wagon and down into the well, bringing them
to the right height for driving over the side onto the platform.
In
1961 Eastern Region built some interesting car carrying vehicles which
resembled windowless passenger coaches. These had a centre section which
lowered down between the bogies allowing additional cars to be carried in a
'double decker' arrangement. These vehicles were TOPS coded TCV, I have seen
references to either eight or fourteen of these being built and although
equipped for ferry working I believe they were only used on the Anglo-Scottish
motorail services (I could not see the securing lugs in any pictures I have
seen but they have the 'ferry' anchor marking and ferry data plate as shown in
the sketch). They required an elevated access ramp as the entrance was in the
upper half of the end (the drop flap at the bottom of the doors is shown in the
sketch below, its open position is shown to the left of the lower full coach
sketch). They were presumably originally painted maroon with yellow lettering,
changing to rail-blue and white in 1964. The sketch is based on this later
livery.
Fig ___ Eastern Region Motorail TCV
As the British Railways standard coach designs began to
appear in some numbers BR converted old Big Four coaches into carflats for both
Motorail and also for delivering new cars to dealers both in the UK and (via
the train ferries) in Europe. New ex BR Mk1 coaches still being converted to carflats for
Motorail services in the early 1980's but they were also routinely used for new
car and van traffic, travelling in goods trains but still carrying the full
Motorail markings. I am not sure when the Motorail carflats were phased out but
by the later 1980's BR was once again using bogie vans for (at least some)
Motorail services.
The upper drawing in the sketch below is based on a photograph on Paul Bartlett's web sire (see Bibliography) and shows the early intercity livery of white and blue. Most GUVs were pain all over blue but those designated to run in passenger trains had this livery applied. The marking in the lower right are the number (96153) above the code (NXX) above 'Tare 30 Tons'.
I believe the GUV vans used in the later years were often plain blue
but some were painted in the revised 'intercity' livery (officially called the 'executive intercity livery' I believe, introduced in 1983), grey upper side, white lower side with red
stripe and below the stripe toward the left hand end the word Motorail in
black. Some GUV vans in this revised Intercity livery simply had the word Motorail added to the chalk boards at each end of the body as shown in the bottom drawing below, one of these was parked outside the Eurostar depot in Ardwick (South Manchester) in 2004.
Fig___ Motorail GUV vans
The development of the motorway network and the improved
reliability of motor cars all counted against Motorail and the service was not
sufficiently popular to justify the investment in depots. The number of cars
carried peaked in the mid 1970's and the last BR Motorail services ran in
1995.
The Motorail concept has proved popular in Europe, where
passengers sometimes travel in their cars loaded onto special car-carrying
vehicles. This idea was adopted for the cross-channel tunnel services
transporting people sitting in their cars between Britain and Europe.
Recent developments
In 1999 a new Motorail service between
London and the South West was launched by First Great Western. The Motorail
service, from Paddington to Penzance, will carry cars in special rail vehicles
attached to the "Night Riviera" sleeper service.
Also in 1999 Great
North Eastern Railway announced an intention to launch a cars-on-trains
Motorail service between London and Scotland.
Finally I came across an
announcement, again dated 1999, that 'Motorail' had announced plans to
transport 20,000 cars a year to Scotland by rail, for distribution by dealers
in the Highlands. As far as I am aware Motorail does not exist as a separate
company however GB Railfreight were in talks with GNER regarding their motorail
service so GBR may be operating this service using Motorail branded
stock.
There is a photograph on
Wagons on the Web
showing another van connected with motor car traffic. Coded NVA
they appear shorter than a standard coach and may have been re-bodied full
brake vans or GUV vans. They had no windows but three pairs of doors occupied
most of the vehicle side. I do not know what the ends were like but they were
all black, the sides were Rail Blue with a white strip in the upper section
containing the words Car Carrier (presumably to run with GNER stock). Some were
in use in late 1999 and they may have been built for the revived motorail
services. The side doors would presumably allow side-loading, which would save
having to provide and end-loading facility.