Western Region Passenger Rolling Stock (or not...)

By 1980 I was ensconced in the WR General Manager’s Passenger Rolling Stock department office at Paddington. Open its door to the corridor outside and the complete vista of the platforms and train-shed interior of Paddington were laid out before and below you as we were situated to the side of Platform 1� A downside of all this was that your, erm, cock-ups, could be clearly seen, as a train with the wrong coaches might sit in full view of the General Manager, who occupied offices only two doors down from ours.

My job was to endeavour to ensure that all loco-hauled passenger trains consisted of the correct vehicles, preferably in the right order� We were encouraged to actually go down to the platforms to check on the results of our work and occasionally we were able to experience special trains when they were in one or other of the platforms� In this book you can see the result of that with the Cheltenham Gold Cup special of Orient Express Pullmans although once, with great fanfare, the prototype diesel-powered four-car semi-fast DMU arrived for inspection. In effect it was a 317 or South Western suburban unit, but not powered by electricity. Someone remarked it looked like an early 1900s Manchester to Bury electric unit! We were not impressed. Another time a panic-stricken Passenger Inspector burst in to say that the Queen Mother was on the late morning arrival from Cheltenham and there was no-one to meet her� I am not certain whether she was impressed with my hastily combed hair and tweed jacket, but we got her into her car without too much hassle �

Luckily for me the air-braked Mark 2 sets which provided the lion’s share of the stock for the West Country/Bristol/South Wales services virtually ran themselves and I don’t recall any serious hiccups� I was backed up by fabulous guys at Old Oak Common, Laira and Malago Vale, Bristol, the Foremen of which I spoke to every morning first thing and they reported a complete run down of every passenger vehicle at their location and its status. No computers then, I had to handwrite a report-sheet each day�

The list was vital. If anything in the London Division went tick, you could usually work something out with OOC. The worst occasions were the aforementioned Mark 2D FO with no seats and when, for some reason or other, there seemed to be a defect pandemic breaking out amongst the Sleeping Cars (SLEPs). I remembered in the back of my mind that for week after week Laira reported two ‘spare’ SLEPs, but nobody took much notice until it seemed that there was a UK shortage of them, at least two went tick at the same time�

Sleepers were like Catering Vehicles, we existed on just enough and not more� The latter were continually unavailable at critical moments because Traveller’s Fare wanted to restock or destock or some such nuisance activity� That meant OOC would have to extract the vehicle they wanted from the set it was in, then you had to arrange a trip to bring it to the parcels bay outside the station itself at the end of Platform 1 where the first WR publicity shot of desert-sand Western Diesel Hydraulic D1000 was taken. All so that the passengers could be nourished en route.

So, one day to try and alleviate the SLEP shortage I had the bright idea of retrieving those vehicles from Laira � We ran a daily Empty Coaching Stock (ECS) and parcels train from Plymouth via Bristol that picked up and dropped off anything we at Paddington asked it to, in addition to its normal everyday consist. When the two sleepers arrived at OOC, the shunters were surprised that they contained, from floor to ceiling, spare and used bunks, bedding