BR Mk1 57' Non-Gangway Suburban BS Brake Second #E43138 (Blue) - Pre Order


BR Mk1 57' Non-Gangway Suburban BS Brake Second #E43138 (Blue) - Pre Order

Canadian RRP: $94.99 estimate   UK RRP: £64.95 (£54.13 without VAT)

Accurascale's Expected Release - Q3 2023

Common features:

The latest addition to the Accurascale "Moving Britain" range of coaching stock, the British Railways 56ft 11" Mark 1 Suburban Non-Gangwayway coaches! Accurascale have gone to town on these coaches, offering all body variants so you can build up a prototypical rake for your layout. Not only that, but the coaches will have a fully lit, fully detailed interior packed with easy access and other innovations, beautifully detailed underframe, bogies and bodysides as these distinctive carriages get the full Accurascale treatment.

Almost 600 of these coaches were built by BR between 1954 and 1956 on the short 56ft 11" frame to provide suburban coaching stock across a variety of BR regions. Sampling a wealth of BR traction throughout their lifetime, from various types of tank engines on the Midland, to GER N7 0-6-2T, GNR N2 Gresley 0-6-2T, LNER L1 Thompson 2-6-4T, LNER B1 Thompson 4-6-0 and more on the Eastern Region, to most types of BR Type 2 diesels and more throughout their service careers.

These suburban stalwarts were almost synonymous with Brush Type 2 (Class 30 & Class 31) on the Eastern Region, and when Accurascale decided to push ahead with their Class 31 models in OO/4mm, these classic coaches seemed very much the "no brainer" to compliment them.

Debuting in the distinctive Carmine Red with black ends in 1954, it wasn't long before the transition to Maroon touched these forgotten children of the Mark 1 family, without lining initially before some received these additional embellishments. From 1966 all over rail blue, including coach ends became de rigueur of the suburban fleet, mimicking non intercity DMUs of the day. This latter livery was particularly associated with the Eastern region, behind Brush Type 2s and Baby Deltics, and seen alongside Brush Type 4s and the mighty Class 55 Deltic (both of which could also be seen hauling these coaches on empty stock movements in the Kings Cross area). They last operated a service train in 1977.

Accurascale's research odyssey for these distinctive members of the Mark 1 family saw them visit the North Norfolk railway for two survey trips in the late 2020 and mid-2021. Their assistance during development of these models has been invaluable, with railway preservation once again assisting development of models for layouts and collections across the country and beyond.

Full access to both the exterior and interior was granted, which was required as Accurascale's philosophy of doing things the "Accurascale Way", means capturing the full set of exterior and interior variations, not to mention covering all configurations of these coaches to allow modellers to form a prototypical rake.

Innovation is a key driving force for the Accurascale development team, as the company seeks to drive the hobby forward in features as well as detail and prototypical accuracy. The Mark 1 suburban coaches have offered a perfect opportunity to innovate and solve an issue that has constantly come up through customer feedback across the industry. Granting access to the interior of coaches in a easier fashion to add passengers and further detail. Accurascale has come up with a solution, a fully removeable magnetic roof!

With a full removable magnetic roof, modellers do not need to fret about removing the bodies and breaking any of the separately applied detail, body clips or glazing. The seamless removal of the roof allows modellers to turn their empty stock movements into packed commuter trains, just like the prototype.

Of course, with a removable roof a beautifully detailed interior is also required, Once again, this is part of the "Accurascale Way" so a fully detailed interior which matches each coach configuration, including etched metal luggage racks and full interior lighting has been included in another step to take OO/4mm coaching stock to the next level. Naturally, the exterior is dripping with detail too, with separately applied door handles (and there are many of them?) as well as intricate underframe detail and beautiful, free rolling bogies.

All six designations have been tooled and covered, five of which have different exteriors and interiors. From about 1965, patches were added to the bottom of the bodies to rectify the effects of corrosion. Accurascale have also covered that repair for each type within its tooling suite. Both ventilators spacings on the roof, as well as three types of ventilator and on the BT and the distinctive full height periscopes, half height periscopes and removed periscopes will also be included as per the prototypes.

Multiple runnign numbers in both BR Carmine and BR Blue make up the first run, with runs in BR Maroon to follow in later batches.

Detailed BR Mk1 56' 11" Suburban Non-Gangway Coach History:

British Railway's creation of standard Mk1 non-gangway stock in 1954 was something of an enigma in comparison to the creation of the 'standard' Mk1 gangway desig, especially considering that entirely adequate (and in some cases, superior) pre-nationalisation non-gangway stock, even as late as 1953, was still be produced. The Great Western Railway (GWR) had the Collett sets, the London Midland & Scottish Railway (LMS) had the Stanier sets and the London & North Eastern Railway (LNER) utilised not just Gresley and Thompson designs, but Quad-Art and Quinn-Art sets.

Perhaps even more surprisingly two underframe lengths were used, 56' 11" and 63' 5", in a combination of six different designations; Composite (C), Composite Lavatory (CL), Third (T), Third Lavatory Open (TLO), Third Open (TO) and Brake Third (BT). Although the withdrawal of Third Class as a designation in favour of Second Class in 1956 led to more commonly referred to designations of C, CL, Second (S), Second Lavatory Open (SLO) and Brake Second (BS) for the non-gangway stock.

The longer 63' 5" underframe non-gangway found favour with the Southern and Western regions, as the entry to their London terminus was unrestricted, while the shorter 56' 11" stock was ideally suited to the more constricted curves of the suburban terminus in North London, Glasgow and Edinburgh, and it is this length of Mk1 stock that forms the subject of this Accurascale product.

A total of 596 of the short frame non-gangway vehicles were built by British Railways between 1954 and 1956, with construction taking place at BR's Wolverton, Swindon, Doncaster, York and Derby works. The Brake Thirds and Thirds formed the vast majority of the stock built, being used across all of the BR regions and these were built to tradional designs of 'suburban' stock, along with the Composites and Third Opens, the former being supplied solely to the BR Midland (M) and BR Western (W) regions and the latter to the BR(M), BR(W) and BR Scottish (Sc) regions. Compartments (or bays on 'open' designated vehicles) were designed to a nominal length of 6' 3", creating nine zones, but on the BR Eastern (E) region, exclusive CL and TLO stock, the toilet compartments replaced a complete seating zone.

In the composite vehicles, First Class compartments received an extra 3" of foot space, with the Third/Second Class compartments being stripped of 2" in length to compensate for this 'luxury', becoming the narrowest compartments in British Railways' stock.

First Class compartments had four-a-side seating with armrests; reduced to three-a-side with armrests in the Corridor Lavatory vehicles, while Third/Second Class compartments had continuous six-a-side seating, reduced to four-a-side continuous seating in the corridor Lavatory stock. A big feature of the non-gangway vehicle compartments were the six picture frames, three on one side, two on the other, that featured local regional scenes painted by an array of BR commissioned artists, along with a single mirror. By comparison, the open stock interiors featured two separated bays, arranged in a 3+2 seating arrangement, with six-a-side seating set against the bulkheads.

Life for the Guards in the BT was never as comfortable as it was for their mainline colleagues; the Guard's compartment being open, with no separate goods cage and just a small partition for housing the periscope to separate the Guard from the goods' van.

Externally, there were no major changes in design during the lifetime of the stock, but subtle differences in detail did arise, with different roof ventilator types and positions, end hand rail types, door hinges and vacuum piping arrangements at the coach ends all being observed, while the Western Region even went to the lengths of including small eyelets set into the coach ends to retain the coupling during slip coach operation; an operational use that had ceased to be practiced.

From December 1963 onwards, roof periscopes were removed from the Guards' compartments and the holes were plated over and in the same period, various longitudinal patches were welded to the bottom of the outer compartment panels to combat the spread of corrosion in that area particularly.

The most obious design difference related to the variance in ventilator spacing from the centreline that was associated with the 24 BR Derby built 'Metrogauge' Brake Second, Second and Open Second vehicles for the BR(M) region that worked via the restricted bore tunnels from Kentish Town under St Pancras.

To reduce the height from the rail and gain clearance under the tunnels, the ventilators were moved to 1' 7" from the vehicles centreline and the Guards' periscopes were slightly reduced in height, but this practice also seems to have soread to British Railway's Doncaster Works as well, as all their non-gangway built vehicles featured wide roof ventilator spacing.

From new in 1954, all non-gangway vehicles appeared in British Railways' Carmine Red on the coach body, with black coach ends, but from 1956 BR Maroon was introduced, again with black coach ends; a livery that lasted until late 1966 when non-gangway stock began to appear in BR Rail Blue, with similarly coloured body ends.

In the interim period, between 1959 and 1961, some of the non-gangway stock received lining to the maroon livery, a move led by the BR(M) Region in particular, although examples were noted across all regions, varying in body position between being directly under the window baseline, or by being shifted slightly lower on the body.

In BR Departmental service, a number of ex-BT vehicles from BR(E) and BR(Sc) were converted to Freightliner Brake Vans during 1967, appearing in Freightliner Grey and of these, two vehicles were then converted to BTU Tool Vans, appearing in Engineers Yellow with black chevrons on the lower body.

While the most familiar images of non-gangway stock date back to the matched rakes of identical BR Blue stock hauled by Class 31 locomotives out of Kings Cross on the former Great Northern Railway lines, matched rakes were not always the case, especially at introduction in 1954.

Marylebone's Outer Suburban services out of High Wycombe, Aylesbury, Brackley and even the 69 mile journey to Woodford, were formed as 6-sets with Gresley & Thompson carriages and initially only the Mk1 BTs were allocated into these sets as a replacement.

Over at Kinds Corss and Moorgate, the intensive Inner Suburban services out of Hatfield and Hertford were formed from two Quad-Art sets, which could not be split and so from the outset, Mk1 non-gangway 5-sets were formed, a formation of BS-S-S-S-BS that actually meant 150 fewer seats than the Quad-Art sets.

For the BR(M) St.Pancras-Moorgate-St.Albans/Luton services, the branded Metrogauge reduced height 6-sets comprised of BT-T-TO-TO-T-BT were needed to negotiate the reduced height St.Pancras tunnel, as well as to cope with the intense curves.

Improvements to all services were made through the late 1950s; a Second was introduced to the Marylebone service in 1956, and capacity was increased on the Kings Cross Inner Suburban services in the early 1960s by dropping a BS and substituting it for an S, resulting in S-S-BS-S-S and then S-S-S-BS-S-S formations. In the same period, the Dunstable Branch was featuring short BS-S 2-sets which could be doubled up at busier periods to cover capacity.

Elsewhere, Kings Cross Outer Suburban/Secondary services extended out of Royston and Cambridge, as well as Peterborough, introducing the CL and SLO carriages in 6-sets comprised of SLO-BS-CL-CL-SLO-BS, or strengthened with the additional of an SLO, or CL, CL, or even CL, S, S to form 7-sets, 8-sets or even 9-sets. Later developments in the 1970s saw formations on the Outer Suburban sets altered to SLO-SLO-CL-BS-CL-SLO, but as withdrawals of non-gangway stock were hastened by the rapid influx of DMUs to suburban and rural routes, and stock was cascaded between regions, the formations fluctuated as stock was withdrawn from service and sent for scrap.

In BR's other regions, BR(W) and BR(Sc), the BT, T, TO and C stock was interspersed with Collett or Thompson stock as required, with both disposing of vehicles quite quickly as DMUs were introduced during the early 1960s.

By the early 1970s, the only survivors were those vehicles assigned to the King's Cross area workings, as the York Road and Hotel Curves could not accommodate longer frames stock such as the Derby Suburban units, and the Cravens DMUs which were used on off-peak services, were deemed unsuitable for the busiest rush hour trains due to insufficient power, seating capacity and passenger movement characteristics.

The final locomotive hauled services were due to be retired by November 1976, but work at Kings Cross' station throat led to a stay of execution for 10 months, with the final working of locomotive hauled non-gangway stock taking place on Friday, September 30th, 1977, with the 17:42 King's Cross service to Royston formed as 7-set SLO-CL-BS-CL-SLO-S-S with coaches 48009, 43003, 43359, 43043, 48006, 46108 and 46147.

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