I am looking to get some Mk1 coaches for my layout BUT! what livery

Chocolate/Cream, Crimson/Cream, Maroon

Bearing in mind my layout is Crewe 1959 - 1963

and what type, corridor, separate cabins (if that's the right term)

Quote from: Tom@Crewe on May 15, 2013, 08:29:56 PM
I am looking to get some Mk1 coaches for my layout BUT! what livery

Chocolate/Cream, Crimson/Cream, Maroon

Bearing in mind my layout is Crewe 1959 - 1963

and what type, corridor, separate cabins (if that's the right term)

1956 saw the introduction of the maroon livery. 1959 would have certainly seen some crimson/cream coaches  but getting less and less common.

The Western only repainted a few mark 1 coaches chocolate and cream in the late 1950s intended for the crack expresses.  There would also have been other non BR Mark 1 coaches around again gradually getting phased out.

Most trains would have been Mark 1 corridor coaches. The suburbans had a rather brief life on the whole before quite a few of them got turned into carflats. The big exception to that was some of the Kings Cross suburban services. The suburbans replaced older non corridor coaches but were fairly promptly replaced by high density DMU stock and corridor passenger stock.

(The idea for non corridor stock is that you can fit a lot more people per coach and a lot more people/ton which mattered more in steam days. It's however hard for ticket checking, and makes getting to the loo even harder than finding a working loo on an FGW 158)

Alan

I agree, a mix of maroon and crimson/cream. You would also probably get some staniers around Crewe as well in that period.

My layout is more the Crewe-Chester-Holyhead line rather than the Crewe-London.

So how many coaches would make a typical train length? (too many coaches on the layout would reach end to end and look wrong 

And the loco (steam) pulling them would more likely be ex-LMS with Late crest rather than LNER or others with late crest

Mostly LMS and BR stock for that. LNER was the other side of the country (Grimsby, Hull, Newcastle, Sunderland etc)

Holyhead would see a mix including really big trains - in its heyday it saw services like the Irish Mail and was the route to Dublin.

Hi Irish mail often loaded very well with relief and excursion traffic very heavy - and that could bring allsorts of festering old stock. Rhyl carriage sidings alone could hold 150 vehicles.

I guess main trians of 6-8 and local trains of 3 coaches would look about right on the normal house layout. NorthWales coast was early into Derby lightweight DMUs and Derby Heavyweight 108 units - like Farisn produce!.
Heavy Parcels /van traffic to Holyhead .

This months Rail express worth getting with first of several articles on North Wales operations.  Check out the web for pics and library for North Wales books - some good picture albums were made. - check out second hand book sales at shows .
Robert       

My experience of Crewe in the Sixties was that you could expect to see almost anything on inter-regional workings. When I was living in Barrow-in-Furness in early 1966 we used to travel home from Preston regularly on a Sunday evening on a train from Crewe to Barrow. It seemed that the stock used on this train was anything they could get there hands on at Crewe, including Gresley stock and it was always a mixed bag. For a few weeks there was an ex-GWR coach in the formation and we used to make a bee line for this just because it was different. Towards the end of that decade a lot of ex-Southern Region BR Mark i's appeared on the West Coast main line and they looked very odd going over the northern fells on the Euston - Glasgows.

Ron