Carriages (2)

The standard livery evolved gradually from the 1875 brown livery. Upper panels were painted umber brown (termed buff from 1896) and the lower ones dark lake (called purple brown in1896). Ends were dark brown and the underframes were black. From 1881 door and window frames were red; letters and numerals were gold surrounded by black, vermillion and white lines. Other small amendments to the livery took place over time, for instance drop lights became a dyed mahogany colour and varnished, whilst mouldings on large windowed stock were edged in pale orange (later evidence now suggests that it was gold, the ageing of the varnish possibly making it appear orange). A sans serif lettered crest with buff garter was specially created for carriages and Non-Passenger Coaching Stock.

Attock's health began to fail in 1895 and Aspinall realised that he needed to make quick decisions to overcome a backlog in carriage replacement. His first proposal was to increase carriage building from 160 to 260 per year. George Hughes was appointed as Assistant Carriage & Wagon Superintendent when Aspinall took overall control in October of that year. Development began again, albeit slowly, for example the American “Gold” system of carriage heating was decided upon in 1896 and a new corridor dining car train which ran from Leeds to Fleetwood for the Belfast steamers was built in 1901. This led to other dining cars and expanded services and from 1907 wide picture windows and elliptical roofs were introduced. George Banks was Assistant C&WS answering to George Hughes and together they created the LBL set (Leeds/Bradford/Liverpool) which comprised of two 54ft Brake thirds and a 56ft First/Second Composite giving seating for 30 First, 48 Second and 120 Third Class passengers in the three lightweight elliptical roof open style vehicles. It was the lightness of the trains rather than the power of the locomotives which made the fast schedules attainable. Second Class was abolished in 1912 and soon after a new eight coach gas lit train was built for the Manchester – Southport service. Riding on 10ft bogies and known as the “Fireproof” stock they were the last fling before electric lighting finally became standard. The Great War intervened and suspended new construction preventing the spread of carriages such as the 10 compartment 120 seat 60ft by 9ft Third Class. Amalgamation with the LNWR saw 3,776 LYR carriages within the pool.

Most of the services in the 20th century were run with bogie stock and trains were made up of sets of carriages with specified strengthening to known well loaded trains (e.g. five daytime trains from Burnley Bank Top to Blackburn were formed as an “A” set consisting of two 5 compartment Brake Thirds and a Composite (4 First & 4 Third compartments, plus an extra bogie Third), but the 1.12pm in 1913 consisted of three bogie Thirds. There were still a fair number of 6 wheelers kept for Summer Saturday trips to the coast during the Wakes holiday period.

The L&YR expected to get approximately 30 years' service out of a carriage especially as new vehicle cost had increased to about £2,000 in 1920. Construction was a wooden frame and body on a fully braked steel underframe. The modern elliptical designs were very much at the forefront of contemporary trends and many L&YR carriages survived into early BR days. Some carriages have been rescued and rebuilt by preservation societies. Fortunately this means that building styles and construction methods can still be studied today.