The LNER Encyclopedia

The minutes stated that the LNER at the end of December 1928 owned 140 "Rail Motor Vehicles" worth £355,815. This excluded motorised permanent way trolleys.

They were broken into four catergories namely

Steam Rail Coaches (Sentinel and Clayton.)
Electric Rail Coaches
Petrol Rail Coach
Petrol Electric Rail Coaches.

Part A-Roughly how many of each were there?
Part B-I understand Sentinels and Claytons but what were the other three. I'm particularly interested in the Petrol Electric Rail coaches.

421

For more info on the petrol - electric railcars, follow this link; http://www.electricautocar.co.uk/ or see the various posts on this forum from "Autocar publicity"

Watto 60041- The terms used in the question are those used in the minutes. They were all described as being Rail Coaches it would be interesting to find out where the term rail-car came from and when.

I was just surprised at the breakdown between the four regarding numbers in each group.

I'll certainly follow up your links

421

I suppose that the "electric coaches" will be the vehicles built for the Tyneside electrification. Not all of these were passenger vehicles as there were also motor luggage vans. I have no idea of how many there were, but no doubt someone will be able to tell us.

Jingling Geordie wrote:The minutes stated that the LNER at the end of December 1928 owned 140 "Rail Motor Vehicles" worth £355,815. This excluded motorised permanent way trolleys.

They were broken into four catergories namely

Steam Rail Coaches (Sentinel and Clayton.)
Sentinel -- 37
Clayton -- 11

Electric Rail Coaches
NER Tyneside stock -- 126
GNoS Crudas Bay trams -- 2*
GCR Grimsby and Immingham trams -- 16*

Petrol Rail Coach
NER --1 -- number 22105, a strange thing with one fixed axle and one bogie

Petrol Electric Rail Coaches.
NER -- 2**
GCR --1 -- 51907, the Bollington bug

There were also 3 ex NER petrol inspection saloons

* As trams these may not have been included in the total
** In not sure that these two were still in service in 1928, though they were stil on the books.

Watto Bill,
Thank you for a very detailed and, if we ignore the inclusion of carriages, correct answer.

Steam Rail Coaches (Sentinel and Clayton.) 49 (no breakdown between the two provided.) They cost £173,009 (£3530 each)

Electric Rail Coaches 87 These cost £172,297 (£1980 each)

Petrol Rail Coach 1 (The minutes read coaches but I thought that was misleading) (It cost £1,752)

Petrol Electric Rail Coaches. 3. £8757 (£2919 each)

The minutes describe the units as being Rail Motor Vehicles so presumably non-powered stock is ignored. Throughout the minutes passenger carrying vehicles are called carriages, coach seems only to have been used when it related to a motorised unit and rail-car is not come across.

Were the Petrol Electric's mechanically identical to diesel electrics??

However, your 48 for Steam Rail Coaches is probably correct because I can vaguely remember a minute saying that an order for a Sentinel unit had been cancelled.

Finally Sentinel/Claytons were depreciated at the rate of 6% pa, the other 3 types at 5%. That is a significant difference the Sentinel/Clayton's rate being 20% higher than the other 3.

421

Re Tyneside electric stock does this include perambulator coaches, Luggage vans and de icer units.

Watto 52D, all the minutes say is, "Electric Rail Coaches.

So I don't know the minutes gave me bald facts and what I found was that these raised questions I couldn't answer. So the questions were in two parts ones where I could give the answer and those where I hoped the answers could be given.

421

52D wrote:Re Tyneside electric stock does this include perambulator coaches, Luggage vans and de icer units.

at a guess i would say 2no luggage vans, 2no perambulator vans which wuld be also used for the controlled set each of the above had two no motor bogies,the 1904to 1938 stock ,used old carriages 4 or 6 wheeled which presumably had a jumper cable fitted so the two powered cars could work in unison at either end .when the1938 stock came in they used some of the earler stock as the meat in the sandwich,i have seen some pictures of these sets but not many, they were ,used mainly for the ship yard workers,some one else might have more info.

60041 wrote:For more info on the petrol - electric railcars, follow this link; http://www.electricautocar.co.uk/ or see the various posts on this forum from "Autocar publicity"

i see that these cars where fitted with track brakes,which leads me to ask does any other stock running today on network rail have them other than the tyneside metro

52D wrote:Re Tyneside electric stock does this include perambulator coaches, Luggage vans and de icer units.

The perambulator vans were not produced until 1951/5 and the de-icer units date from 1938 so they were not included in the 1929 board minutes.

Bill Bedford wrote:

52D wrote:Re Tyneside electric stock does this include perambulator coaches, Luggage vans and de icer units.

The perambulator vans were not produced until 1951/5 and the de-icer units date from 1938 so they were not included in the 1929 board minutes.

the parambulator vans where the some of the heaton fire replacment stock ,the met-cam vans used for the controlled stock where sometimes also used for the same purpose as the seating had been modifyed these two where the same dimensions as the luggage vans and fitted with buffing gear but with passenger stock windows, never got to ride in one

i see that these cars where fitted with track brakes,which leads me to ask does any other stock running today on network rail have them other than the tyneside metro

I don't know about Network stock but there are definately some trams at Crich that do.

That type of braking was a tramway sort of thing although some American electrics and our Autocar have it.

Re the petrol-electric autocars, our information is that No.3171 was withdrawn on the 31st May 1930 and (our) No.3170 on the 4th April 1931. Whether they were in regular use up to those dates or kept on the 'active' list as an administrative convenience/bureaucratic fiddle is uncertain.

Mechanically, there was a petrol engine in the engine room which generated power for two Westinghouse traction motors on the Fox bogie underneath. At that time, petrol technology was more advanced than diesel, so despite the obvious fire and mechanical disadvantages in using petrol, that was chosen rather than diesel. The autocars are indeed the pioneers of petrol/diesel-electric technology which powers a significant proportion of the world's railway engines.

Brakes, the autocars had three types, the traditional screw handbrake, Westinghouse air brakes and an electro-magnetic track brake which 52D and Bryan have mentioned. The autocars were introduced as a response to the NER losing traffic on Tyneside to electric trams, there are many similarities between the autocars and trams, so perhaps it is not unusual for one of their brakes to adopt tram technology?

As others have mentioned, more information is available on our web-site, also I wrote a piece for the Railway Modeller which was their 'Scale Drawings' feature in the July 2009 edition.

Re the Newcastle Metro, there is a Bairstow p/b book about the 'Suburban Railways of Tyneside' (c£10) which includes details about the Metro. There's also the NERA, which has a lot of material about the NER and some about the Metro.

Hope that answers people's questions...

Simon