The LNER Encyclopedia

Hello All, A question for the board: As an American, I sometimes can't perceive the sizes of British stock because of the very small loading gauge. My question is this--What would the average inside width of an LNER sleeping car be, and how long would that make one of the beds (and by extrapolation, the width of the hallway)? I realize different styles of coaches exist, but I was generally thinking of a teak that would have made it into the 40's-50's. Thanks

I know it's not directly related to your question but i believe there was still a couple or more ex-LNER Gresley sleeping cars floating around in the very early 1970s because i'm pretty sure that i remember seeing them sometimes coming up road in the mornings through Welwyn Garden City as part of the over night sleepers from Aberdeen which departed Aberdeen sometime around 21:00hrs or thereabouts the night before?. Usually they were within a train of 12 or 13 coaches made up of several BR mark-1 sleeping cars, a composite or two & brakes aswell as several GUV vans all behind a Deltic or sometimes a Brush type 4 timed to run at about 50-60 mph because they didn't want to arrive in the 'Cross' to early the next morning usually around 06:30-07:00hrs. Micky

According to one of the Diagrams (18) the depth of a sleeping compartment from the inside of the carriage side to the inside of the corridor partition is typically 6' 5.75". The clear width of the side corridor (that which you call a hallway) was 1' 10". These are typical dimensions of most of the carriages.

The First class compartment was 4' 6" wide, and the single berth took up 2' 6" of that; the Third class compartment was 6' 4" wide and had 4 berths, upper and lower on each side of the central space. First class carriages slept 8 and Third class 32, all in the equivalent space.

I can assure you that modern BR sleepers don't give you any more room, so us 6 plus footers end up with a crick in the neck.