Motorail Services Trivia

[sprinterguy]

I remember there being Motorail vans in the formation when I travelled overnight from Euston to Fort Willliam in June 1991.

The Fort William sleeper became separate from the morning Glasgow-Mallaig (and evening southbound) when the Sprinters were introduced, which was in 1989.

Ah, so a few years earlier than I thought - Thanks for the additional information.

 

[AJP62]

Yes - I think all the Kings Cross services used TCVs attached to regular trains.

The York - Inverness also used them.

 

[Mollington St]

@Mollington St , many thanks for uploading these images, but is there any chance you could upload in a higher resolution - with a watermark as necessary to protect your proprietary interest - as some of them are too low-res to be readable? I had a look on your site and it looked to me that you have larger images but scanned at the same resolution.

Please let me know if these are better.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 27 Sep 2022 ==

Reference the loading and being in gauge , i have just seen the Summer 1981 Motorail Guide and Timetable and the picture on the back cover shows some interesting loading gauges at an unknown location .

 

[najaB]

Please let me know if these are better.

Thank you so much! These are amazing.

 

[Mollington St]

Let me know if any of the other earlier ones you would like me to re scan , before i keep on adding a few more each day or so

 

[Gloster]

Yes - I think all the Kings Cross services used TCVs attached to regular trains.

The York - Inverness also used them.

There were only fourteen TCV and I think that they were originally used on a day time ECML train. After a period of disuse following a fatal accident, they seem to have been used on a variety of workings, normally with at least one end on the Eastern, in various numbers and formations.

Reference the loading and being in gauge , i have just seen the Summer 1981 Motorail Guide and Timetable and the picture on the back cover shows some interesting loading gauges at an unknown location .

I think that the location is Kensington Olympia.

 

[WesternLancer]

Let me know if any of the other earlier ones you would like me to re scan , before i keep on adding a few more each day or so

Hi - any chance of that Newhaven - Dieppe one you posted earlier? that would be good if poss.

 

[hexagon789]

Please let me know if these are better.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 27 Sep 2022 ==

Reference the loading and being in gauge , i have just seen the Summer 1981 Motorail Guide and Timetable and the picture on the back cover shows some interesting loading gauges at an unknown location .

Superb, excellent clarity and very interesting material.

 

[ABB125]

There are still a number of car trains running on the continent. At Easter, I went on a NightJet service from Vienna which had about four car wagons on the back. How is this economically viable if it isn't possible here?
Back in the UK, I'm fascinated by the thought of a Motorail terminal at Worcester - this is the first I've heard of it, it's not far from where I live.

 

[najaB]

How is this economically viable if it isn't possible here?

The longer distances involved make it more attractive, I would imagine.

 

[alistairlees]

Please let me know if these are better.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 27 Sep 2022 ==

Reference the loading and being in gauge , i have just seen the Summer 1981 Motorail Guide and Timetable and the picture on the back cover shows some interesting loading gauges at an unknown location .

The ‘unknown location’ is Kensington Olympia.

 

[Ediswan]

I think that the location is Kensington Olympia.

The site remains as the 'Motorail' car park: https://goo.gl/maps/M1CHrQksEzHC4nrS9

 

[GusB]

Please let me know if these are better.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 27 Sep 2022 ==

Reference the loading and being in gauge , i have just seen the Summer 1981 Motorail Guide and Timetable and the picture on the back cover shows some interesting loading gauges at an unknown location .

It's good that you've posted these here, but if you don't mind sharing your scans with the wider world, I'm sure that the folks at TimetableWorld.com would be grateful if you uploaded them there too.

 

[Rescars]

The longer distances involved make it more attractive, I would imagine.

At a slight tangent, the lack of alternative routes is another reason. Thus the various car transporter services through alpine tunnels - such as the frequent service from Kandersteg to Goppenstein through the Loetschberg for example. Not quite motorail, but nonetheless "going by car by train".

 

[Mollington St]

Here is the 1967/68 Winter or Out of Season Services

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 28 Sep 2022 ==

Then from across the Channel - SNCF 1975 . Note the detail of the three different types of Car Carrying Services - Car-Sleeper, Car - Carrier , and Day Car - Carrier.

 

[30907]

The longer distances involved make it more attractive, I would imagine.

IIRC the parent night trains (Graz/Wien-Feldkirch) are subsidised by the Austrian government. Vorarlberg is pretty difficult to access from Eastern Austria, even though it's only about 400 miles from Vienna.

 

[Helvellyn]

I suppose the Motorail network was a very convenient way for BR to get some good (albeit seasonal) use out of dozens and dozens of reasonably new (at the time) Mk.1 FK coaches which had been made redundant from regular, long-distance main-line services by the introduction of Mk.2 stock.

By the golden age of Motorail, secondary routes and relief trains which still relied on Mk.1 rolling stock probably had relatively little (legitimate) demand for first class accommodation, which could be easily met by one CK, BFK or even the ever-versatile BCK - leaving lots of fully First Class coaches with nothing to do.

With the added selling point that you could offer one compartment per car, so families had their own space without trying to match seating bays in open stock to various groups. As you say, using First Class stock probably made good use of the asset. If Motorail had survived this way I do wonder if Mark 2C or 2D FKs would have eventually been used.

 

[Taunton]

Having recently moved from Somerset to the Wirral, we (family plus car, Vauxhall Victor 101 new that year) went in 1966 in the "new" Motorail from Newton-le-Willows to Newton Abbot, for a family holiday in Cornwall. It ran via Shrewsbury and the Severn Tunnel, as indeed the principal day passenger service from Liverpool to the West Country did at the time.

Departed around 0730, into Newton Abbot about 1330, return left 1500, into Newton-le-Willows about 2100. A Class 47 handled the train (almost) throughout there and back, presumably refuelling at Newton Abbot. I would guess the loco was a Western Region one which had run up light from Crewe, as at the time the WR, and probably the GWR long before, didn't allow locos without GWR-pattern AWS/ATC to run passenger services on its main lines [think Southall here]. The early start and late finish were a bit of a challenge, particularly for my mother for whom any train before about 11am would be described as "early" in a critical voice, but enabled those driving on to Cornwall to complete the journey reasonably.

I seem to recall it ran three days a week, on alternate days, and on the other alternate days the same rake ran from Newton-le-Willows to Stirling.

All Mk 1 FK stock, each car had a separate compartment, which much was made of (as well as being first class) in the publicity brochures. I later read that the open car carriers were onetime LMS coach frames, with the bodies stripped off and timber decking provided for the cars. There was a full restaurant car, which provided my first ever BR breakfast. Meals had to be paid for at normal BR prices. The family in the next compartment had brought along a substantial and impressive picnic in hampers instead.

Loading/unloading of cars was done both ways by BR staff at Newton-le-Willows, while at Newton Abbot you did it yourself. I think maybe one had a platform alongside for the driver to step on and off, the other needed staff walking along the carflats.

At Newton-le-Willows the siding was on the north side, facing eastward, so cars loaded from an end ramp (seemingly the sole capital investment there for the service) facing east. Having deposited the car, we adjourned to the eastbound station platform where the Class 47 was just reversing the stock alongside, the restaurant car fully laid out and staffed forming a passing fascination. All aboard and ready to go, the coaches were drawn forward, reversed onto the carflats, and then pulled out towards Manchester. Now a Warrington Black 5 (this is 1966, remember), which had been alongside, attached to the rear, and pulled the whole formation, Class 47 and all, over the crossover and in reverse all along to Earlestown and beyond, where it was detached, and the train started forward over the sharp west curve onto the WCML. Cars had to face forwards; there had been some early journeys apparently where this was not done, and the less-stressed back windows of cars blew out at speed.

Is there anyone else on here whose family car was hauled by steam?

Passing through Taunton at speed my mother announced we should all crouch down beneath the windows to avoid being spotted by the older generation there who would want to know why we had passed through without visiting .

At Newton Abbot, stopped and detrained onto the platform. The station pilot Class 08 then pulled the carflats back eastwards, and propelled them into the unloading siding on the north side, where we drove off.

Newton Abbot station announcer had been given a script welcoming and thanking etc the Motorail passengers, as well as telling them where to go. I'd never heard the station Tannoy be used for anything other than factual announcements before, it seemed quite strange.

When we returned, having driven onto the carflats we went to while away time at the station. At the east end of the Up platform there was a railway relics shop, like a miniature Collectors Corner. Picked up among others a couple of redundant single line tokens, doubtless provided by Exeter S&T from recent rationalisation, which I still have. There’s a nice brass Tyers tablet from the former Southern lines, which is occasionally polished up with Brasso by Mrs T – who at the time of this trip was not even born! But a disappointment was they also had, laying for much of the length of the floor, the old roofboards off the carriages of the Torbay Express. Probably about 15-20 feet long. However would anyone get them home? My suggestion that they could be laid on the carflat alongside the car and borne back to Newton-le-Willows alas fell on deaf ears.

The outward trip had run through Bristol Temple Meads station nonstop, itself a novelty, but on the return we went (for my only time) via the St Philips Marsh avoiding line, where there was a lengthy stop, probably for crew change, and then by the curves (including the Rhubarb one) onto the Stapleton Road line. Then, it was the time when there was a trial of double-headed Class 37 on selected accelerated Paddington to South Wales expresses, which I had read about in a magazine. We were stopped approaching Patchway Junction, all went quiet for several minutes, then one such express came round the curve from the Badminton line, passing grandly in front of us. A Cardiff to Bristol dmu was just restarting across the junction as well as we restarted, it was apparent who got the priority.

There must have been a meal served in the restaurant car on the return, but I don’t recall it. I think the stewards brought along coffee to the compartments, in the traditional tall silver jugs, as well.

After the trip I recall my parents having much trouble getting (presumably) thrown diesel fuel/brake dust off the car, particularly the windscreen, it lasted through several subsequent car washes. I later saw Motorails pass, including back at Taunton again, and each car was now fitted with a protective windscreen cover.

 

[Mollington St]

Love the story about the 1966 Journey

Today here is the 1977 and the 1978 Motorail Brochure and Guide

I will keep on scanning and listing them as long as they are of interest, Do keep an eye on my own site where i will keep adding the scans also - Transport Past Times

 

[Gloster]

When we used a daytime Motorail, possibly Kensington-Perth around 1974, we were in a First class compartment with another family of three, rather than having our own compartment. I remember that while we were on the southern part of the WCML the husband of the other family, who was looking out of the window, made a comment about the railway ‘down there’ being flooded. My father, thinking he was joking, was about to make a similar humorous comment when he realised the chap was looking at the Grand Union Canal and was quite serious.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

There used to be a car loading ramp near Wakefield Westgate station, at the far end of what used to be the surface car park (the site is now occupied by the station's multi-storey car park), but none of the documents posted upthread mention Wakefield as a Motorail destination. I'd always assumed this ramp was for Motorail service, but was it in fact for delivery of new vehicles?

 

[alistairlees]

There used to be a car loading ramp near Wakefield Westgate station, at the far end of what used to be the surface car park (the site is now occupied by the station's multi-storey car park), but none of the documents posted upthread mention Wakefield as a Motorail destination. I'd always assumed this ramp was for Motorail service, but was it in fact for delivery of new vehicles?

Yes delivery of new cars. Not a motorail location.

 

[greyman42]

With the added selling point that you could offer one compartment per car, so families had their own space without trying to match seating bays in open stock to various groups. As you say, using First Class stock probably made good use of the asset. If Motorail had survived this way I do wonder if Mark 2C or 2D FKs would have eventually been used.

I remember the overnight motorail services that departed York in the late 70s, had Mk1 FKs that had pillows and blankets in the compartments. If there were only 1 or 2 passengers booked for that compartment, you had a comfortable night's sleep.

 

[Gloster]

There used to be a car loading ramp near Wakefield Westgate station, at the far end of what used to be the surface car park (the site is now occupied by the station's multi-storey car park), but none of the documents posted upthread mention Wakefield as a Motorail destination. I'd always assumed this ramp was for Motorail service, but was it in fact for delivery of new vehicles?

British Leyland and Ford used to have new vehicles delivered to what was known as Wrenthorpe on a regular basis. Other makes may also have appeared.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

British Leyland and Ford used to have new vehicles delivered to what was known as Wrenthorpe on a regular basis. Other makes may also have appeared.

I see they gave the facility a rather inaccurate name, in true railway tradition. Wrenthorpe itself is about a mile away, hence the electrified loop/cripple siding being known as Wrenthorpe Loop (with a bit more accuracy). The car ramp was basically in the city centre.

 

[Gloster]

I see they gave the facility a rather inaccurate name, in true railway tradition. Wrenthorpe itself is about a mile away, hence the electrified loop/cripple siding being known as Wrenthorpe Loop (with a bit more accuracy). The car ramp was basically in the city centre.

It is possible that it is not the same location, but I think it is more likely the way the railway termed things. The yard (or the remaining sidings of it) just north of Westgate was, I think, called Wrenthorpe Yard and it was possible that trains of cars ran to the yard, after which they were tripped in a local movement to the ramp.

 

[Rescars]

Having recently moved from Somerset to the Wirral, we (family plus car, Vauxhall Victor 101 new that year) went in 1966 in the "new" Motorail from Newton-le-Willows to Newton Abbot, for a family holiday in Cornwall. It ran via Shrewsbury and the Severn Tunnel, as indeed the principal day passenger service from Liverpool to the West Country did at the time.

Departed around 0730, into Newton Abbot about 1330, return left 1500, into Newton-le-Willows about 2100. A Class 47 handled the train (almost) throughout there and back, presumably refuelling at Newton Abbot. I would guess the loco was a Western Region one which had run up light from Crewe, as at the time the WR, and probably the GWR long before, didn't allow locos without GWR-pattern AWS/ATC to run passenger services on its main lines [think Southall here]. The early start and late finish were a bit of a challenge, particularly for my mother for whom any train before about 11am would be described as "early" in a critical voice, but enabled those driving on to Cornwall to complete the journey reasonably.

I seem to recall it ran three days a week, on alternate days, and on the other alternate days the same rake ran from Newton-le-Willows to Stirling.

All Mk 1 FK stock, each car had a separate compartment, which much was made of (as well as being first class) in the publicity brochures. I later read that the open car carriers were onetime LMS coach frames, with the bodies stripped off and timber decking provided for the cars. There was a full restaurant car, which provided my first ever BR breakfast. Meals had to be paid for at normal BR prices. The family in the next compartment had brought along a substantial and impressive picnic in hampers instead.

Loading/unloading of cars was done both ways by BR staff at Newton-le-Willows, while at Newton Abbot you did it yourself. I think maybe one had a platform alongside for the driver to step on and off, the other needed staff walking along the carflats.

At Newton-le-Willows the siding was on the north side, facing eastward, so cars loaded from an end ramp (seemingly the sole capital investment there for the service) facing east. Having deposited the car, we adjourned to the eastbound station platform where the Class 47 was just reversing the stock alongside, the restaurant car fully laid out and staffed forming a passing fascination. All aboard and ready to go, the coaches were drawn forward, reversed onto the carflats, and then pulled out towards Manchester. Now a Warrington Black 5 (this is 1966, remember), which had been alongside, attached to the rear, and pulled the whole formation, Class 47 and all, over the crossover and in reverse all along to Earlestown and beyond, where it was detached, and the train started forward over the sharp west curve onto the WCML. Cars had to face forwards; there had been some early journeys apparently where this was not done, and the less-stressed back windows of cars blew out at speed.

Is there anyone else on here whose family car was hauled by steam?

Passing through Taunton at speed my mother announced we should all crouch down beneath the windows to avoid being spotted by the older generation there who would want to know why we had passed through without visiting .

At Newton Abbot, stopped and detrained onto the platform. The station pilot Class 08 then pulled the carflats back eastwards, and propelled them into the unloading siding on the north side, where we drove off.

Newton Abbot station announcer had been given a script welcoming and thanking etc the Motorail passengers, as well as telling them where to go. I'd never heard the station Tannoy be used for anything other than factual announcements before, it seemed quite strange.

When we returned, having driven onto the carflats we went to while away time at the station. At the east end of the Up platform there was a railway relics shop, like a miniature Collectors Corner. Picked up among others a couple of redundant single line tokens, doubtless provided by Exeter S&T from recent rationalisation, which I still have. There’s a nice brass Tyers tablet from the former Southern lines, which is occasionally polished up with Brasso by Mrs T – who at the time of this trip was not even born! But a disappointment was they also had, laying for much of the length of the floor, the old roofboards off the carriages of the Torbay Express. Probably about 15-20 feet long. However would anyone get them home? My suggestion that they could be laid on the carflat alongside the car and borne back to Newton-le-Willows alas fell on deaf ears.

The outward trip had run through Bristol Temple Meads station nonstop, itself a novelty, but on the return we went (for my only time) via the St Philips Marsh avoiding line, where there was a lengthy stop, probably for crew change, and then by the curves (including the Rhubarb one) onto the Stapleton Road line. Then, it was the time when there was a trial of double-headed Class 37 on selected accelerated Paddington to South Wales expresses, which I had read about in a magazine. We were stopped approaching Patchway Junction, all went quiet for several minutes, then one such express came round the curve from the Badminton line, passing grandly in front of us. A Cardiff to Bristol dmu was just restarting across the junction as well as we restarted, it was apparent who got the priority.

There must have been a meal served in the restaurant car on the return, but I don’t recall it. I think the stewards brought along coffee to the compartments, in the traditional tall silver jugs, as well.

After the trip I recall my parents having much trouble getting (presumably) thrown diesel fuel/brake dust off the car, particularly the windscreen, it lasted through several subsequent car washes. I later saw Motorails pass, including back at Taunton again, and each car was now fitted with a protective windscreen cover.

Wonderful memories!

I also recall the fuss my Dad made about getting the windscreen clean after our first trip. He bought some special glass cleaner, but it still required a lot of effort to shift the residue. The covers helped a bit when we used the service a second timetime I believe, as well as protecting against broken screens.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

It is possible that it is not the same location, but I think it is more likely the way the railway termed things. The yard (or the remaining sidings of it) just north of Westgate was, I think, called Wrenthorpe Yard and it was possible that trains of cars ran to the yard, after which they were tripped in a local movement to the ramp.

Yeah, that does make more sense.

 

[32475]

I just noticed the latest GWRA auction has some Motorail posters Lot No 144