Carriage 124

Carriage 124
In service, 2008
Type	Service Car
Home Railway	FR
Status	In service
History
Built by	FR Co.
Built	2005/7
Technical
Length	38 ft 5 in
Frames	Ex IoM R7
Carriages

Carriage 124 is a Ffestiniog Railway service car from the Centenary Stock series.

Background

See here for photos of the construction

Carriage 124 was built using the underframe from the scrapped Tin car Carriage 121 (1981) and was originally to be numbered 121. However the number was changed in March 2007 to allow a new passenger carriage to use this number instead. 124 moved into the Paint shop for final painting 29th August 2006.

The first of the new "service cars", it emerged from Boston Lodge in 2007. As part of a carriage plan started in 2005 to increase set formation flexibility and also to improve first class in observation carriages, the railway introduced the Service Car scheme, which saw the construction of new vehicles contain the guard's, toilet and buffet compartments all in one carriage. Carriage 124 was the first of these and it was built in 2005-7 in parallel with the second Carriage 100, the first observation carriage without a guards compartment.

Entry into Service

There was a test run with Carriage 100 and Carriage 124 hauled by Moelwyn on 15th March 2007 upto Tan y Bwlch. The trial was a success and final snagging work will finish the carriages for entry into service.

Carriage 124 entered service with Carriage 100 in A-set with 11:40 departure on Friday 6 April 2007. The carriage represents a new way of accommodating on-train facilities, with the Guard's van, buffet car and toilet all in one carriage. The carriage also contains a generator which powers the on-board fridges, freezer, hot water heater and space heaters. A significant point of detail is that there are two taps for serving hot drinks which materially speeds the process compared with the buffet cars which had/have only one. In the buffet cars the single hot water tap is a common bottleneck and stewards at busy times often have to queue to prepare hot drinks. The off-centre position of the heavy generator results in a less than smooth ride, as well as the lack of dampening making the carriage fairly noisy when the generator is in use. These problems were considered during the construction of WHR service car Carriage 2010 resulting in a smoother quieter ride in that carriage.

At its first repaint over the winter of 2015/16 124's livery was adjusted to have the upper panels painted black to resemble windows when viewed from afar.

• 
  In service in 2008
• 
  The interior of the buffet end. Note the two red hot water taps behind the steward.
• 
  The interior of the brake end and the toilet cubicle.

See also

• FR Carriages