GWR Route: Banbury to Wolverhampton

GWR Route: North Warwickshire Line

Tyseley Shed: gwrt3032

Fifty-six foot, eleven inch long third class corridor toplight coach No 3892 to diagram C32, seen in the final Great Western Railway livery at Tyseley Carriage Sidings in 1950. The coach has nine foot pressed steel bogies, pressed steel sides and toplights over the compartment fixed windows. This is the compartment side, there being eight compartments (six foot between partitions) and a lavatory at each end of the coach. The wooden platform is to facilitate cleaning the coach exterior.

This particular coach was purpose-built as an Open Ward Coach for a Continental Ambulance Train during the First World War. The Great Western Railway supplied coaches for; four Home Ambulance Trains and ten Continental Ambulance Trains (including four Trains for the US Army). The majority of the coaches in the Ambulance Trains that were supplied to the War Office, consisted of conversions from existing passenger coach stock, but some were purpose-built. After the war the Great Western Railway repurchased most of the coaches that they had supplied, including twenty two of these purpose-built Open Ward coaches which they then proceeded to convert into third class Diagram C32 corridor coaches under lot 1269 in August 1920. The table below gives details of all seventy-five diagram C32 coaches constructed, including those converted from Open Ward Coaches (OWC) after the war:

See table in 'gwrt3031' for details of all the third class coaches modified from repurchased Ambulance coaches and see 'misc_equip245' for more details of the Ambulance Coaches and Trains.

Robert Ferris

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