BR Mk1 Coaches - footsteps

[Jeremy Good]

I'm in the process of converting/upgrading a batch of Bachmann Mk 1's for my 1970/1971 Scottish layout project. They will be almost exclusively in BR Blue/Grey livery.

Most of the detail photos of blue and grey coaches I have found are from a later period and the coaches have had the footsteps on the coach ends either side of the corridor connections removed. When did this happen? Was it when they were painted blue/grey in the late 1960's/early 1970's or later?

Any help/guidance gratefully received.

Jeremy

[Derek]

Hi Jeremy

Would it not have been when they put up the overhead wires? ie to stop people climbing up on the roof and forgetting...

If so, would 1959 not be the earliest example (other than isolated cases around the Country such as Sheffield-Manchester etc)

Derek

[Noel]

The BR Mark One Coaches supplement of the HMRS includes some Carriage Standards Committee minutes as Section 17. Minute 2431 [on page s17] instructs that all end steps on all BR and pre-nationalisation vehicles are to be removed. A bottom step may be retained if necessary. The date is 9/3/1960. The reason given is OLE protection as suggested by Derek.

Minute 2531 [27/7/1960] requires the urgent application of OLE warnings on vehicles still having end steps, with an implication that the committee felt that they should also be applied even where the steps had been removed [which implies that the programme of removal was already underway]. It also states that works should have their attention drawn to the recommendation[!] that steps should not be fitted to vehicles currently being built.

In practice photographs show that the bottom two steps were left in at least some cases, and that part of the steps attached to the end was sometimes left on the vehicle, rather than the whole step being removed.

Noel

[Jeremy Good]

Thanks all. I thought that the timing must have been linked to the installation of overhead wires but couldn't find an easy reference.

I'd better get on with removing the footsteps on all the coaches then!

Jeremy