L&SWR

Models for Rail3d — L&swr

1 Background

The London & South Western Railway operated services out of London’s Waterloo Station until the grouping of the British railway companies after the first world war, when it became part of the Southern Railway.

As well as long-distance services which reached as far west as Exeter, the lswr operated an extensive network of suburban services around London, and was a pioneer of electrification.

2 Steam railmotors

Like many British railway companies, the lswr experimented with the use of steam railmotors for branch line services in the early years of the century. The H13 was the first “production” series of these. Experience showed that the combination of passenger coach and steam power unit was very uneconomic to operate and maintain, so they were soon replaced by small tank engines hauling lightweight open-vestibule coaches.

2.1 lswr H13 Railmotor (Nos. 3–15) built 1905, converted to autotrain trailers in 1916–19.

The trailer version is included.

3 Non-corridor bogie coaches

Non-corridor bogie coaches for steam-hauled suburban block trains, built in the 1890s on 51ft underframes. These were later converted into emus (see below).

• 9 compartment third
• 8 compartment 1st/3rd composite

4 Electric multiple units

4.1 ”hovis” emu

These units were rebuilt for the lswr’s first electric services from compartment stock built in the 1890s and originally used in close-coupled steam-hauled sets. The original sets had two driving motor brake composite cars sandwiching a trailer 3rd; later, four-car non-driving trailer sets were built and worked the busiest trains coupled between a pair of three car motor sets. Later on, the Southern Railway made some very similar conversions from steam stock to create their 3-sub units.

One reason we remember these sets is that the manufacturers of hovis bread noticed that the single-letter headcodes used to indicate the destinations of lswr suburban services could be used to spell out the name of their product.

This emu was my first attempt at making a highly-detailed scale model for Rail3D, and it is still one of the largest stock files I have made. If you use too many of these in your layout, you may notice that the time required to load D3D mode gets rather long. Use at your own risk. The models are based on drawings by R.E. Tustin published in Model Railway Constructor, October-December 1976.

5 Waterloo & City Railway

In 1898 the lswr opened a short underground railway to connect its London terminus at Waterloo to the City of London, where many lswr commuters worked. This was London’s second electric “tube” railway. It passed with the rest of the lswr network into the hands of the sr and British Rail, and was only transferred to London Underground in 1994. It has only two stations, and has no connections with the rest of the underground network: when stock has to be removed for maintenance it is lifted out to the surface at Waterloo (there used to be a rolling stock lift; this was removed when the Channel Tunnel terminus was built at Waterloo).

For more on the history of the W&C, see:

• Weddell, G.R., lswr Carriages in the 20th Century, Oxford Publishing Co., 2001 (ch. 7)
• Gillham, J.C., The Waterloo & City Railway, The Oakwood Press, 2002

5.1 1898 Stock

In more than a century of operation, the W&C has only had three batches of rolling stock. For the opening of the line, Jackson and Sharp of Wilmington, usa, supplied five four-car trains (M+T+T+M) and two spare motor cars. All had end balconies and lattice gates (which meant that a train had to carry four guards to supervise loading and unloading). The motor cars also had a single sliding door. Current collection was from a central third rail. There was no multiple-unit equipment: the driver’s controller supplied current to both motor cars, via a set of jumper cables running along the roof of the train. Fortunately, the W&C never suffered the sort of fire that made the Paris Métro abandon this system in 1905.

Shortly afterwards, these were supplemented by extra trailers (to allow the original trains to be stretched to five cars) and double-ended motor cars for off-peak use. This stock remained in service until 1940. A peculiarity of W&C operation was that trains did not use white headlights: they carried red marker lights at each end. Note that the colour-scheme of the models is a guess: no details of the original livery seem to have survived. For simplicity, the lining of the lower panels has been omitted.

5.2 Links

• earlygen - Site with lots of useful lswr information, including colour schemes, headcodes and that Hovis ad…

UK Rail Steam Electric History

You can download all my Rail3d models from the download library http://www.rail3d.net or by using the Rail3d update tool. All models are free for personal use with Rail3d, on condition that they may not be modified or distributed further without the author’s explicit permission. Liveries and logos used in the models are purely representative, and do not imply any endorsement from or of the companies concerned.