"C" Carriages

The “C” Series : Four-Wheel Carriages

For the opening of the Peel Line of the railway on 1st July 1873 fourteen of these four-wheel carriages were delivered from the Metropolitan Carriage & Wagon Co., Ltd. of Saltley Works in Birmingham. They were made up of three separate compartments, each designed to carry ten people across two longitudinal bench seats (whereas today it is more common to accommodate eight in each compartment). What was later designated as the “C” series consisted of thirteen standard compartment carriages with brake compartments (also capable of passenger use when not occupied by brakesmen) and one first class saloon (C.9) which was later “paired” with A.12 to form the Governor’s Saloon which is displayed in the Railway Museum today. A variety of the series survive, notably the restored C.13.

It quickly became apparent that marshalling rolling stock was time consuming and so to save time the four-wheelers were commonly ran in sets, and from 1881 a policy of close-coupling the four-wheelers into pairs was embarked upon which later formed the basis of the “pairs” series being two four-wheelers mounted on a bogie underframe commencing in 1909 and running until the last was completed in 1926. There follows below a breakdown of how the “C” series were mounted on bogie underframes and their subsequent fates. Details for each individual vehicle can be found by clicking the links on the left of the information panel below, each article is accompanied by a rendering in a number of conjectural liveries and lining details which are open to debate. As with other series of four-wheelers, a number survive today but none have been restored to traffic at the present time, C.1 exists as an exhibit on the site of Peel Station:-