Whereabouts would a sleeping car come in the order of carriages? Admittedly, I'm sure that the average sleeping train would probably have more than one, but...
My thought is: -
Loco - seating carriage - seating carriage - sleeping car
in a scaled down, simplified way?
Noakesy123
well, i know its not prototypical for England, but me and a friend were talking to a member of the Nene valley railway, who is currently restoring a Wagon Lits sleeper coach that was used on orient expresses that crossed europe, as well as other expresses, and he was saying how there would usually be a portion in the rear of the train, including the sleeping coaches, and sometimes one other coach, that would be detatched and left in yards whilst the passengers slept inside, thats why they had built in coal heaters, and they would be attatched onto the relevant trains, however, this would never happen in the UK!
I think, that alot of sleeping trains were formed of completely sleeping cariagges, 1 or 2 normal coaches, and a brake coach, and were only really used on train that went through the highlands down into the UK.
There may of been sleeper cars put on the end of trains, but i dont know about these. Im sure Pol or Tom or someone will bring up several links to various websites though!
Sorry about the length of post, and hope that probably useless information helps!!
Thomas.
poliss
As I remember, although I could be wrong, all the sleeping cars on the Edinburgh-Plymouth overnighter were at one end of the train. They started off at the back of the train, but the train reversed direction at Carstairs and again at Birmingham I think. Intensely annoying as I have to face the direction of travel. There was no buffet car either and as we had hopped on at the last minute we didn't even have so much as a packet of crisps between us.
A word of advice if you ever travel on a sleeper. Always book a sleeping berth. Never, I repeat never, think that you can manage to grab a few hours of shut eye trying to sleep on the ordinary seats. They are exactly four inches too short to curl up on!!
Even older tom
My only experience of sleeper trains is Liverpool to London in 1965. You might think 'Sleeper? It's only a 4 hour run max!' It would have been except the loco and the front coaches left us at Nuneaton for over 2 hours and then we were attached to another train to complete the journey.
Total time - over 6 hours. At least we got a couple of hours kip, which I was told was idea.
Back to Hugh's question, the sleepers on 'shorter' runs are bolted on the back.
