Sleeper Services Past and Present

[CHESHIRECAT]

Royal Highlander in "80"s used to have restaurant car to Crewe detached there and attached for inbound journey so pax could have breakfast on eay to Euston !

 

[keppoch69]

I <think> from reading this forum, going through many old, locked topics that the trains which my family & I used to travel up to Glasgow from Birmingham, to visit our Scottish grand parents was not a "sleeper train" as such, but a <night train>, I would call it?
We travelled in the 1970s into the very early 1980s, & I believe the carriages were called, <compartment, carriage stock>?? As part of a family of 5, I used to love one of my parents dimming the ceiling light, & I used to kneel up & switch on the lights above the seats. It felt so glamourous to me, as a child in junior school. LOL.
This of course, was in the days of slam door stock, & the <splitting> at Carstairs. I was always scared at that point. Were we on the correct part of the original train. lol. I can still recall the metal creaking & lunging. Do you lovely travellers who use the lowland sleeper still hear that?

 

[AY1975]

I believe that in the old days sleeping cars had to use a platform that was equipped with a trough beneath the track to catch the effluent from the toilets, so passengers could use them before departure and after arrival. This is not necessary with the Mark 3s as they have retention tank toilets. So presumably the signallers had to be careful not to signal a sleeper train into a platform without a trough by mistake! At Paddington you can still see these troughs beneath the tracks if you look carefully. I think they've mostly been filled with ballast now, though.

 

[AY1975]

The Mk1's were basic. If you needed to go at night there was a 'bed pan' which you put into a slot under the sink and tipped it away.

Unfortunately this facility was omitted from the Mark 3s, presumably because by the 1980s BR thought it was unhygienic. Also, its contents went onto the track, so they would still have needed troughs beneath the track at stations where sleepers started and terminated, thus defeating the object of having retention tank toilets.

 

[GusB]

The Mk1's were basic. If you needed to go at night there was a 'bed pan' which you put into a slot under the sink and tipped it away.

Unfortunately this facility was omitted from the Mark 3s, presumably because by the 1980s BR thought it was unhygienic. Also, its contents went onto the track, so they would still have needed troughs beneath the track at stations where sleepers started and terminated, thus defeating the object of having retention tank toilets.

I've only ever done a sleeper journey once and it was when I was quite small (1977?) so memories are hazy. It was from Glasgow Central and we were headed for Cornwall, so I'm not entirely sure where the ultimate destination was. Now you mention it, though - I do vaguely remember the bed pan that went under the sink.

I also remember the steward bringing tea and biscuits too!

We went as far as Redruth. I'm not sure if the sleeper would have stopped there, or whether we had changed trains at some point throughout the journey.