I recall the Euston Sleeping Car Attendants who worked into Fort William talking about their Sleeping Car Inspectors who would join the train unannounced in the middle of the night at Carlisle or Preston to carry out checks. Perhaps the Western Region didn't have Sleeping Car Inspectors.
Certainly at that time even with my limited knowledge of sleeper operations the first two things which jumped out of the report were the linen not stored in the van and the locked doors.
This is going off topic again, for which I apologise, but did Euston-based sleeper hosts (attendants as they were probably called then) go all the way into Fort William? If so, how did they manage to get enough sleep before having to get up to work the 18.20 sleeper back to London (in some years it was earlier?). Or did they lay over so that they work the sleeper back the next day?
Presumably there were Fort William-based hosts back then, as there are today, and I suppose when it was their turn they would simply not be diagrammed for consecutive night shifts? Did they go as far as Euston back then? I never used the sleeper in BR days so have no knowledge of how it was staffed.
With the current Serco arrangements (well, those that existed in the three/four years or so before the pandemic hit), I think the Fort William sleeper hosts simply work between Fort William and Edinburgh where the lounge car and seated coach detaches. The through sleeping cars are then worked by a London crew/Aberdeen crew between Edinburgh and Euston, depending on which night of the week it is. I seem to remember that in Scotrail days, Fort William hosts did go through to Euston, and Euston ones all the way to Fort William, but it made for a *very* long shift and also caused difficulties because sleeper hosts have to have a minimum of nine hours rest before being allowed to book on again (this can only just be achieved with the sleeper arriving on time at 09:55 and departing at 19:50 as it currently does)- if the inbound sleeper was late into Fort William, then this would invariably make the outbound one depart late that evening. Of course, these regulations were probably nowhere near as strict in BR days.
The Plymouth and Penzance sleepers have always had a relatively short journey time, so I don’t suppose there is any question of the crews on that (even in BR days) not getting at least nine hours‘ break between turns. In fact the man who worked the Plymouth portion probably got around 14 hours if everything was running on time.