No 416 - Dean 4-Wheel Brake Third

A third class carriage with guard’s compartment and four passenger compartments built in July 1891.

No. 416 pre-dates the emergency chain inside each compartment which would apply the brakes. Instead No 416 has Harrison’s Patent apparatus of a rope above the windows. In an emergency you need the presence of mind to open the window on the right hand side facing direction of travel and reach up to pull the rope. The rope is wound around a large wheel in the guard’s compartment. As the wheel is turned by the rope it trips a bell to alert the guard, who then applies the brakes and looks for a compartment with a length of rope hanging down outside it. And possibly a panicked passenger waving out of the window.

The coach was originally oil-lit but heating and gas lighting were fitted in 1898 before it became an early recipient of the incandescent gas system in 1906.

No 416 was condemned in December 1937 but survived by being converted by the GWR into Camp Coach No. 9940, during June 1938 – fitted with bunks and parked in a siding at a picturesque country station where it could be hired for a week or two’s holiday. It was withdrawn altogether in 1966.

It has been fully restored and entered traffic, albeit without lining and lettering, on 26 September 2009. Final lining out and lettering were completed in August 2010.

Status

Operational

Build date

1891

Built at

Swindon

Original railway

GWR

Lot Number

582

Diag No

T.49

Length

31’ 0.75"

Date Preserved

1968

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