Carriages 117 - 121
From Festipedia, hosted by the FR Heritage Group
Known as the "The Tin Cars", these carriages were built in the late 1970's and early 1980's on underframes purchased from the Isle of Man Railway. These underframes had been built by the Metropolitan Amalgamated Railway Carriage & Wagon Company (later the Metropolitan Carriage Wagon & Finance Company) at various dates from 1909 to 1926 to allow the IOMR to create 26 'new' bogie carriages by mounting two old 4-wheeled carriage bodies on each one. In the 1960s the life-expired bodies were removed from 11 of them (Nos.F51-53, 55-6, 58-61, 69 & 72) so that the underframes could be used as 'runners' for container traffic. They were numbered R1 to R10 with one left un-numbered. When the containerisation venture failed they were surplus to requirements and 10 were bought by the FR, their dimensions being very close to the then standard for FR underframes. The truss rods were removed from each of the frames used for carriage construction by the FR to allow for the use of bogies with smaller wheels than had been fitted in the IOM. Not all have been used for FR carriages, two having been put into service as a bogie flat wagons Nos 56 and 57 (ex-IOMR R4 and R2), and two are currently spare.
In early 2006 during conversion work on Tin Carr carriage number 121 from an all 3rd to the first of the new Buffet / Toliet / Gaurds Service Cars, it was found that the old steel body work was in very poor condition and the decision was taken in February to scrap the body work and build the new body of wood rather metal. The resulting new design is very similar to the traditional Barn design of Coaches 100 - 107, but differs in that it is mounted on the ex-Isle of Man Railway under frame originally under the Tin Carr. The new vehicle has, therefore, become a Barn, although it retains its original number 121. The facility to mount Barn design bodies on IOMR under frames may be used again in the future as the railway has several of these frames.
The carriages in this series are:
- Carriage 111 Built 1990 on IOMR frame No.R?
- Carriage 117 Built 1977 on IOMR frame No.R8
- Carriage 118 Built 1977 on IOMR frame No.R6
- Carriage 119 Built 1980 on IOMR frame No.R10
- Carriage 120 Built 1980 on IOMR frame No.R?
The carriages formerly in this series were:
- Carriage 121 Built 1981 on IOMR Frame No.R7 Scrapped 2006 in its original Tin Car form. Frame No. R7 used under a new wooden bodied carriage.