Carriages and creature comforts – a timeline
In the 1840s:
First-class passengers had padded seats, a roof and glass windows. There was even a super first-class called a posting carriage, fitted out like a country house drawing room;
Second-class had a roof, but no glass in the windows and wooden bench seats just 15 inches wide;
Third-class had just open wagons with wooden benches and no weather protection. They often travelled in slow freight trains. When the 1844 Railway Act forced them to provide weather protection, they provided windowless wagons with just four louvres for ventilation.
The early carriages all had a short wheelbase and crude couplings, which gave them a very rocky ride. There are replica 1840s second- and third-class carriages in the transfer shed.
What did the Great Western Railway do to improve conditions for their passengers over the years?
Their first full corridor train, where passengers could walk from the front to the back of the train, was introduced in 1892. At least in theory you could walk through! In practice, the doors between the carriages were kept locked, and only unlocked by the guard in response to an emergency. The railway did this to protect the passengers’ privacy. For the same reason, they stuck with individual compartments and side aisles, rather than follow the American model of open carriages and central aisles.
This train was also their first to have steam heating throughout, though they did not finish building unheated non-corridor carriages until 1901. Before steam heating, passengers had to make do with foot-warmers. These started to be phased out in 1901, but could still be made available on request until 1908. Interestingly, third-class compartments got a higher level of heating than first-class, on the basis that their better standard of upholstery (horsehair padding, etc.) retained the heat better than the more Spartan third-class compartments. Third-class did not even get padding on their wooden seats until 1878, and second class had to wait until 1882 before carpets started to be fitted on their floors.
Lighting in the early carriages was by smelly, inefficient oil lamps (Great Western third-class had to wait until 1848 to get just one oil lamp per carriage). The last oil-lit carriage was built in 1896, though the Railway had a policy of switching to gas lights from 1882. The Royal train had electric lighting from 1897, and it started to be introduced for the general public from 1901. But by the 1948 nationalisation, the Great Western still had 389 gas-lit coaches, though by then the policy was to switch to fluorescent lights.
The first on-board toilets started to be provided in 1882, though the absence of any corridor links between the carriages at that time limited the use that could be made of them by passengers.
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This project was developed by the GWS Education Team, with valued support from Wren and FCC Environment.