THE Welshpool & Llanfair Light Railway (WLLR) has appointed a design team to develop plans for construction of a new first class carriage.
Plans shown to members depict a fully accessible multiuse premium vehicle with three seating bays, one of which can be removed for wheelchair access, an observation end for nominally five passengers, a small area that can be used for basic food preparation (with drinks chiller facilities) and a guard’s compartment with an end balcony.
Although the broad outline is consistent with the line’s replica historic Pickering carriages, the new vehicle will not follow any particular prototype, signifying that proposals, not greeted with universal acclaim, to build a replica of the so-called ‘Queen’s Coach’ constructed for the Sierra Leone Railway (SLR) in 1961 included in the ‘Railway Transformed’ appeal launched last year (RM, June 2021) have been dropped.
A primary attraction in construction of a new first class carriage is that 20% of WLLR’s current income is generated from first class travel, but is dependent on a single vehicle. If that carriage goes out of traffic, that revenue is lost.