W5-W7 thread
Greg King
Sunday, August 26, 2001 2:49 AM
Now we move on to the cars that were built with
Sliding doors from the start, apart from 840-850, you could say the rest,
851-979,981-1032 were identical, the diferences were entirely in the half drop
windows and the seating. SW5 844 shows the first (and the most attractive
version) type, the window below the standee, would drop half way down into the
side of the car, the standees (all of the cars onwards were the same) were a
"hopper"type window in that the top part would pull inwards to form a "V" shape.
Apart from 840, these cars had back to back wooden seats in the centre and back
to back padded seats in the ends (the centre were the "smokers" section) whilst
840 had a long bench seat each side in the centre (like PCC 980 and the W7's
had). The next sub group the SW6 880-889 were also nice inside having the
standard wooden seat in the centre but padded "tip-over" seat in the ends. The
next group, still SW6 but #890-939 had bus type seats in the ends
(basically a war time austerity measure). Cars 851-880 had stainless steel half
drop windows instead of the single pain of the previous batch, (PCC 980
displays this type) all cars onward had steel versions but cars 881-909 had the
small corner gussets in the lower corners, (training car 890 shows this type)
the previous stainless steel windows had no gusset and in later years became
very loose. 910 onwards had the gussets in the top corners (979 shows this
type), meanwhile, the seating in the ends reverted to the SW5 type with back to
back padded seats from car 940 onwards. From 970, they were known as W6's.The W7
(shown by 1032) had the same body but the window gussets were now rounded
instead of angled and a half drop window had appeared in the very centre window
and side bench padded seating in the centre "smokers" section. By the 80's,
almost all (with only a couple of exception, 857,900,918 which retained their
original seating) cars had been standardised on the W6 style of seating
(includind all centre seats padded) except the W7's which never changed. A minor
point of annoyence with thes cars was that, all the steel gusseted windows, were
interechangable and very often you would see cars with the odd different window,
ie a W7 with all correct windows and then one with the gussets upside down, this
still happens on the remaining cars, this is a depot thing, when a car got a
broken window, they would replace it with what ever was available. The reamining
cars now have a ticket machine on one side of the drop centre, in the W7's a
space was cut out of the side seat, with the other, the back to back seats on
one side were replaced by side seats either side of the "tin
Conductor".
Greg
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