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South Eastern & Chatham Railway
"Hundred Seater" 3rd No. 1098

SECR "hundred seater" 3rd No. 1098 as restored to Southern Railway livery in 1994.
Richard Salmon

This coach was built very solidly, if simply, to carry London commuters. Having ten seats in each of its ten compartments, it is known as a "Hundred Seater". It was one of just 10 of this type of coach to be fitted with 'Special MM Ventilation' on the doors in place of the normal roof vents and conventional door-top vents.

The SR had initially planned to convert this coach (along with the majority of the other 100 seaters), to be used as trailer vehicles for electric trains, but they instead retained them as steam-hauled stock. It was at some point allocated as part of SR Set 918, later becoming a loose vehicle. With suburban services incresingly being electrified, in February 1943 it was one of two such coaches to be piped through for push-pull working, to strengthen the normal 2-coach sets to three coaches at busy times, and ended its days on the Lymington Branch.

Seven similar coaches were still in daily use in 1960 attached to sets of more modern Bulleid coaches on services from Tunbridge Wells West, Forest Row and East Grinstead into and out of London Bridge.

It came to the Bluebell, selected at random as the next available carriage stored on the Ardingly Branch (otherwise the stock stored there was awaiting scrapping) in May 1963, to replace hundred seater No. 1070 which BR had supplied that February, but which had broken windows.

With nothing more than routine maintenance, painting, re-trimming of the seats, and a new roof-canvas, it was in service for many of its first 29 years on the Bluebell, a testament to the quality of its design and construction.

In March 1992, 1098 was one of three vehicles moved by road to the BR depot at Cricklewood, from whence they were used in the filming of a scene for the 1993-released feature film "Chaplin" at the pre-Eurostar St. Pancras station. Later that year it entered the carriage works for a major door overhaul, with minor repairs made to the structure of the coach. The external steel sheeting was also replaced, as were the windows, and through lighting control was fitted. It returned to traffic in 1994 carrying the lined Maunsell olive green that it had carried in the 1930s, having been amongst the last SECR coaches to be repainted from that railway's plain brown post-war livery.

Right: Seating as re-trimmed in appropriate 1930s 'Jazz Pattern' moquette (Richard Salmon - 24 September 2016)

In February 2016 it was one of the carriages which were hauled to Bounds Green depot in the company of C-class loco No. 592 for the filming of a scene in the feature film "Wonderwoman" at King's Cross station.

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Type: Third
Built: November 1922, underframe at Birmingham RC&W, body by the SECR at Ashford.
Seating: 100 3rd
Length: 60'
Weight: 32 tons
Original No: 1416 A
Other Nos: 1098, S1098S
Withdrawn: December 1962
Preserved: 1963
To Bluebell: 2/5/1963

Read the article about our two Hundred Seaters, as part of the Carriage Fleet Review.

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