In the Fifties and Sixties when most railway photographers were focussing their cameras on locomotives, Geoffrey Kichenside was one of that small group who also turned their lenses to the coaching stock. It was a time of great variety. The war had meant that many carriages remained in service long past their use-by date. The backlog of repair and replacement had started slowly, with many being built to the existing company designs. Then the new BR standard coaches (later known as Mark 1) started appearing in great numbers. However, much pre-grouping and pre-nationalisation hauled passenger stock survived in service until the end of the 1960s.

Geoffrey Kichenside’s coach photographs can now be found in the photographic archive at Transport Treasury. Hugh Longworth has been delving into these archives to produce a number of albums that bring to light some of the vast variety of  coaching stock. This first one covers the LMS stock in BR service. Each photograph is accompanied by a diagram showing the layout of the carriage, highlighting the wide variety of designs to be found.