South Eastern & Chatham Railway
"100 seater" 3rd No.1098 (built in 1922)

SECR "100 seater" 3rd as restored to SR livery as No.1098 in 1994
Richard Salmon

This coach was built very solidly, if simply, to carry London commuters. Having 10 seats in each of its ten compartments, it is known as a "Hundred Seater". With these services incresingly being electrified, in February 1943 it was piped through for push-pull working, 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 in-to and out-of London Bridge.

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 twenty-nine years on the Bluebell, a testament to the quality of its design and construction. In 1992 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 carried in the 1930s, having been amongst the last SECR coaches to be repainted from that railway's plain brown post-war livery.

Go to a full article about the two Hundred Seaters, as part of the Carriage Fleet Review.