While most Mk.2c retained their blue/grey livery during their often short departmental service, one of the most colourful and long lasting vehicles was Civil Engineer/InterCity West Coast Staff & Tool Coach DB 977787, renumbered with few obvious external or internal differences from Brake Second Open M9453 in May 1992. One of three BSO to transfer to departmental use and one of just a handful of coaches to be repainted in the grey/yellow ‘Dutch’ livery, it also carried the lettering “InterCity Civil Engineer Preston”. It was initially based at Carnforth for use on the North West section of the WCML, although it was recorded at Doncaster by 1993. It later gained a generator, which involved significant reworking of the brake end gangways and the replacement of several windows with grilles. After spells at Carlisle Kingmoor, Carnforth and Derby Etches Park it was finally retired in the early 2000s. Stored at Throckmorton Airfield, Worcestershire, and then Dalton Transport & Storage, North Yorkshire, as part of the ill-fated Mk.2 Preservation Group project, the gas axe finally caught up with it during the mass clearout of the remaining vehicles from the latter location. It was cut up at CF Booth, Rotherham, in April 2022, but not before donating parts to help bring several other Eastern Rail Services’s Mk.2s back to service in due course.
Never before produced in ready-to-run form in any scale, accurascale is excited to reveal the latest addition to its eagerly-anticipated range of 4mm/OO gauge Mk.2 coaching stock, the late-style Mk.2c variant with their characteristic small 'air con'-style toilet windows. Famously designed to be retrofitted with air-conditioning equipment, a modification that never took place, 150 vehicles were built at Litchurch Lane, Derby, in 1969-70 to five designs (out of 250 Mk.2c in total), primarily for the London Midland Region: Tourist Second Open (TSO), Corridor First (FK), Open First (FO), Brake Corridor First (BFK) and Brake Open Second (BSO). In the 1980s four further types were introduced, SK and SO (declassified from first class), Corridor Composite (converted from FK for Scottish Region services) and a mini buffet with trolley space, known as TSO(T). All nine of these versions will feature in our production.
