The L.N.E.R. Coach Association was formed in 1980 as an informal group with the aim of preserving and restoring L.N.E.R. coaches to form a teak liveried train for use on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway.
Tourist open third Carriage (TTO) number 24109 was the first vehicle to be rescued in the name of the association when it was bought by long time Gresley enthusiast Colin Sykes.
Over the years L.N.E.R.C.A. members have purchased a number of Gresley and Thompson designed coaches. All these coaches are privately owned and the restoration work is financed by their respective owners.
The Association was given Brake Third Open (BTO) number 43567 by the now defunct Gresley BSO group and purchased Thompson Full Brake (Brake Gangwayed BG) number 110, for the princely sum of one pound from the N.Y.M.R. .
In the summer of 1987 it was decided by the core of volunteers that L.N.E.R.C.A should become a more formal railway preservation society with a membership subscription to bring in a regular income, enabling the production of an improved newsletter and coordinating and concentrating the efforts of the labour force. The first and most major payoff of this policy was the location of a reliable and economical source of Teak panels sufficiently large enough to panel the body sides of Gresley coaches, the lack of which had been the largest hurdle in all Gresley restoration projects. The North Norfolk Railway in their excellent restoration of a Buffet car had to use panels made up of strips of a south American hardwood similar in appearance to Teak, glued together and the Severn Valley Railway (L.N.E.R.(S.V.R.) Coach Fund) were also forced to use built up panels this time using Teak.
The next major development was in 1988 when a consortium of six L.N.E.R.C.A. members from all walks of life, joined together to form the Gresley Owners Group or GOG for short. GOG clubbed together to buy two Gresley vehicles which had been preserved some years earlier. Then in 1989 L..N.E.R.C.A. purchased another coach, not this time to restore but to scrap for spares for other coaches.
Over the years the L.N.E.R.C.A. Team has travelled the U.K. collecting spare parts from less fortunate coaches and transporting the loot back to Pickering, thus massing missing components for the entire 'fleet'.
Not all the parts that are required can be obtained second hand in sufficient quantity, or indeed at all in some cases. To overcome this problem some members spend hours in dusty museums and libraries searching out photographs and drawings which give details of fittings, which are then used to produce them in bulk. Unit costs are brought down by cooperating with coach owners on other railways.
The Association had raised funds with the aim of buying another vehicle, in the autumn of 1990 the opportunity to buy Third Corridor coach no. 23896 was taken, this coach is currently undergoing restoration by West Coast Railways at Carnforth in Lancashire. The work undertaken to date on 23896 has seen the repairs to the timber body framing, the replacement of the knee irons, followed by repaneling with Teak and today the coach is largely complete externally. To further this work a member of the Association bought the BG 110 with the approval of the 1991 annual general meeting and he has already done much repanneling work on it.
The restoration of the Gresley Buffet 641 was completed in the summer of 1994 when in a ceremony aboard the coach it was handed over to the NYMR. Since then attention at Pickering has been focused on GOG owned open Third 56856. Over the past few years, several more coaches have become associated with the group. The most notable of these being open third 23956 which has been placed on long term loan from the National Railway Museum in York.
The London & North Eastern Railway Coach Association welcomes any support however small or large.
© 1998-2008 L.N.E.R. Coach Association.