Mrs. Ostrich & Chris J

[Gabor Kovacs]

Mrs. Ostrich (a wildlife member of the RVR family) eyes out and strutted her plumage for Chris J.

[Stefan Andrzejewski]

I await the elephant (s) with anticipation. Those coaches behind Chris are in excellent condition.

[John Ashworth]

These are a part of a set of scrap main line sitter coaches which we obtained a couple of years ago. They really were scrap, with no doors or windows, ceiling panels and toilets missing, rusty holes in the sides, and plenty of problems underneath. We've gradually been bringing them into service, and these two are certainly in good condition now. We had them professionally lifted for the bogies, brakes, etc to be repaired, and FOTR has done all the other repairs and renovation. They have proved invaluable to provide extra seating as our trains have become increasingly popular and our faithful seven-car suburban set just hasn't got enough seats for all the punters.

[Steve Appleton]

Nine-coach trains, including these two ex-mainline sitters, have become the norm on FOTR these days. And to think that when we restored the fourth and fifth of the old 4M suburban trailer coaches and put them back into service just a few years ago, we wondered when and how often we would fill them! How the popularity of FOTR's steam trains has grown in recent times! Well done everyone and especially well done to Arno, Billy and family in the marketing arena. Without the bums on seats all this would never have been possible.

[Stefan Andrzejewski]

Well done . You have done extremely well against the odds. Their are 5 mainline coaches (Steel) standing at Paarden Eiland . they have been there for 6 years. Little by little they are getting ripped apart by vagrants. I see they have managed to rip the stairs of each coach. No doubt for scrap metal. Next thing they will burn like th coaches in Culemborg did. Only the bogies are left of those. With your popularity you could be running two seperates sets soon.

[John Ashworth]

Thanks, Stefan. In fact we have occasionally run two separate trains on the same day, usually for charters. We have two more operational passenger vehicles (a main line sleeper and our Regional Manager's Saloon) so in total we can field eleven passenger vehicles, which nicely make up a five-coach and a six-coach train. But if we could get more of the "scrap" main line sitters into operation we could certainly fill them, and with the 15F we have a loco that can haul them without the need for double-heading.