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I am a volunteer in the Carriage & Wagon Department at the Bluebell Railway and a member of the Maunsell 7864 Group the group responsible for raising funds for the restoration of Maunsell Restaurant Car 7864.To this end, I'm running the Edinburgh Marathon on 22nd May 2011 to help with the fundraising.

7864 was one of a number of Kitchen First (ie with first class seating and a kitchen) coaches designed by Richard Maunsell for the Southern Railway in the late 1920s / early 1930s to provide an at-seat dining service on their primary express routes out of London

Built at Eastleigh in 1932, 7864 featured (from right to left in photo 4) a kitchen (to the right of the double doors) and a pantry (to the left of the doors in photo 4) in the northern half of the coach. The kitchen and pantry catered for the 24 first class passengers in the southern half of the coach (left-hand side of photo 4)  and a further 56 in an adjacent third class saloon coach.

In 1947 the first class seating was replaced by a buffet and eight stools with meals being served from the kitchen to adjacent coaches. 7864 was purchased by the Bluebell Railway in 1962 to provide static catering facilities at Sheffield Park - a role it served for almost twenty years. During this time one of the seating bays was removed and a new doorway created to ease congestion.

Over the last 30 years the coach has deteriorated and is in poor condition - the roof leaks, substantial sections of the timber framing is rotten and it has no interior. Although it is in poor condition, 7864 is the only surviving Southern Railway catering vehicle and so it is the subject of a major appeal with the aim of raising £100,000 before the restoration can begin. To date we have about 20% of this total (including £3000 raised from last year's London Marathon). Other income has come through tours of the Bluebell Railway's Carriage & Wagon (C&W) Department at Horsted Keynes on gala days and bank holidays, standing orders and from the sale of jams and chutneys in the C&W Department.

Some of the money raised has been used to purchase a large amount of mahogany from our colleagues in the Mid Hants Railway Wagon gang at Medstead and Four Marks. Later this year the Maunsell 7864 Group hope to arrange for the removal of the remaining asbestos within the coach. This is principally located around the large roof-mounted vents located above the range in the northern end of the kitchen.

Our aim is to restore 7864 to as built condition with a kitchen, pantry and 24 seats to form the centre piece of a six / seven coach Maunsell train for use on the Bluebell Railway in Sussex. 

Further details of the coach can be found on the Bluebell website via the following link:

http://www.bluebell-railway.co.uk/bluebell/pics/7864.html

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