R stock

I take it you've got a copy of the R stock story by that upstanding gent Piers?

Right - I'll dig my copy out now and see if I can give you your answers!

All red R stock cars were repainted in aluminium colour, without the red stripe from Feb '63 - found to deteriorate rather quick, 'grey' then applied from Feb '71' (paraphrase of caption on p33)

Every car had traction equipment, plus either a compressor or a MG. (comment embedded within p24), more detail than that I can't offer.

The train with the new paint 21133 - 23236 - 23333 - 23433 + 23516 - 22625 left Acton after overhaul with the new cars in bold print finished in a new 'light-grey' colour. This was in Feb 1971. The new paint actually looked white. [...] (p23)

Thanks, when the 7 cars came in did it cause problems with the equipment formations?
The way I see it is it went from this:

1DM(M)-2NDM(C)-3NDM(C)-4UNDM(M)+5UNDM(C)-6DM(M) + 5UNDM(C)-6DM(M)

to this:

1DM(M)-3NDM(C)-4UNDM(M)+5UNDM(C)-6DM(M)+5UNDM(C)-6DM(M)

1DM(M)-2NDM(C)-2aNDM(C)-3NDM(C)-4UNDM(M)+5UNDM(C)-6DM(M)

M-motor generator
C-compressor

I'm fairly sure that the system-wide staff shortages were in part responsible for the reformation. (Un)coupling is staff-heavy. The WTTs covering the period 95 (30/11/70) [1], 96 (7/2/72), C96 (11/72) tell a story in themselves - not only the cessation of uncoupling, but the progressive reduction in services. The revisions below incorporated into WTT 95 are very telling of the times:

(a) Mondays to Fridays
Reduction in peak services to 30 trains per hour between Tower Hill and Gloucester Road to provide a regular 2 minutes service (with the addition of a Richmond line " push-in " during each peak period).
Circle, Ealing, Richmond and Wimbledon-City peak services widened from 7½ to 8 minutes.
Edgware Road-Wimbledon line peak services widened from 7½ to 8 minutes but with all trains running through to Wimbledon.
Upminster-Tower Hill peak services reduced by 2 trains per hour.
One train fewer in scheduled service during morning peak and two trains fewer scheduled during evening peak period.
Transfer of one train from Ealing Common Depot to Parsons Green Depot.
Olympia services scheduled to run to High Street Kensington only (instead of Edgware Road).
(b) Saturdays
Dagenham reversing trains to terminate at Barking before 10.00.
From 20.00 to finish service widened to correspond to Mondays to Fridays finish.
(c) Sundays
Improved connections at Earls Court between Edgware Road-Wimbledon and City-Richmond services.
Westbound District line trains routed via No. 2 platform road at Gloucester Road.

_{Wow! Decent OCR software!}

No doubt there will be others more knowledgeable able to comment further.

Uncoupling - the issue for the District was that some stations required platform attendance for 8-car train operation, even with two-crew trains. The uncoupling staff were also saved.

The staff shortage was very bad. I think I've mentioned this before but at Baker Street we had a 75 crew roster but we were short of 25 guards. This means that a third of duties were cancelled. Even less trains ran.

If you had to do 4 Circles and when you booked on your train was already cancelled, you had to go to Farringdon or Edgware Rd to get it into service. That cost one Circle because you could only get it into service for the start of the second. Then you did your two rostered Circles. If there was no one to take you off, you spent the fourth Circle putting the train away. The poor punters really sufffered.

There were drivers at Hammersmith who never did any running for more than 6 months. One even claimed for road training when he was eventually given a guard!