B⁴D Sud-Est
modernized coach REE

The bogies have a rather hard rotation. At first glance, I think I just have to loosen the pivot screws, but no. On further investigation, it turns out that the power pick-up system is to blame: the vertical tongues of the bogies lean on small blades inside the body, but these blades are too stiff and therefore hinder the bogie rotation. They also prevent the correct bearing of the chassis on the bogies.

Another new feature at REE is that the drawbars are no longer interchangeable, which is not a bad thing given the broken couplings that occurred with the old system. The drawbars are quite hard to return, because the springs are very short (2 turns).

Wheel set characteristics: wheel diameter 10.55, flange height 0.8. Back-to-back wheel spacing: 14.4 (NEM 14.5 ± 0.1). Distance between tips 22.5. Axle diameter 3.1 (with insulating sleeve).

The coach is delivered with a folded bellows on the lamp side, which makes sense if it is at the end of the train with the working lamps on. If it is in the middle of the train, things get more complicated: replacing the bellows with a folded one is easy, except for the gangway, which will surely escape; but, to change the bellows holders, you also have to remove the end wall reinforcements that are attached to them, and these are fragile parts, with tight tenons, which will not withstand a lot of handling. It is best to leave them in place, even if it means bending the holders in one direction or the, other depending on the bellows installed.

Still in the case of the coach in the middle of a train, the lamps must be switched off. To do this, it is necessary (in the absence of a decoder) to open the coach to operate a slide switch. It might have been clever to place this switch under the water tank cover at the other end of the coach and make it removable to access the switch without disassembling everything…

This brings us to the disassembly. The manual indicates that you have to remove the buffers, but it’s not as easy as it says: when pulling on them, you might break the heads because the shanks are very thin. What the manual forgets to say is that you also have to remove the return springs in the form of a very thin steel wire, which may twist if left in place. Then, removing the chassis is not so easy, as it is well fitted in the body, without any clearance.

As for the interior, there’s nothing to complain about, except that the colour of the seats, a pale blue tending towards mauve, is not very convincing. The floor and walls of the van are grey; the corridor wall is ivory, with yellow-green window frames. The grab rails are fixed to the inside of the windows, without excess glue as in a certain other brand…

Finally, the electrical wiring consists of two wires, red and black, soldered to the aforementioned blades, connected to a small printed circuit with a digital plug. It also apparently contains a voltage regulator circuit. A 100 µF / 25 V capacitor is used to maintain the voltage in the event of a power failure, which is probably sufficient for the LEDs in the lamps.

See:

• Loco-Revue Forum.
• gamos81.altervista.org for the reference list of issued ex-PLM coach models.

The origin of these coaches is very old, since they date from the years 1906 to 1913. At that time they had a wooden body. The PLM had decided to modernize them for the first time, known as “type 26 metallization”, which was carried out between 1929 and 1938. It consisted mainly of replacing the wooden frame with a metal frame. Source: Encyclopédie des voitures SNCF.

Main characteristics: 32 seats; tare 40 to 42 t; speed limit 140 km/h; incandescent lighting.