1 photo from Wikimedia Commons · credits & licences
what is it?
A First Open or FO, is a type of railway carriage used by British Rail and subsequent operators since privatisation. They were first produced as British Railways Mark 1, and subsequently Mark 2, Mark 3, and Mark 4 variants were produced. This type of carriage is an "open coach" because of the arrangement of the seats inside – other types of carriage may be corridor based variants (FK) or have a brake compartment (BFO or BFK).
who runs it
base stats
Bars compare against all trains: 600 km/h (maglev), 1,700 seats; power, weight and number built on a log scale up to 20 MW, 1,000 t and 20,000 built.
fun facts
- First built 75 years ago, in 1951.
- Top speed is 1.7× a car on the Dutch motorway (130 km/h).
- At full speed it would cover Amsterdam–Utrecht (≈ 40 km) in 11 minutes.
- 19.5 m long: about 4 cars parked nose to tail.
carriage / wagon: Unpowered passenger coaches or freight wagons, pulled by a locomotive.
spec sheet
- built
- 1951
- in service from
- 1951
- number built
- —
- kind
- carriage / wagon
- origin
- 🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- builders
- Doncaster Works, Metro-Cammell, Derby Litchurch Lane Works
- operators
- British Rail, InterCity, British Rail ScotRail, Greater Anglia, Anglia Railways, CrossCountry, Cargo-D, Chiltern Railways, Direct Rail Services, East Coast, East Midlands Railway, East Midlands Trains, Great Western Railway, FM Rail
- top speed
- 225 km/h
- power
- —
- gauge
- 1,435 mm standard gauge
- length
- 19.5 m
From the Wikipedia infobox and Wikidata. Blank means the sources don't say.
family
Sources: Wikidata Q5453468, Wikipedia: First Open (CC BY-SA 4.0).Updated 2026-10-25.