Express boat train. From 8 July 1929, the vehicles were deployed to a new train, the Torquay Pullman Limited, an all-Pullman service which ran two days a week between London Paddington and , stopping at and only. Not a commercial success, the train returned for the 1930 timetable as a three-car only service, but was withdrawn at the end of the summer timetable, with the carriages stored at Old Oak Common TMD. A proposal was made to return the full seven-car train in summer 1931, but the decision was taken not to operate the service. At the end of the year, the decision was made to terminate the experiment, and the carriages were sold to the Southern Railway, joining their Western Section carriage fleet pool at Clapham Junction. The GWR replaced them in 1932 with the more opulent Charles Collett designed GWR Super Saloons. During World War II all Pullman services were suspended. They resumed operation shortly after the end of the war. The Pullman agreements were continued by British Railways upon nationalisation in 1948, while the Pullman company remained privately owned. The company acquired the lease on the former Taff Vale Railway carriage and wagon works in Cathays, Cardiff, which then maintained both Pullman stock as well as BR rolling stock, and residual private owner wagons. By the late 1950s the image of Pullman trains remained luxurious, but the rolling stock was increasingly outdated. Nationalisation The PCC was bought by the British Transport Commission (BTC) in 1954. The BTC was the public body that controlled the nationalised transport in mainland Britain. At this point most of the Pullman fleet was somewhat elderly – apart from ten new cars which had entered service in 1951-52 (the building of seven of which had commenced in 1939, and another of which had a reconditioned chassis dating from 1927), the newest cars were 38 vehicles built for Southern Railway 5-BEL and 6-PUL electric multiple units in 1932. The BTC decided to modernise Pullman services as part of the British Railways 1955 Modernisation Plan, with new rolling stock and diesel or electric haulage. The most radical manifestation of this policy was the building of five new diesel multiple-unit Blue Pullman trains (36 cars) in 1960, in a special livery of Nanking blue and cream. Among the services which these initially operated were two new trains: the Midland Pullman (Manchester Central to London St Pancras),