Brake Vans In BR Service

[Bryan]

A couple more photos that refused to download yesterday showing detail along the handrail below the ducket.
The handrail is 1 piece throughout including the intermediate bolt locations.

[chaz harrison]

A couple more photos that refused to download yesterday showing detail along the handrail below the ducket.
The handrail is 1 piece throughout including the intermediate bolt locations.

Excellent detail shots, Bryan. Thanks for providing a definitive answer.

Chaz

[60117 Bois Roussel]

jwealleans » Tue Feb 16, 2010 8:15 am
I'm sure there was a feature on these in Model Rail a few years ago but I can't locate it in the online indexes. I'll have a flick through my back issues when I have a spare moment.

Being the guilty party, I can say that the article was in Model Rail February 2002 and is impossible to find by normal searches because the Editor gave it a funny-ha-ha title of "Bringing up the rear" (a practice I stopped with my stuff at least, for exactly this reason). Based on the BR Std design, it ran to 7 pages with 6 model pictures (Pocket Money Kits, Connoisseur Models plus parts from MJT and Parkside Dundas) and 20 pictures of the prototype, from Paul Bartlett and Duncan Wilcock. These colour pictures included close-ups and a vast range of variations. The historical notes explain the derivation from the LNER design and the four BR Diagrams, transitional hybrids, and errors in a previous publication. So big that the Editor wanted to split it in two: I won him over, that it really all ought to be in one place, and he finally agreed, but now it's almost impossible to find!

When the subject came up again a few years later, I penned some more notes in Model Rail with David Larkin (January 2006) which included pictures of the welded mods of the handrails and discussion of George Dent's adaptation of a Bachmann model.

[D2100]

Another interesting thread that I'd missed, thanks for the revival 60117.

[. Some of the vans that had the long-short type handrails later had pieces welded across the gap, so that they presented the appearance of one long section. Why did they bother?

I've often pondered this also. Bryan's closeup of the Newbridge van shows how small the gap is; you'd have to be pretty accurate to get your hand in *just* the right place on the new piece. The alternative would be to try and spread your fingers around the uprights, that you possibly didnt even notice...

[D2100]

If I might pick up on a couple of other points, for anyone sufficiently interested.

Incidentally "Freight Grey" strictly speaking was a darker shade which I think was used after 1968, when numbers and letters were put in a white-outlined grid (although few unfitted wagons were still in service by then!).

The livery/lettering changes you describe occurred from 1964. BR's wagon greys varied significantly throughout its history, but by the 1970s the colour being used is generally accepted as being Rail Grey, i.e. that which was also used on blue/grey passenger stock. Consequently I would say it was significantly lighter than most that had gone before.

For probably the first half of the '70s, unfitted 16T steel minerals could still be considered numerous; other vehicles less so but would include ironstone tipplers and hoppers, assorted steel carriers and grain hoppers.

. The curved rainstrips over the doors are questionable too; although some vans appeared that way the majority seem to have straight strips laid at an angle.

[The rainstrips? Well the drawings in Tatlow (admittedly of the 10' 6" vans) show curved rainstrips.

The point to me about the rainstrips (and which is common to so many models both kit and RTR) is that they're just a wooden batten. If it's even possible (and if anyone would actually bother) to persuade a relatively short stick of wood into that sharp curve, I'd be surprised. It's long been my contention that the drawings show it like that because it's very easy for a draughtsman to strike such an arc with a compass, and that the more practical chaps in the works would take an easier path. Photographic evidence does reveal a few with a much shallower arc, similar to that common on 12T vans, but the majority are as Mike suggests, at an angle of maybe 30deg. They can be angled either way though, and a short strip parallel with the roof edge also isn't unknown. The rarest pattern is a full length curved strip, akin to that often seen on the GW Toads.

[65447]

jwealleans » Tue Feb 16, 2010 8:15 am
I'm sure there was a feature on these in Model Rail a few years ago but I can't locate it in the online indexes. I'll have a flick through my back issues when I have a spare moment.

Being the guilty party, I can say that the article was in Model Rail February 2002 and is impossible to find by normal searches ...

Rather late with this aren't you? I provided the date in this thread almost 5 years ago!

[65447]

A couple more photos that refused to download yesterday showing detail along the handrail below the ducket.
The handrail is 1 piece throughout including the intermediate bolt locations.

Excellent detail shots, Bryan. Thanks for providing a definitive answer.

Chaz

Courtesy of Dave here is an extract from a later version of an official LNER drawing which shows the fabrication of these handrails and also the later welded tube to bridge the gap in the lower vertical grab rails. Note that BR amended this arrangement so that it was a straight horizontal tube with stand-off supports rather than the bends and flats for intermediate fixings. Likewise the vertical handrails were modified to one-piece.

That is not to state that all works produced the fittings fully in accordance with the drawings, nor that later repairs to timber cladding, duckets or handrails required replacement of the whole assembly.

[Dave]

65447 you beat me too it, I was looking on my hardrive for that drawing.