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Mixed Livery Blue Pullman


Foulounoux
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The attached photo is taken from the book that got me into model railways Ian Allan's Locospotters Annual 1971

 

It shows the grey blue South Wales Pullman but coach 5/6 appear to be in old livery

 

Are they in std blue/grey or the original blue Pullman. Or are they interlopers

 

 

 

post-7016-0-60878100-1531414779_thumb.jpeg

Edited by Foulounoux
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That is a strange photo, because the white (or pale grey) stripe on the old livery was the similar width as the blue stripe on the reversed livery. 

 

Also, the carriage profile and roof shape look different. They almost look like Mk1s or DMU coaches. 

Edited by jonny777
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Blue Pullmans were run as 2 half sets paired, so if a fault was present on one full 8 car unit, as in the pic, 81A would split the sets and match up disparate liveried pair.

This only happened for a short while until all cars were repainted into reverse livery obviously.

 

Mike.

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Above the photo, it mentions Kestrel on a test run?As down the far end, it does remind of a locomotive pulling 2 Mk1's or Mk2's and half a Weston Pullman set.

pp

 

 

That's caption referring to the Books Front Cover sorry should have cropped it out

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Those are definitely Blue Pullman coaches trailing, set the Flickr photo to max size and you can see.

The window paintwork looks the same size on closer examination, must be a trick of the eye.

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if you look at the leading car - the roof dirt doesn't extend all the way down so you get a white stripe down the side, what you might be seeing at the far end of the train is an optical illusion of the grey side of a Mk1/2 which is actually the combination of the side of a older livery BP coach and the beginning of the clean part of the roof.

 

The older livery coaches may also be dirtier than the more freshly painted reverse colour scheme further fooling the eye that it is a MK1 in the background.

 

We see by picking out shapes and when something isn't clear the mind fills in the gap using memory - as black roof, blue/grey sides = Mk1 or Mk2 coaches we see Mk1 or Mk2 coaches

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A question is are the BP coaches actually able to be hauled and coupled to normal stock? The Kevin Robertson BP book shows the full width buffers and the soild centre bar coupling, and discribes a emergency hook for use with a screw coupling, but thefull width buffer looks too low for normal buffering.

 

Also, did the BP ever run as 7 car sets? (IE, half of a six and half of a 8 together?).

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In the event of a failure in traffic Blue Pullmans could be assisted by any train or locomotive either front or rear at a maximum speed of 15 mph, each train had a drawhook at each end.

 

Moving parts of trains using an engine - obviously not under failure conditions - was more complicated and required use of a freight brakevan on the back of the BP set.  In addition parts of BP sets could be moved under their own power even without a power car on the back but the rear vehicle had to carry a tail lamp (using a special blank door which had a lamp bracket) and had to be fully. braked throughout.

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The BP was EP braked air system. The question is did it have a triple valve fitted to the air system, allowing the train to be braked by any air braked loco? Or was it the same as modern units, in that if the loco cannot send the electrical brake signals to the stock the unit would be unbraked?

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I think there were air pipes behind the fairing.

I have a feeling when the six car sets were equipped for MU working these were visible.

The buffers were OK for that so should have been OK for haulage.

The lack of ETH gear on the front ends would preclude haulage in service and would be for ECS or emergency recovery only.

I have a feeling they had three phase ETH similar to HSTs

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The BP book states power for the "hotel" services (to use the USA term) was provided by the under floor mounted diesel engine, so would be incompatable with normal ETH. The air pipe question is we're they only fitted with a air pipe for the main res, just like modern units and the brakes only worked via the EP valves, or did they have a triple valve that applied the brakes in proportion to the brake pipe pressure?

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I'm sure I've seen a picture showing twin pipes when they were MU fitted

Was the 15 mph restriction when new or right to the end? As when they were new there were very few air braked locos.

The brake controller on them looks very similar to southern stock so I would hazard a guess and say they had triple valves too

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Is that photo taken in Sonning Cutting?

 

If so the BP appears to be on the fast line. A train restricted to 15mph is unlikely to be allowed that privilege. 

 

I was thinking it was on the Up Relief

 

Edit.  But I was wrong!!!

Edited by DY444
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The BP was EP braked air system. The question is did it have a triple valve fitted to the air system, allowing the train to be braked by any air braked loco? Or was it the same as modern units, in that if the loco cannot send the electrical brake signals to the stock the unit would be unbraked?

 

What air brake loco?  When the Pullman sets were introduced there were no air brake locos on the WR (apart from straight air brakes on the loco bogies).  

 

The emergency instructions only mention a brake pipe (within the train, no mention of a reservoir pipe), and of course the BR 2-pipe system didn't exist then anyway). Without delving out the full Instructions I can't be sure if they had EP brakes.

 

The location of the photo in the OP is very clearly just east of Westbury Lane Bridge, Purley (from which bridge the photo was obviously) taken and the train is on the Down Main Line.  Giveaways are the location cabinets in the 10 foot and the two bridges in the background - the nearer one carrying Winston Way and the further carrying Purley Lane.  The topography and juxtaposition of the bridges, and their type, is totally different from Sonning Cutting and there were never any location cabinets in what should have been the 10 foot in Sonning Cutting.

Edited by The Stationmaster
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What air brake loco? When the Pullman sets were introduced there were no air brake locos on the WR (apart from straight air brakes on the loco bogies).

 

The emergency instructions only mention a brake pipe (within the train, no mention of a reservoir pipe), and of course the BR 2-pipe system didn't exist then anyway). Without delving out the full Instructions I can't be sure if they had EP brakes.

 

The location of the photo in the OP is very clearly just east of Westbury Lane Bridge, Purley (from which bridge the photo was obviously) taken and the train is on the Down Main Line. Giveaways are the location cabinets in the 10 foot and the two bridges in the background - the nearer one carrying Winston Way and the further carrying Purley Lane. The topography and juxtaposition of the bridges, and their type, is totally different from Sonning Cutting and there were never any location cabinets in what should have been the 10 foot in Sonning Cutting.

The Blue Pullman's had the same EP/Auto Air braking system as the Southern Region DEMUs with one key difference - it was two-stage. At speeds of over 30 mph the "high-speed" brake cane into force with the brake cylinder pressure automatically increased to compensate for the poorer braking performance of tread brakes at higher speeds.

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The Blue Pullman's had the same EP/Auto Air braking system as the Southern Region DEMUs with one key difference - it was two-stage. At speeds of over 30 mph the "high-speed" brake cane into force with the brake cylinder pressure automatically increased to compensate for the poorer braking performance of tread brakes at higher speeds.

 

Having now checked the original Instructions a few points answering some earlier questions -

 

1. The sets did have a main reservoir pipe, max pressure 125 lbs p.s.i. connecting the main reservoirs on each power car to each other and feeding a supplementary reservoir on each vehicle.  The brake pipe was connected to an auxiliary reservoir on each vehicle and the EP brake unit was connected to both the main reservoir pipe and the brake pipe.  

 

No brake hoses were provided at the ends of the train so if loco hauled or assisted the train had no working automatic braking, hence the low speeds stipulated in such circumstances.  

 

The brake could either be worked in EP mode or if that failed it could be operated as a pure auto air brake.

 

2. The 'high speed' brake was activated by a tacho generator and was brought in at a speed of 40mph or higher but would remain operational down to 30mph on a falling speed.

 

3.  Auxiliary engine generator sets on the 8 car sets were sited in the two Parlour Seconds marshalled immediately inside the 'Motor Cars'. (as they are called in the Instructions).  They used underframe mounted 180hp RR engines and supplied hotel power pluscharging the 24volt batteries; a single engine could supply the whole train 'except in extreme cold weather conditions' - interestingly there is no mention of extreme hot weather! 

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