The Southern Railway following on from its constituents made use of Pull Push sets across the network and this practice carried on well into British Railways Southern Region days. Other railways companies also made of such although they were often also known as autocoach, motor coach or push pull sets on these other railways. Originally many of the units were converted from either ex steam railmotors, following early pre grouping experiments that found them to be inflexible and often under powered, and a mix of converted pre-grouping coaches.

The main topic of this post are the nine Pull Push sets converted from ex LSWR 46' 6" Emigrant corridor stock in 1942/3 that created sets 731 to 739. The sets comprised of a Driving Brake Third and a Composite and they retained their corridor connection between the two coaches. Although converted at the same time there were differences between the sets: sets 731 to 4 were identical, sets 735/7 had a slightly different Brake Third, sets 738/9 shared the same style Brake Third as sets 735/7 but with a different style of composite; confusing I know! The sets were widely travelled over all three sections of the Southern network and survived until 1959/1961.

My model of Set 734 that appears on Fisherton Sarum from time to time, and occasionally

Hornby Magazine’s Ashland is a Northstar Models built set. Unfortunately Northstar Models that manufactured a number of limited ready to run ex LSWR coaches are no longer available. They were a Christmas present to myself a few years ago now.

This is an extract from my blog at www.grahammuz.com

The full entry with additional information and images can be read here