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GWR Push Pull Working


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Auto working developed from driving trailers originally designed to work with steam railmotors, many of which were themselves converted to auto trailers during the 20s.  The original auto locos tended to be surplus fully depreciated types that would have otherwise been withdrawn; Metros and 517s have already been mentioned and some 2021 class half cab panniers including outside framed locos were also used.  I believe the first locos specifically built for auto work were the 48xx (later to become 14xx) 0-4-2T in 1932, a development of the 517s, and succeeded by the 58xx which were identical but not auto fitted.  Next came the 54xx, a development of the 2021 0-6-0PT with 5'2" driving wheels to keep out of the way on main line work, and followed by a 64xx, with a reversion to 4'7" driving wheels for auto work in South Wales or the Plymouth area where loads and gradients were heavier.  A 74xx variant of 64xx without auto gear was also produced.  No 2721, 57xx, or 8750 panniers were ever fitted for auto working and neither were any 45xx small prairies.

 

Not sure that the 4575 'sloping tank' small prairies converted to auto work for the regular interval timetable being introduced in South Wales in 1953 count according to the OP's specification; they were certainly GW locos but this conversion, which only applied to selected members of the class, was carried out by BR.

 

The auto gear was a system of rods and joints that connected to a regulator handle in the trailer cab which enabled it's operation to be duplicated on the loco.  The only other controls in the trailer cab were a vacuum brake 'setter' valve and a pedal which operated the warning bell.  Up to two auto trailers could be connected on each side of the loco, and as some trailers were 70' long the trailer cab might be well over 150' away from the loco whistle if two were coupled that side of the loco.  The trailers had to be marshalled with the cabs facing away from the loco as the gear was 'handed' and could not be connected otherwise.

 

One occasionally sees photos of auto trailers facing the 'wrong' way or being hauled by non-auto fitted locos, and in these cases the train is being operated as a normal hauled train, the loco of which will have to run around the stock for the return journey.  Obviously, any non-auto fitted vehicle marshalled between the loco and the trailers means that the train cannot be operated as an auto.

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I’m sure I posted a link/photo of an 0–6-0ST on a very early autotrain, possibly in the Forest of Dean, in an earlier thread.

 

I’m not very knowledgable of GWR things, but presumably this is synonymous with a ‘half cab pannier’, since they were the same thing with different tanks.

 

It is I think a 2021 Class loco, and the date probably 1907, when the halt was opened.

 

Yes, here it is:

 

 

9DF865BC-23E4-44ED-AF8A-32DD982FD686.jpeg
 

If you google ‘drybrook halt’ there are several other photos of this formation, although some are a bit hard to make out at first.

Edited by Nearholmer
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To add just a smidgen to that comprehensive reply, in GW days only lower powered 6 wheel engines were auto fitted. Pre group classes seem to have had it added and removed quite readily,  one may guess that when a loco went in for a heavy repair the gear was taken off and put on the next suitable outbound. As noted favourites seem to have been 517s, Metros, small (4ft1in wheel) 0-6-0 tanks especially 2021 and to an extent the older double framed hence low powered 4ft7.5in large panniers.

 

Collett seems to have changed policy and his auto classes kept the gear for life, no evidence of swaps between 48s and 58s and no fitments to 57s.

 

Autogear on 2-6-2Ts strictly a BR phenomenum. One may also note the two  four experimental fake coach encased auto locos, two 517s and two 2021s IIRC, Bulleids Leader[sic] 40 years earlier... 

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Having had a look, the website “a beginner’s guide to panniers” is exceedingly  informative, and genuinely does what it’s title says ..... well worth a read unless, presumably, you are already a deep expert.

 

Best bit is the 0-4-0PT No.795 ...... a cartoon engine!

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On 02/01/2020 at 13:47, Nearholmer said:

Having had a look, the website “a beginner’s guide to panniers” is exceedingly  informative, and genuinely does what it’s title says ..... well worth a read unless, presumably, you are already a deep expert.

 

Best bit is the 0-4-0PT No.795 ...... a cartoon engine!

 

Linky for that.

 

http://www.gwr.org.uk/nopanniers.html

 

 

 

Jason

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@The Johnster I have a question arising from the above (though it's outside of the OP's original question): I have a photo of a Prairie sandwiched between one autocoach 'ahead' and two coaches 'aft' the far-end one being another autocoach. The picture was taken during BR times (crimson lined autocoach) on the single section of what is now Cardiff's 'City Line', possible Coryton (as there is what appears to be a run-around loop) or one of the other intermediate stations. The train is in reverse with the two coaches leading (red lamp on the rear of the single autocoach) and the point of the question is - what could be the intermediate coach as I seem to be able to count 7 maybe 8 sets of door hinges (the photo is at an oblique angle)?

 

As the photo was 'borrowed' from t'interwebs, it's copyrighted so I am reluctant to post here.

 

Cheers,

 

Philip

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On 01/01/2020 at 22:59, Nearholmer said:

If you google ‘drybrook halt’ there are several other photos of this formation, although some are a bit hard to make out at first.

 

And some very interesting photographs of the halt, including this one, which Neil Parkhouse claims is one of the three earliest colour shots of a British railway subject.

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47 minutes ago, Philou said:

@The Johnster I have a question arising from the above (though it's outside of the OP's original question): I have a photo of a Prairie sandwiched between one autocoach 'ahead' and two coaches 'aft' the far-end one being another autocoach. The picture was taken during BR times (crimson lined autocoach) on the single section of what is now Cardiff's 'City Line', possible Coryton (as there is what appears to be a run-around loop) or one of the other intermediate stations. The train is in reverse with the two coaches leading (red lamp on the rear of the single autocoach) and the point of the question is - what could be the intermediate coach as I seem to be able to count 7 maybe 8 sets of door hinges (the photo is at an oblique angle)?

 

As the photo was 'borrowed' from t'interwebs, it's copyrighted so I am reluctant to post here.

 

Cheers,

 

Philip

It's an auto trailer, Jim, but not as we know it... it sounds like an A44, which is a Collett compartment Brake 3rd converted to auto trailer use by BR in 1953 for the extra auto work incurred in the new 'regular interval' Valleys timetable.  Those 4575s provided with auto gear were done at the same time and for the same purpose.  There were matching 10-compartment 'intermediate' all thirds (seconds by this time of course) without driving cabs, diagram A43, as well.  They lasted less than 10 years in service.    Unlike 'normal' saloon type auto trailers, they could not be used where there were unstaffed stations or low level halt platforms, but a precedent had already been set for this with the 'Clifton Downs' type of driving and intermediate trailers.  Plymouth area used 70' saloon trailers in gangwayed pairs, the 'inner' trailers having cabs which AFAIK were never used.

 

I've attached a photo from Google Images of A44s and a 64xx at Porthcawl in the early 60s.  They were known as 'Cyclops' trailers for obvious reasons.  Coryton auto trains were usually a 4575 with one trailer smokebox end and two bunker end; it was important to be able to climb the 1 in 80 from Crwys Road bridge to Heath Jc. smartly in order to keep out of the way of the Rhymney Valleys services.  In the early 50s the Coryton service seemed to be used as a sort of retirement home for pre-grouping trailers from the Cardiff, Taff Vale, and Rhymney, usually kept in 2 car matching sets.  The run around loop was retained well into the late 60s, as the branch featured a daily pickup, 94xx hauled and D95xx post 1965, which serviced the yard at Whitchurch and the various private sidings connected to the ROF and the Llanishen industrial estate that had grown up between the railway and Ty Glas road.  There were some loco hauled as opposed to auto passenger workings as well at peak times, including gangwayed coaches filling in from a Bristol diagram (but not the Bristol loco)

 

In early 1945 a military ambulance train working through via the train ferries from the Ardennes front line in Europe turned up with an air brake fitted Harwich B12 at the front and customers for Whitchurch Hospital, then being used by the US army.  They eventually built their own hospital at Rhydlafer out on the Llantrisant road, and used it until about 1947 at which point it was absorbed into the new NHS.   The loco must have run around it's air braked train at the General and worked up the branch tender first, and local residents recall the patients being transferred from the train on trolleys down the main road from the station with, apparently, the entire staff of the hospital pitching in to help.

 

Unknown.jpeg

 

Comet do kits for the Cyclops and the intermediate trailer.

Edited by The Johnster
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Which prompts a question that I've raised before, but not been able to answer:

 

Did the ADNR convert one or more of its circus coaches to driving trailers?

 

Some of the photos of them show the end looking suspiciously like a driving trailer.

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5 hours ago, The Johnster said:

There were matching 10-compartment 'intermediate' all thirds (seconds by this time of course) without driving cabs, diagram A43, as well.  

 

I think you will find they had 9 compartments.

 

Chris

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Jcm

 

you have to chisel right through to the end, or quicker, here’s a picture https://rcts.zenfolio.com/steam-gwr/other/hA88BE134

 

Its quite obviously a rebuild of a typical industrial 0-4-0ST, but from which original builder I don’t know.

 

I do know: Hawthorn Leslie.

 

K

Edited by Nearholmer
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One of the quirks of driving from the trailer is that the vacuum brake can be applied, but not released.  Only the fireman can do that, from the footplate.  Therefore the driver has to be good at stopping in the right place at a platform, with only one shot at it, or needs a fireman alert enough to release the brake quickly if he's going to undershoot.

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10 hours ago, melmerby said:

Didn't some of the GWR constituents also have auto trains?

(They certainly had steam railmotors)

TVR had railmotors and trailers, also auto fitted 4-4-2T locos and used a overhead wire control system.  This was easily removed by the GW at the grouping and the trailers fitted with GW gear; the trailers were in service in the Cardiff area until the early 50s, quite distinctive coaches with inset end vestibules and 'scissors bar' folding gates.  The Cardiff Railway also contributed some trailers which looked fairly similar to contemporary GW type with bolection mouldings around the windows,  and a control system apparently compatible with the GW's.  Not sure without looking up, which I'm not doing at this time of night, what the Rhymney and Barry Railways had.

 

The TV and Cardiff trailers were kept in pairs until withdrawal, some surviving to be painted in BR unlined crimson livery.

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