Mk 1 Full Brakes - why used?

[Wickham Green]

16 hours ago, phil-b259 said:

 

 

That wasn’t done for luggage reasons - the original Pullman brake coaches we some of the oldest Pullman carriages in use so BR withdrew them and used a BG instead. 

 

In the final year of the Belle at least one of the BGs was in the cooperate blue and grey - not sure if the livery carried when they were first used was maroon or green.

I don't think any BGs ever carried green livery (?).

[Aire Head]

44 minutes ago, Wickham Green said:

I don't think any BGs ever carried green livery (?).

 

Found this thread when I did a quick Google and it seems that some did.

[dibber25]

I always understood that one of the reasons for the popularity of the Mk.1 BG was the ease of accommodating BRUTE trollies and getting them in and out. (CJL)

[Wickham Green]

Yeeeeah  -  but the BG ( in its BR Mk1 form and its predecessors ) was around aeons before the BRUTE was invented !

[Gwiwer]

15 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

Yes.  It came in three varieties - CL which meant it was collected at the sending point; DL which meant it was delivered at the destination, and PLA which meant it was station-to-station only if memory serves me right (or is memory getting hazy and it was collected and delivered - I need to check that one.

 

At summer holiday resorts it could turn up in considerable quantities.

Passenger's Luggage in Advance could be stowed into a van (often a BG) which would be attached to a service bound for the destination.  Upon arrival there the van would be uncoupled, shunted as required and left for station staff to unload as convenient.  

 

Examples of this working included at Minehead, Ilfracombe and Swanage and I believe at some east coast resorts including Scarborough and Filey Holiday Camp.  

 

The arrangement was far from foolproof.  There is already one account in this thread of baggage arriving on the day of departure after the holiday.  And another of seriously misrouted bags.  I have hazy memories of the family using the service once when I was very young.  I might have been 3 or just 4 when we stayed in Swanage for what turned out to be a continuously wet and miserable week.  As the party included my parents and two very young children (my sister being 25 months younger) they chose not to be also burdened with heavy luggage on a trip requiring at least two changes of train.  I have  a recollection of being taken with my late father to Swanage station to collect the cases the day after we arrived.  And luckily they were there.  

 

The same process applied in reverse and probably with an arriving van having been unloaded then being re-loaded with returning baggage.  Ours probably took a different route to ourselves.  That return trip involved trains from Swanage to Wareham, thence into Bournemouth West, from there to Southampton Central via Ringwood, thence to Reading General and ultimately back to our then home with Mother's parents in West Drayton & Yiewsley Junction for Uxbridge and Staines - as its running-in name-boards proudly proclaimed at the time.

[Fat Controller]

3 hours ago, Wickham Green said:

Yeeeeah  -  but the BG ( in its BR Mk1 form and its predecessors ) was around aeons before the BRUTE was invented !

Not that much before. IIRC, the M1 BG arrrived from 1956 onwards, whilst I have seen photos of BRUTEs dating from 1961/2

[96701]

I'll just leave this here.

 

 

[davknigh]

Did Mk1 full brakes tend to roam between the regions or be confined to their designated areas? Or to put it more simply, might you find a W prefix full brake on a ScR train?

 

Cheers,

 

David

[Gwiwer]

1 hour ago, davknigh said:

Did Mk1 full brakes tend to roam between the regions or be confined to their designated areas? Or to put it more simply, might you find a W prefix full brake on a ScR train?

 

Cheers,

 

David

 

The regional prefix indicated allocation or nominal ownership but they could, and did, turn up anywhere.  It was rare to see an Sc-prefix van as far south as London but it happened.  It was equally rare in my experience to find a W- or S-prefix much farther north than Glasgow or Edinburgh.  But the nature of van workings and traffic requirements meant that they did roam far and wide.  E- and M-prefix vans could turn up anywhere.

 

 

[Covkid]

On 14/01/2020 at 16:44, cravensdmufan said:

There was a few trains like that - the 04.30 Liverpool Street - Ipswich was around 50/50 NPCCS/passenger Mk1 stock.

 

BG's for mail and newspapers. Passenger compartments sometimes full of sleeping squaddies alighting at Colchester.  I used to pick it up at Brentwood around 05.12 as the train didn't stop at my larger local station (Shenfield) because the mail sorting office was at Brentwood. 

 

 

Haha.  That sparked a memory for me.  In the last week of the "Lowestoft" loco hauled I joined the gang of cranks who were doing it.  Can't remember which 37 it was but we piled on, however it was a dead end move when you got to Norwich, after the empties from Cambridge.  Fortunately I was with an ex SF driver, and after a couple of beers in Norwich we wandered back to the station and he tapped up some ex colleagues on a class 47 and single BG.  We jumped in the rear cab for the trip to Liv St, and when the rather large Caribbean guard arrived, my companion told him he would have to travel in the BG.  Don't remember but about that ride but it was pretty lively. !!  

[Enterprisingwestern]

22 hours ago, Aire Head said:

 

 

Iirc prior to 1969 the brake didn't have to be the rear vehicle on a fully fitted train either. I mate be incorrect but was it a maximum of 2 vehicle behind the brake vehicle?

 

Wasn't it the number of axles behind the brake rather than the number of vehicles?

 

Mike.

[Siberian Snooper]

6 minutes ago, Enterprisingwestern said:

 

Wasn't it the number of axles behind the brake rather than the number of vehicles?

 

Mike.

 

Yeah, I think you're right, I can't remember how many though.

 

 

[Enterprisingwestern]

2 minutes ago, Siberian Snooper said:

 

Yeah, I think you're right, I can't remember how many though.

 

 

 

No, me neither, that's why I left the post as it is!

 

Mike.

[Aire Head]

8 minutes ago, Enterprisingwestern said:

 

Wasn't it the number of axles behind the brake rather than the number of vehicles?

 

Mike.

 

Actually yes your right there. I can't remember how many either 

[Aire Head]

@Enterprisingwestern @Siberian Snooper

 

I found this while snooping around trying to the find the answer.

 

Front another topic and written by @The JohnsterJohnsterJohnsterJJohJohnstJohnsterJohnsterJohnsterJJo

 

"Prior to 1969, a freight brake van is required on all freight trains, as the last vehicle except that 2 fitted vehicles may run behind it on fully fitted trains, a common feature on ECML fish traffic.  On parcels or milk traffic, a passenger brake van must be provided, and steam heated in the season, for the guard to ride in, and up to 10 bogie or 20 4/6 wheeled vehicles may be marshalled behind it; a similar rule applies to passenger traffic."

 

 

[adb968008]

A typical mIx of GUV/BGs on a parcels working here..

 

This is Clifton station, between Bolton and Manchester and is the Tuesdays/Thursdays GUS stores Bolton vans.

47596 came on vacation around the North West for a summer, based from Crewe and did all the usual workings.

 

Formation is GUV+BG+GUV+BG+BG+BG+BG+GUV+GUV

 

heres another (slide is being eaten), but 8 BGs and 2 GUVs.

Preston Royal Mail with 47575

 

Heres 47592 at Kearsley .. 2 GUVs + 2BGs+ 4 GUVs

Edited January 16, 2020 by adb968008

[SM42]

On 14/01/2020 at 12:39, number6 said:

I was putting my bike in a full brake at Crewe for Euston, late 1980s, it was completely empty except for one small packet with a label on it: Live Mice - destination Bristol. They were obviously going the long way around...

 

The joys of the Red Star Parcels computer and its, errm, creative, routing options. Parcels certainly got plenty of miles for their money.

 

I think a relative of this computer now works at National Rail Enquries.

 

Andy

[Gwiwer]

12 hours ago, SM42 said:

 

 

I think a relative of this computer now works at National Rail Enquries.

 

 

 

I could believe it does.  And I could believe it feeds all third-party apps as well as a few railway-operated ones.  Some of the routings offered are based purely on the next departure irrespective of route / fare / arrival time.

 

An example I deal with several times a day is Clapham Junction to Richmond.  Around 15 minutes by direct train of which there are plenty.  But if most planners are consulted between xx.58 / xx.28 past the hour they will offer the xx.06 / xx.36 via Wimbledon and Kingston which is the next departure but takes more like 50 minutes to get there.  And via five fare zones not two.

 

Likewise to Waterloo - served typically every 2- 4 minutes from Clapham by direct trains from a choice of platforms 3, 4 and 10.  Yet there is always someone on platform 5, 6 or 11 pointing at the app which shows the "Next" train from those platforms which will take as much as an hour rather than 9-10 minutes to reach Waterloo by way of a circuit of the Hounslow or Kingston loops.

 

The problem lies with incomplete reading of the app as often as not.  Whilst the GIGO principle applies (Garbage In - Garbage Out) the system is only regurgitating the data it is fed.  It is the user who fails to take note of the route, fares and arrival times in every case.  

Edited January 17, 2020 by Gwiwer

[The Johnster]

On 15/01/2020 at 12:25, Wickham Green said:

Yeeeeah  -  but the BG ( in its BR Mk1 form and its predecessors ) was around aeons before the BRUTE was invented !

I think what Dibber was getting at was probably that BGs, along with GUVs and other NPCCS, were preferred when you were working with BRUTES because BSKs, BSOs. BCK's etc had cages in which items could be locked.  In the case of a BG with corridor connections, the entire coach was locked when the guard was away from it (and sometimes when he was inside it if he wanted a bit of peace and quiet).  The lack of the caged area meant that there was more room to handle the BRUTES, and you could get more in.

 

On 15/01/2020 at 21:27, davknigh said:

Did Mk1 full brakes tend to roam between the regions or be confined to their designated areas? Or to put it more simply, might you find a W prefix full brake on a ScR train?

 

Cheers,

 

David

Depended on whether they were in regular passenger rakes or circuit working (Express Parcels, Newspaper, or similar brandings); pool vehicles in parcels service could and did end up anywhere and everywhere.

[The Johnster]

1 hour ago, Gwiwer said:

 

I could believe it does.  And I could believe it feeds all third-party apps as well as a few railway-operated ones.  Some of the routings offered are based purely on the next departure irrespective of route / fare / arrival time.

 

An example I deal with several times a day is Clapham Junction to Richmond.  Around 15 minutes by direct train of which there are plenty.  But if most planners are consulted between xx.58 / xx.28 past the hour they will offer the xx.06 / xx.36 via Wimbledon and Kingston which is the next departure but takes more like 50 minutes to get there.  And via five fare zones not two.

 

Likewise to Waterloo - served typically every 2- 4 minutes from Clapham by direct trains from a choice of platforms 3, 4 and 10.  Yet there is always someone on platform 5, 6 or 11 pointing at the app which shows the "Next" train from those platforms which will take as much as an hour rather than 9-10 minutes to reach Waterloo by way of a circuit of the Hounslow or Kingston loops.

 

The problem lies with incomplete reading of the app as often as not.  Whilst the GIGO principle applies (Garbage In - Garbage Out) the system is only regurgitating the data it is fed.  It is the user who fails to take note of the route, fares and arrival times in every case.  

I was told during my time as a freight guard at Canton in the 70s by a bloke who generally knew his stuff that booking offices are instructed to route passengers by the fastest permitted route in order to arrive at the earliest possible time; of course, this varies according to the time of day according to the destination.  And, in days gone by, to the tide...

 

Back in the pre-grouping days, it was alleged, you could book a through ticket from Cardiff to Paris.  The usual route would be London-Dover/Folkestone-Calais/Boulogne-Gare du Nord, but it varied different times of the day and might involve Newhaven-Dieppe, or Southampton-Cherbourg.  There was, though I doubt anybody would have ever had the endurance for it, a possibility at certain times of the day and states of tide, of routing Cardiff (Riverside)-Barry Pier, Barry Rly steamer-Burnham on Sea-(S & DJ)-Bournemouth change LSWR-Poole, steamer-St Malo-Gare du Montparnasse.  2 steamers and 4 trains, at least 3 of them without toilet facilities and stopping everywhere!

 

The more I learn about the Victorians, the madder I realise they were... 

[C126]

On 14/01/2020 at 23:12, cravensdmufan said:

I'm enjoying this topic - a lot of useful information coming through.

 

May I just second this, and thank you all for your contributions.  I, too, am finding it very useful.  Any memories of the van train along the west Sussex coast, bringing market garden produce up to Bricklayers Arms?  Was the train used regularly for any other horticultural freight flow into London?

[The Stationmaster]

On 16/01/2020 at 08:29, Enterprisingwestern said:

 

Wasn't it the number of axles behind the brake rather than the number of vehicles?

 

Mike.

On passenger trains it was actually the number of wheels.  And the number allowed behind the  rearmost brakevan on a passenger etc train depended on the maximum rising gradient of the route over which the train would run.  It should be noted that the limits were set by regional Instructions not the normal Brake Regulations and may well have varied a little between Regions prior to 1972, for example things changed considerably when what amounted to fixed formation air braked Intercity trains began to operate regularly. The detail given below has been checked against WR official source documents. 

 

So - at 1960 (and going back for quite a long while previously it was as follows -

A. Rising gradient not steeper than 1 in 100 or falling or level = total of 40 wheels allowed behind the rearmost brake;  passengers allowed to travel in a maximum of vehicles up to and including 40 wheels behind the rearmost brakevan

B.  Rising gradient steeper than 1 in 100 but no steeper than 1 in 40 = total 40 wheels;  but passengers only allowed to travel in vehicles up to a maximum of 24 wheels behind the brakevan.

C.  Rising gradient steeper than 1 in 40 = total of 16 wheels; passengers only allowed to travel in a maximum of  a single vehicle behind the brakevan. 

 

By October of 1966 (memory suggest the actual change either took place earlier that year or late in 1965) the numbers were changed to - 

A.  80 and 80

B.  64 and 48

C.  32 and 24

 

This was mainly to enable the number of brakevans to be reduced to one on as many passenger trains as possible and to facilitate the gradual introduction of standard formations on some routes.  It effectively allowed a 10 passenger carrying coaches (instead of 5 x 8-wheeled bogie coaches under the earlier limit) to be conveyed behind the brakevan.   As far as I can trace the limits had gone by 1972.  The limits, obviously I hope, did not apply to DMUs. 

 

On 15/01/2020 at 10:51, dibber25 said:

I always understood that one of the reasons for the popularity of the Mk.1 BG was the ease of accommodating BRUTE trollies and getting them in and out. (CJL)

 

On 15/01/2020 at 21:27, davknigh said:

Did Mk1 full brakes tend to roam between the regions or be confined to their designated areas? Or to put it more simply, might you find a W prefix full brake on a ScR train?

 

Cheers,

 

David

There were BGs and then there were BGSs- effectively, and gradually two different fleets.  Those working in passenger trains were generally very strictly controlled by Regional Passenger Rolling Stock offices and they tended to be retained in fixed sets but in any case worked in accordance with coach/carriage working programmes and even in pre-TOPS days were kept under fairly close observation.  Thus on the Western - and no doubt elsewhere - if a depot needed to take a BG out of a passenger set or out of its booked working it needed permission from the HQ Passenger Rolling Stock Controller (who, in one job I occupied, used to sit at the opposite end of the office from me).

 

BGs in parcels working were treated slightly differently and officially worked to fully balanced diagrams which ensured there was always one where it should be - their main use on parcels trains and certain mail trains was to provide a bogie brakevan which in consequence allowed trains to run at bogie vehicle speeds.  In this case the Parcels Operations Sections used to monitor the working of BGs to check that trains were correctly formed and as ever the LMR couldn't get it right because they had diagrammed themselves to use more BGs than they had allocated and to forward more BGs inter-Regionally than they received.  Thus their big advantage on parcels trains was one of train speed and thus journey times without taking a passenger carrying vehicle out of passenger train use which meant that trains ran late when a freight brakevan was substituted for a BG

 

They were not ideal for BRUTE loading - GUVs were far better in practice and they had fewer windows to break - and fewer footboards to damage when BRUTEs were unloaded the naughty way by 'bouncing' them out of the van with the result that the back end of the Brute bashed down on the footboard and (usually) split it.  The biggest advantage of the GUV was that it was open from end-to-end internally without the Guard's cubby hole area in the way of manoeuvring and stowing BRUTEs - which meant a GUV could hold more BRUTEs than a BG hence their adoption for specialist BRUTE Circuit workings whenever possible.  In contrast the BG had some advantages for mail traffic with more doors and at least one piece of positive division between stowing areas.

[Wickham Green]

20 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

On passenger trains it was actually the number of wheels.  ..........................

Hopefully there would normally be a simple correlation with the number of axles !

[The Stationmaster]

2 minutes ago, Wickham Green said:

Hopefully there would normally be a simple correlation with the number of axles !

The number of wheels in effect allowed vehicles to be counted more easily because they came with either four, six, eight, or twelve wheels.  If you counted axles you could finish up with an odd number when vehicles with three axles were involved - counting wheels always involved adding even numbers (even if they don't come out exactly to, say, 40).

[Edwin_m]

4 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

The number of wheels in effect allowed vehicles to be counted more easily because they came with either four, six, eight, or twelve wheels.  If you counted axles you could finish up with an odd number when vehicles with three axles were involved - counting wheels always involved adding even numbers (even if they don't come out exactly to, say, 40).

Not sure why counting to 40 in twos should be easier than counting to 20 in ones.  Unless you're Noah.