LNER Banana Van announced!!

[Garethp8873]

LNER Banana Van announced as part of the 2021 range! 

 

https://www.facebook.com/2176618712550434/posts/2814301105448855/

 

 

Edited January 29, 2021 by Garethp8873

[Suffolk Dave]

Excellent, more GER loveliness from Oxford. 
 

[NXEA!]

Fantastic, will definitely get some of these to go with the other GER vans already announced. It says they have something other things in development - as they have three GER products in the range now I wonder if they'll go for anything else. Some 50ft corridor coaches would be exquisite... 

[PaulG]

14 hours ago, NXEA! said:

 Some 50ft corridor coaches would be exquisite... 

..........never say never: one of the items put to Oxford Rail a year or so ago along with a number of other GER items!

 

Paul

[County of Yorkshire]

I have to say that even as a GWR modeller I find these apeeling. 
 

Don’t think I’ll grab a bunch, but perhaps just one to give skin-deep coverage. 
 

CoY 

[tractionman]

15 hours ago, Suffolk Dave said:

Excellent, more GER loveliness from Oxford. 
 

 

some inf on Hatton's website too:

 

https://www.hattons.co.uk/newsdetail.aspx?id=1018

 

cheers,

 

Keith

 

 

[NXEA!]

1 hour ago, PaulG said:

..........never say never: one of the items put to Oxford Rail a year or so ago along with a number of other GER items!

 

Paul

You’ve got my hopes up Paul!

[stewartingram]

With this leaning towards the GER, should Oxford Rail rename themselves Cambridge Rail?

 

Stewart

[PaulG]

Just now, stewartingram said:

With this leaning towards the GER, should Oxford Rail rename themselves Cambridge Rail?

 

Stewart

.............well Network Rail are hoping to reconnect Oxford and Cambridge!

[Compound2632]

If I've understood correctly, these are Stratford-designed vehicles built in 1923, so appearing under the auspices of the LNER (and in that company's livery). Was the Great Eastern amalgamated into the LNER group on 1 January 1923? (Owing to delays in the legal process, the Caledonian and North Staffordshire weren't amalgamated into the LMS until 1 July 1923.) The email notification I've had from Hattons rather more accurately describes these banana vans as LNER vehicles!

 

What was the Great Eastern's port of entry for bananas? They're an import one usually associates with Liverpool, initially, then Avonmouth and Southampton.

Edited January 29, 2021 by Compound2632

[Roy Langridge]

43 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

The email notification I've had from Hattons rather more accurately describes these banana vans as LNER vehicles!

 

 

As do Oxford as shown in the heading on the flyer in the first post.

Roy

[Dunsignalling]

AIUI, the Southern never had enough Banana vans to deal with maximum demand and hired extra ones in from the LNER, presumably this sort as (AFAIK) the LNER didn't have any other kind.

 

Not sure if it extended into loans between regions in BR days, but I'm willing to wing it for a couple!

 

John 

[Michael Hodgson]

3 hours ago, County of Yorkshire said:

I have to say that even as a GWR modeller I find these apeeling. 
 

Don’t think I’ll grab a bunch, but perhaps just one to give skin-deep coverage. 
 

CoY 

Yes, but the GWR had flying bananas

[Steamport Southport]

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

If I've understood correctly, these are Stratford-designed vehicles built in 1923, so appearing under the auspices of the LNER (and in that company's livery). Was the Great Eastern amalgamated into the LNER group on 1 January 1923? (Owing to delays in the legal process, the Caledonian and North Staffordshire weren't amalgamated into the LMS until 1 July 1923.) The email notification I've had from Hattons rather more accurately describes these banana vans as LNER vehicles!

 

What was the Great Eastern's port of entry for bananas? They're an import one usually associates with Liverpool, initially, then Avonmouth and Southampton.

 

The LNER had quite a large presence in Liverpool - GCR and GNR especially. I think there would have been GER presence somewhere, even if it was just a goods office.

 

So although they were probably ordered for the GER section and worked from their docks, they possibly did work Oop North depending on need.

 

 

Jason

[jwealleans]

Well, who'd have thought it?

 

On 22/03/2020 at 08:54, jwealleans said:

others were steam heated for banana traffic as well.

[Pteremy]

There is an RMWeb thread on 'Banana Vans' which, amongst other things, says that:

 

In 1931 Elders & Fyffes moved the import of bananas from Hull to Southampton. In view of the LNER's loss of traffic requiring specialist vans and to assist the SR some 200+ ex NER, ex GCR and ex GER banana vans were hired to the SR. In return the SR loaned the LNER the same number of covered goods vans.

 

 

The LNER bananas kept their LNER numbers but had large SR branding added! Having not been built by the Southern I doubt they would have been allocated any diagram numbers. Of the 325 vans involved, 60-70 were lost in a fire on 5 June 1936 and the LNER requested the return of the others in November the following year. This prompted the Southern to build a large batch of its own. 

[jwealleans]

59 minutes ago, Dunsignalling said:

(AFAIK) the LNER didn't have any other kind.

 

They did, a standard design on a 9' wheelbase (IIRC), but when the banana traffic moved back to Southampton from Hull they hired almost all, possibly all, their vans to the SR, who rather carelessly allowed them to catch fire and a significant number were destroyed.

 

Edit - as has just been said at exactly the same moment.

Edited January 29, 2021 by jwealleans

[Pint of Adnams]

I'm confused! It looks like a hybrid - the GER type vans that were built were identical in external appearance to the GE's 19' van on a steel underframe but lacked the end vents, whilst steam heating and vacuum braking were added - see Diagram below. In which case doors should have external framing and diagonal bracing and there should also be diagonal flat bracing to each side (see Tatlow vol 1pp206-7). The LNER vans were shorter at 17' 6", unusually for the LNER had flush cupboard doors, and no bracing to the sides (see Tatlow  vol 4A pp156-7). The illustration in the OP does not appear to show these features, and has a capacity of 10T not 8T...

 

 

Edited January 29, 2021 by Pint of Adnams

[PaulG]

Pint of Adnams perhaps this helps

[Michael Hodgson]

The photos show quite a lot of prominent strapping which looks much less obvious on these drawings  This might in fact be absolutely correct to scale as it won't have been very thick, so it could just be that shadows make it stand out in the photos, but will the overall impression of the model be incorrect?  Or am I just accustomed to overscale angle irons?

[Nile]

The diagonal bracing is there if you look hard enough.

[NXEA!]

I ask this as someone with no knowledge of banana traffic at all, so would appreciate some insight. Generally speaking, how did banana traffic work - was it block formations from point to point, and was there anywhere on the GE region where Banana’s were imported such as East London, Harwich or anywhere else? Or could wagons run singly and be marshalled in general goods traffic and end up on branch lines etc? And did they get used for anything else other than Bananas in BR days? 

[Miss Prism]

Banana traffic on the GWR tended to be in block trains, primarily from Bristol. Fully-fitted stock, fast timings. Dock unloading times and transit times were tightly controlled as a controlled part of the fruit ripening window.

 

 

[Compound2632]

I don't know about the Great Eastern's banana traffic and like you, @NXEA!, I'd like to find out. My knowledge of banana traffic is confined to the other side of the country:

 

 

[Midland banana train posed at Hathersage, 31 July 1911. NRM DY 9588, released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) licence by the National Railway Museum.]

 

The LNWR from Liverpool and the Midland from Liverpool and later Avonmouth ran block trains meeting the banana boats; I suppose these may have detached portions en route - there was discussion in the thread @Pteremy mentioned, which starts off talking about colour but gets into discussion of the traffic:

They do seem to have run in blocks. There was a dreadful collision at Sharnbrook on the Midland main line, 4 February 1909, where an up fitted express goods train from Manchester was in a head-on collision at over 50 mph with a down goods train that was running wrong line; there was much destruction of rolling stock including the five banana vans in the train. Five more were built as replacements, which I suppose demonstrates that they were valuable vehicles being worked to capacity.

 

I think Oxford are on to a good thing here. If you have one banana van, you need at least a dozen!

[TheSignalEngineer]

10 minutes ago, Miss Prism said:

Banana traffic on the GWR tended to be in block trains, primarily from Bristol. Fully-fitted stock, fast timings. Dock unloading times and transit times were tightly controlled as a controlled part of the fruit ripening window.

 

 

The Avonmouth to Birmingham train was booked three hours via Stourbridge. 

Another route coming my way was the Southampton - Birmingham which took about one hour from Banbury to Moor Street. 

The trains had their own section in the WTT book which included notes as to other trains to be kept out of the way if the Banana special was running.