Coal buffer stops

[Nathanael]

Hi folks. 
Does anyone have some real world pics of coal buffer stops? Google hasn’t been particularly helpful or my googling skills are just rubbish!

I want to have a go at scratch building a couple. 

Thank you in advance. 

[pH]

What do you mean by “coal buffer stops”? How are they different from other buffer stops? A bit more of a description of what you’re looking for would help in searching.

[Trevellan]

Do you mean the sleeper-built style with a rubble infill, as produced by PECO?

[Nathanael]

8 hours ago, Trevellan said:

Do you mean the sleeper-built style with a rubble infill, as produced by PECO?

Yes that is what I mean. Shows my level of ignorance.

I assumed it was coal. I did wonder what it was filled with. And I really didn’t know what to call them. I feel a bit silly!

[RailWest]

They have one at Minehead behind the turntable. Actually it is 'fake', in that it is hollow and covers a real friction buffer-stop.

 

The story goes that the then General Manager did not think that the latter, which was mandated by the ORR (or their predecessors), looked right for a GWR image, so he went into the station model shop, borrowed a PECO example, showed it to the infrastructure team and asked them to build one to match !

 

Here is a rear view of it taken in 2013 (not that the engine was very GWR either!).

 

Edited January 23, 2022 by RailWest

[Nathanael]

That is very cool. Thanks. This stop of buffer, was it purely a GWR thing?

[Compound2632]

See also this very recent topic:

To summarize: buffer stops of this sort were by no means purely a GWR thing but really they weren't much of a thing at all - one of those modellers' tropes that possibly has more to do with copying other models than paying attention to the real thing. They didn't have coal in them - they would be filled up with spent ballast, earth, or other waste material - remember they had to be massive enough to withstand impact. That Minehead example, if it was the real buffer stop, wouldn't last a moment of it had a locomotive buffer up to it. (Note how the real examples have one or two pieces of old rail wrapped around them to hold them together.) It's nothing more than a large planter!

[The Stationmaster]

I reckon that if you hit one of those with the sort of force I have seen in buffer stop collisions in yards the main way in which it would work would be the contents acting as a sand drag as it was smashed apart.   Don't forget that even heavily creosote impregnated old sleepers will rot at/below ground level and a decent stop block collision is not going to stopped by rotten timber.

[The Stationmaster]

I reckon that if you hit one of those with the sort of force I have seen in buffer stop collisions in yards the main way in which it would work would be the contents acting as a sand drag as it was smashed apart.   Don't forget that even heavily creosote impregnated old sleepers will rot at/below ground level and a decent stop block collision is not going to stopped by rotten timber.