Accurascale Goes Bananas! SR D1478 and D1479 Diagram Banana Vans in OO/4mm

[Mark C]

With or without (you) (apologies to U2): -

 

 

[Graham_Muz]

Going bananas – SR Diagram 1478 and 1479 banana vans in 00 from Accurascale arrive at Canute Road Quay.

More details and a bit of a review here https://southern-railway.com/2024/04/06/going-bananas-sr-diagram-1478-and-1479-banana-vans-in-00-from-accurascale-arrive/ 

Edited April 6 by Graham_Muz

[Brinkly]

This might have been answered on this thread (or elsewhere already), but why did the wartime bauxite-painted vans have a green stripe? 

 

Kind regards,

 

Nick

[gwrrob]

10 minutes ago, Brinkly said:

This might have been answered on this thread (or elsewhere already), but why did the wartime bauxite-painted vans have a green stripe? 

 

 

@Wickham Green too suggested it was a wartime measure and banana traffic specific.

[Ian Hargrave]

Wartime bananas. Were there any ? I know it’s a long while back but given the “difficulty “ of  crossing the North Atlantic at this time,I seem to recall that bananas,a luxury in those times of rationing and shortages of foodstuffs didn’t reappear in the shops until the mid to late 1940’s. We needed Sherman Tanks& GI’s more than we needed bananas I believe. Yours etc. born 1942.and we billeted two of those GI’s prior to D-Day whose generosity with foodstuffs helped sustain a flagging dietary national economy. Wonder what became of them …

 

[Wickham Green too]

49 minutes ago, Ian Hargrave said:

Wartime bananas. Were there any ? ...

Southern Style states "The green markings on banana vans, if they were indeed intended to signify the vans' contents in a discreet manner, also presumably indicate that the banana traffic did continue on however reduced a scale." .................................. the only plausible alternative I can think of is that the vans would be more readily identifiable whenever banana traffic resumed - nobody knew the war still had another four years to run.

[Cwmtwrch]

47 minutes ago, Ian Hargrave said:

Wartime bananas. Were there any ?

According to Fyffes, who were well placed to know, and tried hard but without success to challenge the decision, the already seriously reduced imports of bananas stopped completely in November 1940 following a decision of the wartime Ministry of Food. Imports did not resume until December 1945, and then only in limited quantities and subject to rationing. Rationing of bananas ended in December 1952 and Government controls on banana imports ended in March 1953.

 

Given the level of wartime austerity and the priority given to the armed forces I doubt that there was much repainting of anything on the railways during wartime. Certainly by the end of the war there was a considerable backlog of routine maintenance. Since the green patches appeared on all four corners, one thought was that it was to do with identifying which vans had been refurbished for banana traffic following their wartime use as insulated meat vans, but green on bauxite doesn't show up very well, even before it gets dirty, so I'm not really convinced...

[Islesy]

It’s an interesting conundrum, but given that the drawings were in place, and photographs attest to the livery being in place post-war (both of which I have in my possession), it’s a question I doubt we’ll ever find the answer to now.

There are several possible explanations that spring to mind, most of which surround the fact that the drawing dates coincide with the arrival of US Forces into the south of England, so there’s a good chance that luxury perishable goods were in circulation, but not necessarily through official import routes.

That the green corner bars merge into the red  oxide main livery is intentionally low key in my opinion; a further example of subtle security.

Hopefully, further visits to the NA during the course of the year will yield a firmer answer.

 

All the best,

Paul

[Enterprisingwestern]

10 hours ago, Cwmtwrch said:

Rationing of bananas ended in December 1952 and Government controls on banana imports ended in March 1953.

 

EU controls on banana straightness beginning some time later of course!

 

Mike.

[Wickham Green too]

1 hour ago, Enterprisingwestern said:

EU controls on banana straightness beginning some time later of course!

Unfortunately never enforced ............... bent bananas are such a pain to pack in your shopping !

[Ian Hargrave]

As a sickly child recovering from one of the many infections I seemed to suffer,I remember being given one of the then scarce bananas….my first… as a special treat. I promptly rejected it as inedible. 
   
     If there are any Giles cartoon fans on the forum,there was one featuring the redoubtable Grandma celebrating the return of the banana. 

[Wickham Green too]

You didn't try eating it without peeling it first, did you !!?! 🤢

[Fat Controller]

'Yes, we have no bananas

We have no bananas today...'

was a popular wartme song, I believe'

[Godfrey Glyn]

Don't think Ian's response to the arrival of the banana after the war was unique, a colleague of mine remembered being given one when they started to arrive after the war, and perhaps due to the hype, was so disappointed that he didn't finish it and steered clear of them for many years!  A pity though that we ended up with the journalist who invented the story about straight bananas in a position of some power.

all the best

 

Godfrey

 

PS BTW the models are beautiful!

Edited April 9 by Godfrey Glyn

[Michael Hodgson]

9 hours ago, Enterprisingwestern said:

 

EU controls on banana straightness beginning some time later of course!

 

Mike.

 ... along with the requirement that hens laid square eggs to make them easier to pack.

[Michael Hodgson]

22 hours ago, Brinkly said:

This might have been answered on this thread (or elsewhere already), but why did the wartime bauxite-painted vans have a green stripe? 

 

Kind regards,

 

Nick

Go faster stripes - British Racing Green?

[gwrrob]

Look out for Andy York's @AY Mod review of these in the May issue of BRM.

[AY Mod]

13 minutes ago, gwrrob said:

Look out for Andy York's @AY Mod review of these in the May issue of BRM.

 

They must know I have many derailments.

 

[Enterprisingwestern]

1 hour ago, AY Mod said:

 

They must know I have many derailments.

 

 

I'm glad that chassis only has a vac pipe fixing point at one end, I was beginning to think it was just me!

 

Mike.

[The Stationmaster]

On 14/03/2024 at 11:38, Dunsignalling said:

 

From what I saw of Banana vans in my youth, they customarily ran in train-loads or part train-loads from the docks to ripening warehouses that also functioned as wholesale distribution centres. In my case, that meant Fyffes at Exeter Central, though I think they also had a smaller Depot at Barnstaple.

 

AIUI, retailers were normally supplied from these centres by road rather than single rail vans continuing on to smaller goods yards or down branch lines.

 

John

 

 

 

 

Bit of both John.    the stuff originating from Barry and Avonmouth seems to have invarably started as trainloads - even if only to a local yard (in the case of Avonmouth).  But places like the Geest depot at Lent Rise. Taplow could hardly accept a trainload - unless it was a very short train indeed - so either the through train to Acton detached at Taplow for them to be shunted to Lent Rise by the pilot or they were put off elsewhere and taken forward by the local trip (in its later years Lent Rise only handled two types of traffic - bananas and household coal) The empties invariably came out on the local trip and in some cases empties back to places such as Avonmouth were simply attached to ordinary part, or fully,  fitted freights.  I know one of teh Barry flows used to detach vehicles at swindon - pproablyly for an immediate local destination

 

Lent Rise would hold no more than half a dozen vans, the very long gone former ripening depot at Vastern Road yard in Reading could only deal with a similar number and no doubt similar places existed elsewhere.  So seeing Banana Vans in other than block trains was not exactly an unusual sight nor was seeing them in local freight trips.  However I very much doubt there were any ripening depots at the ends of bucolic branch lines!

[The Stationmaster]

On 09/04/2024 at 17:51, Michael Hodgson said:

 ... along with the requirement that hens laid square eggs to make them easier to pack.

Regrettably the packing machinery and boxes  couldn't handle square eggs so that was the end of that idea ...

[SHMD]

I thought they had to abandoned the "square egg idea because someone said that if it went ahead, then all the other farm animals would complain about the noise!

 

 

Kev.

 

[Wickham Green too]

2 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

Regrettably the packing machinery and boxes  couldn't handle square eggs so that was the end of that idea ...

Obviously couldn't fit a square egg in a round hole !

[Dunsignalling]

4 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

Bit of both John.    the stuff originating from Barry and Avonmouth seems to have invarably started as trainloads - even if only to a local yard (in the case of Avonmouth).  But places like the Geest depot at Lent Rise. Taplow could hardly accept a trainload - unless it was a very short train indeed - so either the through train to Acton detached at Taplow for them to be shunted to Lent Rise by the pilot or they were put off elsewhere and taken forward by the local trip (in its later years Lent Rise only handled two types of traffic - bananas and household coal) The empties invariably came out on the local trip and in some cases empties back to places such as Avonmouth were simply attached to ordinary part, or fully,  fitted freights.  I know one of teh Barry flows used to detach vehicles at swindon - pproablyly for an immediate local destination

 

Lent Rise would hold no more than half a dozen vans, the very long gone former ripening depot at Vastern Road yard in Reading could only deal with a similar number and no doubt similar places existed elsewhere.  So seeing Banana Vans in other than block trains was not exactly an unusual sight nor was seeing them in local freight trips.  However I very much doubt there were any ripening depots at the ends of bucolic branch lines!

Thanks Mike,

 

The ones I remember coming down from Southampton for Exeter and beyond were often formed in a block train, though not necessarily a very long one (some having been detached at Salisbury, perhaps?), with a shorter string of vans at the front of the next through fitted goods.

 

I'd think even a biggish depot would have an optimum number of vans it wanted to receive at once, purely on the basis of the time and manpower available for unloading. I never saw how many vans continued on beyond Exeter Central but from various conversations, I gained an impression of not more than five or six, if that.

 

I interpreted the block train as consisting of as many vans as were loaded and ready to go in time for the first available Q path, with the remainder following by the next scheduled general working.

 

John

Edited April 14 by Dunsignalling

[Downer]

I’m still waiting in France for the vans I ordered through Irish Railway Models.  Anyone else in the same position?