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GW AA3 timber veranda brakes.


Siberian Snooper
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11 hours ago, Paul H Vigor said:

AA3 or wooden-framed AA16?

 

AA3, I have acquired a Frogmore kit and wondered if I could use it on my mid 20s layout.

 

Many thanks, Compound2632, for providing the answer. I shall add the kit to the roundtuit pile.

 

 

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5 minutes ago, Siberian Snooper said:

Many thanks, Compound2632, for providing the answer. I shall add the kit to the roundtuit pile.

 

That wasn't an answer, since I don't know the date of the photo. I simply posted to illustrate what you were talking about.

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4 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

That wasn't an answer, since I don't know the date of the photo. I simply posted to illustrate what you were talking about.

 

The answer was in the link that you provided. Wooden veranda brakes were around into the 20s.

 

 

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2 hours ago, Siberian Snooper said:

 

AA3, I have acquired a Frogmore kit and wondered if I could use it on my mid 20s layout.

 

Many thanks, Compound2632, for providing the answer. I shall add the kit to the roundtuit pile.

 

 

My late father acquired a Frogmore kit for the Kington Branch brake van, it made up into a lovely model.

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4 hours ago, Siberian Snooper said:

The answer was in the link that you provided. Wooden veranda brakes were around into the 20s.

 

I'll have to take responsibility for that educated guess! (Which is based purely on the post-1920 size of G W.)

 

Updating of wooden verandah sides seems to have been either the application of plating (as with the cabin sides) or a more radical replacement in metal. I don't think there was any set timetable - vans were upgraded on an as-needed basis.

 

Pics of AA3s are rare.

 

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On the basis that there is an AA3 in the GWS collection at Didcot, at least one must have managed to survive in original form with a planked verandah into BR days. That said, I suspect that by 1948 any unmodified ones were extremely rare. The modification appears to have come in, at least for new build, with the AA13 vans, which had steel plated verandahs but planked bodies, suggesting that the single brace in the verandah sides, even when upgraded from flat strip to angle iron, wasn't up to the job of prevent lengthways racking of the bodies under the shocks of sudden starts and stops at the back end of loose coupled trains. In between, the first of the 24' vans, to diagram AA11, was fully planked, but with diagonal braces either end of the body sides instead of on the verandah sides. From the AA15 diagram onwards, the lower part of the body sides and the non verandah end were plated.

 

Interestingly, whilst none of the goods brake vans prior to AA11 had any diagonal bracing when built, it was normal on the ballast brake vans, and there are photographs of some of the later 24' vans with diagonal braces to the van body.

 

The modification itself is quite major, as the plates are riveted in place behind the body stanchions. Performing it on an existing van would have meant removing the lower outer and inner planking and stripping out the internal benches/lockers in order to get in behind them.

 

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1 hour ago, jim.snowdon said:

On the basis that there is an AA3 in the GWS collection at Didcot, at least one must have managed to survive in original form with a planked verandah into BR days.

 

The Didcot specimen has been rebuilt about half a dozen times since preservation. Nothing about its pre-preserved state can be assumed (apart from the solebars, maybe!)

 

This old-timer has had a pre-nationalisation verandah upgrade. There probably weren't many AA3s left at that time.

 

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17 hours ago, Miss Prism said:

This old-timer has had a pre-nationalisation verandah upgrade. There probably weren't many AA3s left at that time.

 

This photo shows that at least two of the AA3 vans retained wet sanding  into the BR period (the other being the AA3 at the Dean Forest Railway).

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1 hour ago, Steamport Southport said:

I expect it's a crop of a much larger photo where we are looking at what was relevant at the time, which is the brake van.

 

I doubt many people were taking random photos of Toads in the 1920s.

 

Just so. The interesting stuff is on the edge of the photo, or worse, mostly hidden from view by some hulking great locomotive that has been inconsiderately parked in the centre of the field of view!

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7 hours ago, Steamport Southport said:

I mean the original photograph or set of photographs.

 

That's just an enlargement from a bigger photo, probably a glass plate, which was probably taken to highlight what was going on in the background. Looks like building work.

 

 

Jason

Just the same as I don't generally associate 'Crewe', with the GWR. Another railway was far more dominant there!

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1 hour ago, Wickham Green too said:

.... and - contrary to popular opinion - the GWR wasn't the only railway in Swindon !!!!!!!!!!! 😮

If we wish to be pedantic turning the clock back a few years the GWR didn't even have a station in Swindon as its station was in Swindon New Town.  The other railway had its station on the southern edge of what had been retitled Old Swindon, aka Swindon Old Town (and still known as Old Town - as it was when I was working in Swindon in the 1980s) - is of course the original town of Swindon.  Hence, for example it had the cattle market (which I attended on one occasion with any uncle and other family members many years ago) was in Old Town still hinting very much at the original town's links with agriculture rather than railways.

 

The other railway's station was always titled 'Swindon Town' while thr GWR station was referred to as Swindon Junction (I don't know if it ever actually carried that name on running-in boards etc?)

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