Tail-loads on DMU/railbus services- shunting? Brake vans?

[Captain Slough]

I've witnessed an LMR class 128 parcels railcar scudding along the WCML pulling both a Mk1 GUV and a 4 wheel parcel van, possibly ex-SR CCT some time in the 80s

Edited March 22, 2023 by Captain Slough

[The Stationmaster]

For anyone interested they will find an accurate explabntionn of the difference between tail traffic and Mixed Trains here -

 

 

One point worth making clear is that the construction and level of equipment of vehicles which were permitted to be conveyed as tail traffic changed over the years, a big change coming with the introduction of the XP marking in the late 1930s but note also that the application of this marking to NPCCS 4 wg heel vehicles also changed slightly (in relation to vehicle wheelbase) in the early 1950s).

 

The wheelbase of vehicles attached as tail traffic also influenced the position in which they could be marshalled ina passenger.  incidentally in operational terms the ' XP' marking was rendered obsolescent in Octber 1972 basically as a result of the introduction of data panes on freight stock 4 years earlier.   The marking of course did not apply to bogied NPCCS vehicles. 

 

On 21/03/2023 at 09:53, Wickham Green too said:

Instanter couplings did, of course have 'short' and 'long' positions - and in the latter were no different to old fashioned three-links.

Buckeye - or 'Gould' - couplers go back further than the L.N.E.R. and Mr.Bulleid on the Southern ....... they were used by the Great Northern and S.E.& C.R. before grouping - and even tried by God's Wonderful Railway - then standardised by the LNER & Southern after grouping. [ Even the L.M.S. had three buckeye coupled coaches ! ]

As far as I know the main GWR experiment with buckeyes occurred in the 1920s - they could not readily be coupled to LNER etc buckeyes because of various detail differences

 

On 20/03/2023 at 22:44, Aire Head said:

 

I have made myself quite familiar with them which is why I have never seen a requirement for instanter couplings because that isn't stated in any appendix I've seen. I'm not sure that in the 1960s all Unfitted freight stock will have received instanters either although a good proportion of stock will have certainly been converted.

 

The instructions that I have seen do not specify that you can only use instanters in a mixed train therefore they are not a requirement.

You are absolutely correct.   I have never seen an Instruction prohibiting the use of three link couplings outside Station Limits and I'm  puzzled why there should have been such an Instruction because Instanter Couplings in the long position ran regularly outside Station Limits well into the 1970s and beyond.   Don't forget that BR was still runing a very imited number of Class 9 freights in the early 1990s and Instanters were permitted to eb in the long position in such trains (I've just checked the GA amendments right through to the late 1980s).

 

I do wish that others would do as you and I and check original source documents before posting this sort of information.  If they don't then an awful of misleading nonsense appears and might well be taken as correct by folk who don't have the necessary publications to check what is being posted.  I know the coupling Instructions were difficult for some people  to understand and that they changed ov er the years but that is why information should be checked before those of us who actually take care with what we post have to come along and correct stuff ( and there is still some un corrected stuff in this thread alas but life is s too short to go round sorting all the errors).  

Don't ever forget that if you worked on the railway people might who didn't well believe what you post - so please make sure it is right before posting it.

[Wickham Green too]

5 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

... As far as I know the main GWR experiment with buckeyes occurred in the 1920s - they could not readily be coupled to LNER etc buckeyes because of various detail differences. ...

I know there's a decent photo of the GWR arrangement in one of the appropriate carriage books but its evading me at the moment ..... seemingly the experiment was on 'several trains' of 70' stock built in 1923. The principal difference from the setup used elsewhere was that the buffer heads hinged down rather than retracting ........ oddly, a difference repeated on the LMS Royals - so I can't help wondering if Stanier took a few with him from Swindon !!?! 😊

Edited March 23, 2023 by Wickham Green too

[The Stationmaster]

16 hours ago, Wickham Green too said:

I know there's a decent photo of the GWR arrangement in one of the appropriate carriage books but its evading me at the moment ..... seemingly the experiment was on 'several trains' of 70' stock built in 1923. The principal difference from the setup used elsewhere was that the buffer heads hinged down rather than retracting ........ oddly, a difference repeated on the LMS Royals - so I can't help wondering if Stanier took a few with him from Swindon !!?! 😊

The relevant Instructions were published in Circular No. 3997 in May 1923 and that stated that 'the vehicles will work in sets in specified trains  ... shown in the Coach Working Programme'.  The contents of that circular were repeated in full, with the relevant explanatory diagrams, in Supplement G.A. 7 to the 1920 General Appendix effective from 1 January 1924.  

 

I think the photo below is out of copyright but if it isn't somebody will no doubt shout and it can be removed.

 

[keefer]

Unless the photograph has been reversed, that GWR buckeye is the opposite way round from 'normall' (LNER/SR/BR). Note the moving 'jaw' of the coupling is on the right, normal buckeyes have it on the left:

 

Picture does show the dropped buffers well though - very strange looking!

Edited March 24, 2023 by keefer

[Wickham Green too]

9 minutes ago, keefer said:

Unless the photograph has been reversed, ...

Disposition of the vac. and steam hoses would suggest it IS reversed.

[keefer]

Oops, didn't  even think of that! 🙂

[jim.snowdon]

On 21/03/2023 at 09:53, Wickham Green too said:

Instanter couplings did, of course have 'short' and 'long' positions - and in the latter were no different to old fashioned three-links.

Buckeye - or 'Gould' - couplers go back further than the L.N.E.R. and Mr.Bulleid on the Southern ....... they were used by the Great Northern and S.E.& C.R. before grouping - and even tried by God's Wonderful Railway - then standardised by the LNER & Southern after grouping. [ Even the L.M.S. had three buckeye coupled coaches ! ]

And by the Metropolitan Railway, who used them on all of their electric stock, with a few exceptions, starting in 1904.

[jim.snowdon]

On 21/03/2023 at 09:53, Wickham Green too said:

Buckeye - or 'Gould' - couplers go back further than the L.N.E.R. and Mr.Bulleid on the Southern ....... they were used by the Great Northern and S.E.& C.R. before grouping - and even tried by God's Wonderful Railway - then standardised by the LNER & Southern after grouping. [ Even the L.M.S. had three buckeye coupled coaches ! ]

Something that has long puzzled me is why the Southern, having adopted Buckeye couplers and Pullman gangways for its locomotive hauled stock reverted to side buffers and screw couplings on its electric stock, particularly the through gangwayed stock built for the Portsmouth electrification (the 4CORs etc).

[Wickham Green too]

Probably because the available 'MCB' couplers - as tried on early suburban units - couldn't stand up to the battering of electric stop-start operation.

[The Stationmaster]

21 hours ago, Wickham Green too said:

Disposition of the vac. and steam hoses would suggest it IS reversed.

Apologies.   Yes - instead of rotating the original I did a quick vertical flip and it did reverse.  Corredct orientation below

 

[Wickham Green too]

Still way off topic - but comparison with this might be of interest : - 

 

 The Engine House : 10/7/22

 

[jim.snowdon]

18 hours ago, Wickham Green too said:

Probably because the available 'MCB' couplers - as tried on early suburban units - couldn't stand up to the battering of electric stop-start operation.

My understanding of the early application of knuckle couplers by the Southern to some of the 3-SUB units is that they were fitted without buffing plates, in the same way as they are fitted to US freight cars. The problem was that they were susceptible to becoming disengaged due to vertical motion in traffic. Assuming that they were the same 3/4 scale version of the AAR coupler that everyone else, bar the Metropolitan, used in Britain, the smaller vertical depth of the coupler would not help in this regard. (The Metropolitan used a 1/2 size version.) As far as I am aware, those 3-SUBs and the 1938 LMS Wirral line stock were the only occasions in pre-1970s era British practice when these couplers were not used with a buffing plate. The relevance of that is that the friction between the buffing plates provides a degree of coupling between the adjoining vehicles, reducing the relative motion between them. BR successfully introduced buckeye couplers with low height buffing plates with the 1951 EPB stock on the Southern. The need for buffing plates with knuckle couplers only finally disppeared with the arrival of the Tightlock coupler, which is locked vertically once coupled, not least because it is a proper autocoupler.

[Wickham Green too]

5 minutes ago, jim.snowdon said:

... the early application of knuckle couplers ... to some of the 3-SUB units ... were fitted without buffing plates,...

Correct.

[rodney21]

In the mid-seventies there were two regular daily services from Cleethorpes to Sheffield where the DMU hauled a parcel van. From memory, one left at about 4pm and one at about 6pm. I'm fairly sure one went via Retford and one went via Doncaster. The '08' shunter came from Grimsby Town each morning and positioned the vans at the buffer stop ends of the platforms (usually plats 2 and 4). The incoming DMU buffered up to the van for the shunter (person) to couple the van up to the unit (screw coupling and vacuum pipe).

 

The van could be almost any 4-wheeled van going, but usually was a BR CCT or a SR CCT or PMV but occasionally a BR SPV (ex-fish van) . I do seem to recollect also seeing a LNER type CCT,  and a six-wheel stove van but both of these types would have been close to withdrawal at this time.

 

Bear in mind at the time, 99% of services here were Lincoln based Derby 114's or Cravens 105's (lightweight). Very occasionally a Derby lightweight or a Met-Cam would rock up.

 

I am also aware that if the incoming DMU was a 'lightweight' (105 or 108) they could only take a tail load if the van was a SR wooden bodied CCT or PMV type. Presumably this was because the BR type CCT being steel would be too heavy?. I have known a BR CCT waiting in the platform and the incoming unit being a Craven and the driver refusing to take the van out. Not sure therefore if this was official instruction or just driver beligerence, but it should be noted that the Albion-engined 114's had significantly more horsepower than any of the lightweight types. The Cravens units were not exactly know for their sprightliness so a tail load must have affected their acceleration performance. 

 

The trailing load was always referred to locally by railway staff as a 'swinger'. I can only speculate that this was because the van didn't half swing about behind the DMU, especially on jointed track. Us local enthusiasts took great delight in travelling at the rear of the unit watching the van bouncing and swinging about behind through the trailing drivers cab especially going round the tight reverse curves in the vicinity of Grimsby Docks. The effect was more marked if the unit was a Cravens which bounced about plenty enough when running without the tail van.

 

What I don't know is how the vans got to Cleethorpes because I'm not aware of any incoming DMU services with a 'swinger'. If there had been it would have needed the '08' to shunt the van to release the DMU. I can only speculate that the vans arrived in Cleethorpes on the newspaper train from Manchester every morning (several BG or GUV's with a couple of passenger coaches) which then retuned as a passenger service to Doncaster or Sheffield (varied over time) and thence empty to Manchester Red Bank. These trains are well documented and were odds on for a class 40 but have seen 31's, 47's, 25's, 37's and peaks. The other possibility is that the vans were brought to Cleethorpes from Grimsby by the '08' every morning- there was a mail/parcel train into Grimsby daily which left to return to (I believe) Peterborough at about 7pm each evening and the stock was stabled all day waiting to go out from platform 3 (the platform now used for EMR Lincoln/Leicester services). At one time I'm sure this conveyed a TPO coach of some description. The vans may have been detached from this train when it arrived at Grimsby.

 

Another local oddity was that the fueling point was supplied by TTA type wagons tripped by the '08' into Cleethorpes and these were often stabled at the buffer stop end of platform 6. Platform 6 was out of use by the seventies as being unsafe as it had very dodgy platform edging. For many years a 'steam heat pre-heating boiler van' occupied the platform, but tanks could be seen either in front of the van or in front of the buffers when the van was removed. I have seen DMU's used to drag the tank from the platform to the fueling point for emptying, then pushed back to the platform again.

 

Hopefully some useful information here and I would be delighted if anyone can add to it or correct anything my memory has muddled!

[bécasse]

I suspect that the term "swinger" was widely used by staff to describe an odd vehicle at the tail end of a train. Within the SR Shipping & Continental Dept the term was always used to denote the BR Mk1 BCK that formed the tail end of the Night Ferry between Victoria and Dover. 

[roythebus1]

A "swinger" was also a vehicle with automatic brake that had the automatic brake inoperative. Not to be found on the rear-end of a train unless it has a hand brake!

 

Surely the Metropolitan Railway used the Undergound "standard" Ward coupler? Not miniature buckeyes.

[The Stationmaster]

36 minutes ago, roythebus1 said:

A "swinger" was also a vehicle with automatic brake that had the automatic brake inoperative. Not to be found on the rear-end of a train unless it has a hand brake!

 

Yes -that's the usage of the word I was familiar with (to the extent that I wonder what on earth people are talking about when they are referring to a tail traffic vehicle on the back of a train with a working automatic brake?).

[PortlandStone]

When the units that became class 114 were first delivered, they were under-engined, with B.U.T. 150 b.h.p. engines, and ran in three-car formations DMBS, DMBS, DTCL so that there was sufficient power to handle a tail load. The 150 b.h.p engines were then replaced with B.U.T. 230 b,h.p. engines.

[jim.snowdon]

On 31/03/2023 at 22:54, roythebus1 said:

Surely the Metropolitan Railway used the Undergound "standard" Ward coupler? Not miniature buckeyes.

Remember, the Metropolitan was not part of the Yerkes Underground Electric Railways empire. It was thoroughly independent, with its own works and design offices at Neasden. The miniature (half-size) buckeye came in with the 1904 electric stock and they stuck with it for all electric stock except the the 1931 MV stock and the sets made up from converted Bogie stock. Even the 1922 electric locomotives had facilities for carrying the buckeye couplers, although there is no record of their having actually been fitted.

Standardisation only arrived with the adoption of the Wedgelock coupler by London Underground for all new stock after the 1935 tube stock, except for the Q38 stock, which had Ward couplers in order to work with the rest of the Q stock family.

[roythebus1]

Yes, you're right there. I had a bit of a delve through various photo archives and the T stock had a miniature buckeye. I leanrt the T stock ESL118A/B as a guard in 1973 but can't remember what coupling tht had. I'm not sure if it was a Ward coupling or screw coupling. It didn't have side buffers but was used a couple of times to push stalled DMUs up Chorleywood bank in autumn. R stock had a Ward coupler on the west end driving car as they were never required to couple onto anything at the west end. But we digress.

[russ p]

On 25/03/2023 at 12:38, jim.snowdon said:

My understanding of the early application of knuckle couplers by the Southern to some of the 3-SUB units is that they were fitted without buffing plates, in the same way as they are fitted to US freight cars. The problem was that they were susceptible to becoming disengaged due to vertical motion in traffic. Assuming that they were the same 3/4 scale version of the AAR coupler that everyone else, bar the Metropolitan, used in Britain, the smaller vertical depth of the coupler would not help in this regard. (The Metropolitan used a 1/2 size version.) As far as I am aware, those 3-SUBs and the 1938 LMS Wirral line stock were the only occasions in pre-1970s era British practice when these couplers were not used with a buffing plate. The relevance of that is that the friction between the buffing plates provides a degree of coupling between the adjoining vehicles, reducing the relative motion between them. BR successfully introduced buckeye couplers with low height buffing plates with the 1951 EPB stock on the Southern. The need for buffing plates with knuckle couplers only finally disppeared with the arrival of the Tightlock coupler, which is locked vertically once coupled, not least because it is a proper autocoupler.

 

Transpennine units  and I think 126s used a droppable buckeye without a buffing plate

[Wickham Green too]

The General Appendix ( 1960 ) details these 'Inter-City Diesel Vehicles' with instructions for coupling and uncoupling which are little different from gangwayed loco hauled stock apart from the method of shortening the buffers. It gives a drawing of the 'Leading End' - without gangway or rubbing plate - but no instructions for coupling two such ends together ...... so it's not clear whether the coupler takes the buffing forces or one or both seta of side buffers have to be left in the 'long' position.

[The Stationmaster]

2 hours ago, Wickham Green too said:

The General Appendix ( 1960 ) details these 'Inter-City Diesel Vehicles' with instructions for coupling and uncoupling which are little different from gangwayed loco hauled stock apart from the method of shortening the buffers. It gives a drawing of the 'Leading End' - without gangway or rubbing plate - but no instructions for coupling two such ends together ...... so it's not clear whether the coupler takes the buffing forces or one or both seta of side buffers have to be left in the 'long' position.

The Instruction for coupling applies to both intermediate vehicles and the end vehicles and if you look at the Instruction in respect of attaching a loco you will see that the buffers on the end vehicle have to be extended and the bucjkeye lowered - Item (b) bottom of page 86.  Also look at section 4, item (d) on page 87 regarding coupling to a buckeye fitted vehicle.  This latter item was amended in 1971 reiterating that the buffers were normally in the short position and the buckeye was in the raised position.

 

The original WR instruction booklet (BR29879/2, published October 1957) states that sets should be coupled 'by means of the buckeye coupling (if the had buckeye couplings - the WR booklet also covered Cross Country sets which had screw couplings). In the WR booklet's Instructions Inter City sets were not permitted to convey tail traffic

 

At this point we reach an interesting question because there are pictures of sets in traffic in Scotland with the buckeye lowered - which might be what prompted the 1971 amendment (although it took an awful long time if that was indeed the case!)

[Wickham Green too]

1 hour ago, The Stationmaster said:

The Instruction for coupling applies to both intermediate vehicles and the end vehicles ...

It does, indeed, imply that as it makes no differentiation .... BUT it does specifically say "WHEN COUPLING TOGETHER TWO INTER-CITY DIESEL VEHICLES ..... The gangway covers must be off and the buffers in the "short" position." - which doesn't make a lot of sense on vehicle ends with no gangways from which to remove covers.