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GWR Dia. Y4 Banana Vans from Rapido


RapidoCorbs
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3 minutes ago, Wickham Green too said:

Presumably very early 1940s - before whatever date in '41 the last banana boat arrived ! ( Or are they all in meat traffic p'raps ? )

 

The caption was 1940 but not 100% certain so decided to cover my bases ;) As above there is a MICA in the group, and in the larger photo there are meat vans alongside. I haven't found any photos of Y4s in WW2 meat service yet, would be interested to see if they retained the BANANA lettering or not.

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8 hours ago, RapidoCorbs said:

Yes very much so, interesting that they quote 11 degrees for transport, the source I read quoted 20 degrees.

Very temperamental fruit. Too cold and they won't ripen even when the temperature rises and too warm and they go black before they get to the shops. MarkC of this parish was a refrigeration engineer on the banana boats and gave a full explanation in a previous thread.

 

Edited by TheSignalEngineer
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5 minutes ago, TheSignalEngineer said:

Very temperamental fruit. Too cold and they won't ripen even when the temperature rises and too warm and they go black before they get to the shops. MarkC of this parish was a refridgeration engineer on the banana boats and gave a full explanation in a previous thread.

 

 

Thank you, I think I was right in that case, from what Mark says, 11 degrees is the ship's hold temperature before loading and in that case 20 degrees in the vans (for ripening) makes sense. Perhaps the article got ship and van temperatures confused?

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31 minutes ago, RapidoCorbs said:

In the refrigerated hold of course, then once unloaded they will be heated in transit.

 

Are they docking at Avonmouth then for true authenticity.

Edited by gwrrob
spilling
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Received mine this evening and they are superb, photos on my layout thread anon. A nice touch including some pipes for those who like the dangly bits on their models.

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15 hours ago, Wickham Green too said:

Does the use of reduced letter/number sizes imply that there WAS still banana traffic in 1941 ??!?

More likely 1945 onwards when the banana traffic came back (up to nationalisation). 1942-spec lettering still in force at this point.

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As far as I know, the use of "Steam Banana" with GW livery dates it to the period from about June 1945 or a little later to sometime after nationalisation; exactly how long after would depend on the time before the next repaint. Refurbishing vans (and ships) for banana traffic started well before the first imports in December 1945.

17 hours ago, Wickham Green too said:

Does the use of reduced letter/number sizes imply that there WAS still banana traffic in 1941 ??!?

According to "Fyffes and the Banana", the wartime Ministry of Food banned all banana imports between 9 November 1940 and 18 September 1945, when there was a partial relaxation, which resulted in the first imports arriving in December.

Edited by Cwmtwrch
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Who will be the first to carve theirs up to make this oddity?

 

I've not found out the reason for some vans having this arrangement but I can confirm it is incredibly annoying when they show up in photos and you realise you can't use the running number.

 

Y4post-36.JPG.d154360d8b30237f91ce1bdbc529299f.JPG

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12 hours ago, RapidoCorbs said:

Who will be the first to carve theirs up to make this oddity?

 

I've not found out the reason for some vans having this arrangement but I can confirm it is incredibly annoying when they show up in photos and you realise you can't use the running number.

 

Y4post-36.JPG.d154360d8b30237f91ce1bdbc529299f.JPG

 

The frame was built on a Friday afternoon?

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I only have the first edition of Atkins et al, which mentions, in connection with post-1921 Lots of V14/V16, that "some of these lots were built by outside contractors (such as L983 by the Gloucester RCW)". The example L983 is from V14, but the use of the plural shows other Lots were involved, so is this an example of an earlier contractor-built V16?

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