A Pictorial Record Of Southern Electric Units, Drawings and Plans

[4630]

Title: A Pictorial Record of Southern Electric Units, Drawings and Plans

 

Author: Brian Golding

 

Publisher: Noodle Books

 

ISBN: 978-1-906419-34-9

 

This book was published just before Christmas and Santa kindly delivered a copy to me.

 

The contents cover all southern electrics from pre-grouping (including the LBSC 'Overhead Stock') up to Bournemouth Electrification REPs, TCs and VEPs.

 

The pictures are predominantly B&W with only the cover and a couple of other pages containing colour pictures. Some of the pictures have appeared in other publications that I possess or have seen, but the majority are, to me at least, new.

 

The chapters are laid out to cover each type of southern unit in chronological order and include a description of the type of vehicle in each unit.

 

For me, the most useful sections are the drawings. The author says that they've been 'drawn to a constant scale of 4mm to 1 foot' although I've not verified that.

 

The side elevation drawings will at least help with the positioning and location of the various equipment cases on unit' underframes.

 

The drawings also cover some of the layout variations between earlier and later builds of the same type of unit. For example the differences between the first and later series of 2Bils. Not all variations are covered though. For example the 1974 build of 4REPs (3012 - 3015) had different buffet cars (RU) to the RB type used in units 3001 - 3011 of the 1967 build. This is not reflected in the text or the drawings

 

The drawings should be useful for anyone contemplating a 'cut and shut' on a Hornby 4 VEP, when it's released, to produce a version with the modified MBSO as drawings of the revised layout are also shown.

 

A couple of omissions that I've noticed.

 

Unfortunately the end view drawings on page 229 (figures 446, 448 and 450) are incomplete. These are for CEP/BEP/CIG/BIG/REP/VEP and TCs and omit steps and equipment cases on various vehicle inner ends.

 

It would have been useful to have had a plan view of each type of vehicle showing the positioning of roof vents and where appropriate conduit. The roof vents are only shown on the side elevations.

 

My carping aside, this is nevertheless a very useful book and will certainly help me and supplement other photographic research which I would normally try to undertake.

 

I hope the above is of help.

[Ceptic]

A Christmas prezzy for me also, 4630.

I had been looking forward to this publication for some time.

All in all, not bad. A good reference encyclopedia.

It's good to have all the units' drawings, LBSCR / LSWR / SR / BR(S), bound together in one volume, instead of searching through the piles of old mags.

The drawings themselves are in the same style of Brian Golding's previous D(E)MU publication, reminiscent of those of the 'Skinley' series.

 

On the pedantic side, like you say, 4630, it would have been helpful if roof layouts had been added. In my edition, the majority (2/3rds) of the end views are in 3mm./ft. scale. Whether this was intended, or, whether they were, hurridly mis-printed ?, is open to question.

Being even more pendantic, the first batch of 2-BILs should have been drawn with the slimmer, oblong shanked outer buffers, and not the self-contained, heavy duty type.

Other discrepancies noted, were that the cab-side sliding windows on the EPB, and later units are shown to be the same size, whereas, on a lot of units, they were smaller on the secondman's side.

Also, compare the cab side window / door / saloon quarterlight window spacing on the 4-REP DMSO drawing on p.223, with the photo on p.204. This was spotted by my Son, who used to drive them. He tells me that the cab bulkheads were set further back to accommodate extra switchgear.

The cab end views of the 2nd. generation BR. Mk.1., slightly rounded ended Emus. with reccessed m.u. cable pockets, i.e. 4-CIG / 4-BIG / 4-VEP / 4-REP / 4-TC show the cab front windows to be rectangular, when, in fact, they were tapered in, towards the top. I hope Hornby pick this out with their 4-VEP .

I know from past experience, how easy it is to take certain things for granted when drawing what appears to be a 'standard', and, in doing so, make the odd mistake.

It always pays to check and double check.

 

Regards, Ceptic.

 

P.S. I came across another book / volume on SR Emus, while in Ian Allan's Manchester bookshop. I'll sort out the details and post in on a seperate topic.

 

Edited by Ceptic, 13:20 05/01/10

[pete_mcfarlane]

I have mixed feelings on this book. It contains lots of useful photos, most of which are new to me. Lots of detail photos, and decent shots of some of the more obscure units (SR 2-HAP, 2-SL and 2-WIM).

 

 

On the downside, the drawings are pretty poor. Something in the way they've been produced/scanned/processed has left them very pixelated, leaving a mid-1980s computer graphics effect. This makes it difficult to see small details, and all the curved/diagonal lines are very jagged. The underframe details are often unclear, and there's no proper roof drawings. These are the two areas that a modeller will find the most useful.

 

I to spotted some errors (on units I've modelled recently and so have done a bit of research in to). The trailer collector bogies on the 2-BIL are shown as 8' rather than 8'9", and BR type 2-EPB and 4-EPB motor coaches are shown as identical, when they should have different underframe equipment (as the 2-EPB is a 1951 type unit, and the 4-EPB a 1957 unit). There's also a tendency to ignore detail differences between different batches of units - not all 4-CEPs are the same for example, and there are some vague comments about differences between batches of 4-EPB and 2-HAP units. Surely the point of such a reference book is to clarify what these differences are?

 

 

Worth buying if you model the Southern electric, but treat the drawings with a bit of caution.