Prototype for everything corner.

[Wickham Green too]

Oh - if you insist ......

 

 ..... oddly ,the only two pictures I took between Kings Cross Thameslink and St.Pancreas : 30/3/90.

[melmerby]

I think we can assume from those pictures and the ones I found that Mk4 DVTs never had buckeyes on the driving end.

[russ p]

6 minutes ago, Wickham Green too said:

Oh - if you insist ......

 

 ..... oddly ,the only two pictures I took between Kings Cross Thameslink and St.Pancreas : 30/3/90.

 

 

When I used to take anglia mk3 sets to bounds green for servicing the mk4 DVTs seemed huge compared to the mk3 ones even the they were more or less the same size. Cabs are a lot bigger and higher on the mk4

 

[Wickham Green too]

Maybe an optical illusion  - as they're significantly narrower ??!? ( tapered in two planes )

[russ p]

12 hours ago, Wickham Green too said:

Maybe an optical illusion  - as they're significantly narrower ??!? ( tapered in two planes )

 

The cabs on the mk3 are a lot smaller not much room at all. I suppose it's because the mk 3 has a version of a class 90 cab whilst the mk4 has a cab similar to a 91

[rodent279]

Only got a mk1 BSK and a few vans to run with your Triang/Hornby Princess? 

No worries....

 

Edited May 9, 2022 by rodent279

[Steven B]

Dockland Light Railway unit with pantograph? Near Manchester? Really?

 

( 6089Gardener on Flickr)

 

Steven B.

 

[eastwestdivide]

28 minutes ago, Steven B said:

Dockland Light Railway unit with pantograph? Near Manchester? Really?

Worth following through to read the flickr caption - "...part of a publicity drive prior to the Parliamentary approval of Metrolink"

[The Stationmaster]

On 05/05/2022 at 23:48, keefer said:

I think the default pattern on BR (particularly the SR where it was mentioned in the Sec App) was that locos had buffers extended and buckeyes dropped whereas EMUs had buffers retracted and buckeyes up.

In the case of the cl.90/91/DVT, the 'outer' end would have the buffers out/buckeye down simply because it would be another loco that would couple on (if needed for rescue etc.)

I think with the 90/91s and Mk4 sets, it was something of a novely/new practice that a loco could buckeye-couple to the train (without buffers) whereas the SR had been doing it for decades!

Hardly a new practice on the ECML where engines with corridor tenders had been coupled to their train using a buckeye coupling since before WWII.

[Titan]

When I looked at the buffers on a corridor tender they did not look like they retracted. Does the retraction of the coach buffers, plus the much shorter length of the tender on curves resulting in a smaller angle between the vehicles mean that retracting buffers on the tender were not necessary, or have I missed something?

Edited May 10, 2022 by Titan

[melmerby]

Not much to retract by the look of it:

 

Edited May 10, 2022 by melmerby

[BR(S)]

1 hour ago, Steven B said:

Dockland Light Railway unit with pantograph? Near Manchester? Really?

 

( 6089Gardener on Flickr)

 

Steven B.

 

 

And now with pantographs and driving cabs in Germany:

 

 

[melmerby]

Operating on a very rural looking stretch of U17:

[Wickham Green too]

18 hours ago, rodent279 said:

Only got a mk1 BSK and a few vans to run with your Triang/Hornby Princess? ...

Ah - that rare beast that nobody's ever heard of - a BSK with five compartments and two lavvies ....................... or could it be a BCK p'raps ?

 

 

No, Gresley gangwayed tender buffers do not retract - probably acceptable as there won't be as much angular displacement as between two long coaches. I wonder, though, whether coupling tender to tender with the buckeyes was permitted. ( 4472 was a special case, of course, but the second tender certainly had side buffers and a Pullman gangway at the front - so presumably buckeye coupling, too.)

[The Stationmaster]

47 minutes ago, Titan said:

When I looked at the buffers on a corridor tender they did not look like they retracted. Does the retraction of the coach buffers, plus the much shorter length of the tender on curves resulting in a smaller angle between the vehicles mean that retracting buffers on the tender were not necessary, or have I missed something?

You're sort of starting from the wrong place - i.e. a vehicle fitted with buckeye couplings should normally be regarded as being ready to couple to another vehicle fitted with buckeye couplings unless it is on the end of a train.  Thus coupling a buckeye fitted vehicle to a non-buckeye vehicle means altering it by dropping the buckeye head of the coupler in order to expose the drawhook and extending the buffers to their long position and securing them in that position by placing the saddle over relevant part of the buffer spindle. 

 

I suspect that the LNER tender buffers were designed to cater for either state. - most likely to ensure commonality of spares and possibly even in order to save money although we shouldn't rely on photos of preserved engines as the best source of evidence.  As the tender would always be coupled to a coach which had  extended buffers when  not being coupled by the buckeye coupling there must have been sufficient length available in the two sets of buffers taken together to avoid any problem with the gangway on the tender.  Similarly when coupled to a wgonthe length of teh buffers on the wagon would avoid a problem when coupled to a buckeye fitted tender.

 

What I'm not sure of is what coupling should be used when coupling a buckeye fitted tender to a passenger vehicle which did not have a buckeye coupling but presumably it would be the coach coupling instead of the normal procedure of using the tender's screw coupling?

 

Extended buffer with the saddle in place

 

 

[Boris]

Mike, when we put a vile A4 on a none buckeye vehicle we used the emergency screw coupling on the tender, the guys from the A4LS seemed to think this was standard practice?

[melmerby]

On a different tack.

Do preserved railways couple their Mk1s and other buckeye fitted coaches together with the buckeyes?

Edited May 10, 2022 by melmerby

[Boris]

Just now, melmerby said:

On a differenbt tack.

Do preserved railways couple their Mk1s and other buckeye fitted coaches together with the buckeyes?

Yes, its the only way the Pullman gangways work

[Wickham Green too]

........... Pullman gangwayed coaches CAN be coupled together using the side buffers and Emergency Screw Coupling but, normally, only with the gangway doors closed, locked and bolted ........... as an exception to this, the LNER provided extra short E.S.C.s so that two of their coaches could maintain communication : one to have the side buffers in the 'long' position and the other 'short'.

[45125]

Having had the misfortune to have to uncouple a 91 that was buckeyed up to a barrier vehicle on which both sets of buffers had been left in the long position which took an awful lot of effort and time. The buffers where in contact with one another, so the locking pins for the 91 had to forced out to release the buffers which the allowed the saddles on the buffers on the barriers to be released, then we could squeeze up to release the buckeye. Considerable effort is needed to couple up with buffers extended with a buckeye.

 

Al Taylor

[Nick C]

1 hour ago, 45125 said:

Having had the misfortune to have to uncouple a 91 that was buckeyed up to a barrier vehicle on which both sets of buffers had been left in the long position which took an awful lot of effort and time. The buffers where in contact with one another, so the locking pins for the 91 had to forced out to release the buffers which the allowed the saddles on the buffers on the barriers to be released, then we could squeeze up to release the buckeye. Considerable effort is needed to couple up with buffers extended with a buckeye.

 

Al Taylor

I was told that if you accidentally couple together two Mk1s with buckeyes up and buffers extended, you need a gas axe to separate them again!

 

We (MHR) always use the buckeyes to couple coaches (all of ours are either Mk1 or Bulleid, so all have Pullman gangways), except in an emergency, where, as @Wickham Green too says, the gangway doors have to be locked.

[great central]

When there was an extra service provided from Nottingham to St Pancras, for MML, by a hired class 47 and mk2 stock, (possibly Fragonset?) the first day's service had to be cancelled

The train came empty from Derby and loco ran round in Nottingham,  unfortunately somehow the buffers on the London end had been left in their retracted position, so on buffering up the front of the loco hit the corridor connection. 

[Wickham Green too]

1 hour ago, Nick C said:

.... always use the buckeyes to couple coaches ... except in an emergency, where, as @Wickham Green too says, the gangway doors have to be locked.

It's not me saying that - I'm only passing on what the General Appendage says ! ( Interestingly, I didn't find any mention of corridor tenders therein - though they lasted a number of years beyond 1960.)

[The Stationmaster]

23 hours ago, Boris said:

Mike, when we put a vile A4 on a none buckeye vehicle we used the emergency screw coupling on the tender, the guys from the A4LS seemed to think this was standard practice?

That is an excellent question with an answer that I can't pin down although I don't argue with what you did because nowadays I don't think there is any other way of doing it.  LNER buckeye fitted coaches carried an emergency screw coupling of their own so I suspect that it would perhaps have been the things used to couple anon-buckeye fitted tender to its train.   But I don't have sufficeint ER/LNERT documamntation to answer that idea one way or the other.

 

Nowadays I would think there is really no alternative but to use the emergency screw coupling

[The Stationmaster]

3 hours ago, great central said:

When there was an extra service provided from Nottingham to St Pancras, for MML, by a hired class 47 and mk2 stock, (possibly Fragonset?) the first day's service had to be cancelled

The train came empty from Derby and loco ran round in Nottingham,  unfortunately somehow the buffers on the London end had been left in their retracted position, so on buffering up the front of the loco hit the corridor connection. 

I hope somebody gave the Shunter a right telling-off over that .  He must have been totally idiotic if he didn't know the difference between extended buffers and the normal position and I wonder which condition the buckeye was in because the buffers should have been pushed back when the buckeye was lowered.