Queen Mary Brake: what to run it with…?

[NeMo]

Hello all,

Bought the QM brake van some time ago, and it's a lovely model. Its in the BR engineers olive with wasp ends, and would like some ideas on authentic (or at least excusable) combinations of wagons it might run with. Presumably in this livery it wouldn't be at the back of a plain vanilla mixed freight train of 4-wheel vans and open wagons.

I've got three Dogfish wagons, but was thinking about some combination of these:

* Grampus ballast wagons
* ZRV vans
* OCA dropside wagons
* ZAA plate wagons

These would seem to be the right livery (Dutch or olive green) and era ("8", sectorisation according to Bachmann). But I'm no expert.

Any better ideas…?

Thanks, NeMo

[E Pinniger]

I would be interested to know the same thing (having recently picked up the old NGS etched kit for this type on eBay) only for the BR transitional era (early 1960s).
Would they have been used on the granite trains from Meldon Quarry? Those must have been among the heavier freight trains operated by the SR, and are right for my layout's location as well as era.

[Tank]

I have four of these models:-  Engineers Olive, Dutch, Bauxite and Network SouthEast livery.

They look great with 21t's and the NGF 21t!    You can pretty much run what you like with them, as they were used on all kinds of goods wagon trains, and even with coaches.

The Engineers Olive livery was quite often seen with 21t's.

[NeMo]

Thanks Tank for your reply!

Don't blame you buying four of them. They're such nice models.

I do wonder what they were they used doing attached to passenger trains though?!

I can't find much online about their history or usage. Did operating departments use them any differently to plain vanilla brake vans? Why did the Southern Railway build them so big?

I do quite like the idea of 21ton hoppers, but I can't grasp their use on an engineering train! From your reply though perhaps that isn't an issue, and I can feel free to put a QM at the back of any sort of 70s-80s era train of vans and open wagons.

Cheers, NeMo

[EtchedPixels]

Some fast freight was considered passenger traffic - eg many milk, fish plus some horse and parcel trains. In those cases guards much preferred a bogie vehicle. The Western region often used ex GWR fulll brakes rather than brake vans for this. The southern instead built bogie brake vans (in fact the LBSCR built the first ones the SR conitnued the design with some detail changes)

[Tank]

In regards to the coaches/carriages, the NSE van was used just in the sidings for shunting I believe, and not mainline use.  I'd love to be proven wrong though and see evidence of it on the mainlines.

[EtchedPixels]

This is true of most of them post BR. They were primarily used in propelling movements (loco at the back) - into places like Machen quarry or nuclear flasks movements to and from Trawsfynydd.

http://www.penmorfa.com/Conwy/one.htm

top shot has an example.

[Tank]

Thanks Alan.  I hadn't seen 31's with QM's before.

[EtchedPixels]

It was quite a common formation, sometimes triple headed 31s if there were several flask wagons in the rake (the line on from Blaenau is very sharply curved and graded, originally for narrow gauge).

Alan