Queen Mary
 

Gotcha.........the brakevans, not the ship, of course !

(aka 25 ton bogie brakevans)

I know nothing about them, other than what I have just seen in a model railway catalogue. What were they specifically for? e.g. heavy mineral trains maybe??

The catalogue gives them in all sorts of liveries, so they dont seem to have been confined to any one Region.

Anyone know more?

I only ever remember the Southern Region using bogie brakevans. Some of them survived in Departmental use and travelled further afield.
John.

Ive got one in '00' its in NSE livery. Did the NSE do all its own track upgrades?

Weren't the Queen Mary brakes a conversion from ex-London Underground electric locomotives? Or am I hopelessly confused?

I've done a bit of googling on this one (apparently "they" dont like you using that word as a verb because "they" want to keep the word as a trademark :confused:)

Anyway, the QMs were originally Southern (hooray). Built pre-WW2 from spare bogies. Apparently Bluebell has one that is almost completely restored. They were used on fast fitted freight.

Having never heard of them a week ago, I am now quite curious. I thought one of the trechnical problems with multi-axle brake vans was that you could never balance the brakes evenly. So, under braking, one wheel would be over-braked and skid. Sliding friction being less than static friction the extra load would be transfered to the next axle and it would start to skid too. So the maximum braking force of a multi-wheeled brake van was actually LESS than the good old 4-wheeler.

Or maybe an unfitted van behaves differently to a fitted van.
BUT if the whole train is fitted, then why do you need a big brake van at all.

OW, my head hurts through thinking too much.:(

The multi-axle problems that you mention probably wouldn't apply on fitted freights as all the wagons would be sharing the brake force and not just the brake van.
Maybe the Southern built them on bogies to give their Guards a more comfortable ride.:)
John.

follow link guys. they were converted from old coach stock,

http://www.semg.org.uk/vandw/brakevans05.html


in fact, the S & DHRT @ midsomer norton has got an EWS queen mary brake van.
http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger...8/100B2710.jpg
not sure if the above link will work

K&WVR have a QM.

There was at least one in use on the National Network on 19.12.2000 when 8F 48151 hauled an empty EWS Hellifield - Ribblehead ballast train. See photo in Preserved Locomotives of British Railways.

i know the one. i will take a photo tomorrow (9/4/07) of that one john and post here.:)

Ive got a couple in 00 one is in NSE I cant rember what the other one is in.