Push - pull operations

[kudu]

Can anyone provide info on early push-pull operations on the LNER or its constituents?

So far as I can make out the following LNER classes included push-pull fitted locos:

GCR C13, F2, N5 (69257 only)
GER F4, F5, F7
GNR C12
NBR C15
NER G5

But many of these were only so fitted in the 1930s or later (even under BR).

Were the GCR, GER and NER the only pre-Grouping companies to use push-pull? Summary details of when and where would be much appreciated.

Kudu

[65447]

You've forgotten that a few N7s were also fitted. As to a summary, that would take a considerable effort to provide, covering as it must a number of different pre-Grouping lines let alone the different areas of the LNER and the loco types reallocated out of area.

[JASd17]

LNER G6, the old BTP, were fitted for 'auto-train' working. Some by the LNER.
Source: Green Bible

[kudu]

Thanks for adding to my list.

I feared even a summary would be asking too much, but would I be right to say the GNS, NBR, H&B and GNR did not use push-pull operations (the GN of course using railmotors for a few years, as detailed in the Encyclopedia)?

Kudu

[Bill Bedford]

The GCR and NER fitted a mechanical control system to their classes 12AT and BTP in the early 1900s. This fell out of use in the twenties. In the late twenties the LNER started fitting a vacuum control system to the locos listed by Kudu. AFAIK the GER did not use pull pull on it's trains.

[kudu]

Thanks, Bill.

As an aside, I read that the Furness used an even simpler system: narrow coaches so that signals could be read from the rear. Works best on circular routes, I guess (no buffer stops).

(Source : igg website)

[65447]

AFAIK the GER did not use pull pull on it's trains.

In 1914 James Holden of the GER was given permission to trial auto-trains as a means of reducing operating costs to mitigate falling passenger receipts. He obtained drawings from the LB&SCR of the compressed-air type apparatus used on that line and the equipment was fitted to GER class Y65 (LNER class F7) locomotive number 1311 and later, to provide for those times when 1311 was not available, to Y65 loco number 1304. At the same time a pair of carriages was fitted with the additional equipment.

The initial trials were on the Cambridge-Mildenhall branch and then the Somersham-Ramsey High Street branch. In neither case was the experiment successful, due to the train perforce being a fixed unit and thus unable to add strengthening vehicles on market days or to operate as a mixed working.

The train was then transferred to the re-opened Churchbury Loop, which served the arms and munitions factories in the Lea Valley, and operated on that line from March 1915. When the line was again closed in 1919 the train was transferred to the Palace Gates-Seven Sisters branch. A third Y65, loco number 1309, was so fitted and another pair of carriages were modified to provide a second set. In 1921 Y65 loco numbers 1303 and 1305 were also equipped.

Further developments on the GE Section took place in LNER days and push-pull services did not cease until about the end of steam in East Anglia, either being supplanted by DMUs or by line closures. Probably the most well-known would be the Epping-Ongar service.

Variously class F7, ex-GC F2, ex-NE G5, ex-GN C12, F5 and N7 class locos were push-pull fitted and used on former GE lines, including on services around Norwich, Lowestoft, Yarmouth (South Town) and between Epping-Ongar in LNER days and also King's Lynn-South Lynn, Audley End-Saffron Walden-Bartlow, and North Walsham-Mundesley-Cromer (former M&GN) in BR days. Other services were proposed but not implemented.

E&OE.