52D wrote:Well Mr Bedford/65447/Bois Roussel you've certainly roused my interest with one of the Horseboxes being marked return to Acklington, that's a good excuse to have one now for my D20 to haul to Kelso. Thanks.
That's the kind of thinking I like! And you have several options, depending on your period:
(a) dedicated racehorse trains from Newmarket, which employed the best available horse box at any given point in time (I've put some pictures of Newmarket race trains on my website under "Prototype & Traffic"). The parent loco could work through so you'd be talking about a GE Section loco.
(b) similar trains from the trainers near Leyburn and Malton, which would have been covered mostly by ex-NER horse boxes. This held good into the 1950s, although for such short distances, the traffic began to be lost to the roads in mid-LNER days.
(c) if less than 3 horse boxes were sent, they were attached to the head of normal service passenger trains.
Here's a recent addition to "Horse and race traffic" on my website showing Leyburn on the Wensleydale brach, near which there were some racehorse trainers. In this view from the 1950s, in the siding behind the J21 on a passenger train, the leading horse box is ex-NER, and judging by the elliptical roofs, there are two more ex-NER boxes further back.
Interesting picture, I assume from the condition of the first horsebox that it has recently been repainted and would be in BR colours,
it also clearly shows the 'VB' (vacuum brake) branding on the end, I have only seen it mentioned on the LNER built horsebox lettering drawings.
This seems to imply it must have been applied to all LNER inherited horseboxes in LNER days, before being carried over into BR times.
Dave wrote:Interesting picture, I assume from the condition of the first horsebox that it has recently been repainted and would be in BR colours,
it also clearly shows the 'VB' (vacuum brake) branding on the end, I have only seen it mentioned on the LNER built horsebox lettering drawings.
This seems to imply it must have been applied to all LNER inherited horseboxes in LNER days, before being carried over into BR times.
Overhaul of this pre-Grouping horse box illustrates several thing, chiefly longevity, and that at Nationalisation in 1948, just under half of the coaching stock on the ER was still of pre-Grouping origin. Modellers tend to think that old stock just kind of disappears and only the latest designs are to be seen. Well, it may be true for the most important crack express but the remaining 90-odd percent of operations simply carry on as before, using stock that still has many years of service life.
"VB" was certainly applied in LNER days, on ex-GCR cattle trucks too, for example.
Dave wrote:Interesting picture, I assume from the condition of the first horsebox that it has recently been repainted and would be in BR colours,
it also clearly shows the 'VB' (vacuum brake) branding on the end, I have only seen it mentioned on the LNER built horsebox lettering drawings.
This seems to imply it must have been applied to all LNER inherited horseboxes in LNER days, before being carried over into BR times.
VB and DB - I have just seen for the first time a mid-1920s picture (alas not in my collection) that shows an ex-GNR horse box that was dual braked, ie. vacuum and Westinghouse braked, and carrying the initials "DB" on the end. The LNER began to eliminate dual-braking from around 1930 as the vehicles passed through the works so this would have gradually disappeared, but it would nevertheless have been visible for perhaps two-thirds of the LNER period before WW2.
