Palace Gates to Seven Sisters - Push-Pull Coach Sets & Locomotives 1920 - 1951

[Palace Gates]

(See attached document for tabled configurations)

In the Edwardian era, poor passenger receipts on rural branch lines forced the Great Eastern Railway to finally consider steam railcar and auto-train options (already well-established on the lightly used lines of their competitors where operating costs had to be cut). James Holden was eventually authorised to investigate auto-train working in 1914. He obtained drawings from the LB&SCR of their compressed-air type apparatus and adapted this to GER stock.

Set 1 (without the later centre coach) was coupled behind GER Y65 2-4-2 Tank locomotive No. 1311 and was trialled in 1914 on both the Cambridge-Mildenhall and the Somersham-Ramsey High Street branches. These trials were ill-considered and proved unsuccessful in meeting local needs. Mixed traffic workings were well established and essential on both lines on the busy market days in rural East Anglia, and the unit could only be strengthened when pulling not pushing.

In 1915, Set 1 was used for transporting munitions workers to the Royal Small Arms Factory at Enfield Lock and to the Royal Gunpowder Mills at Waltham Abbey on the wartime restoration of the Churchbury loop between White Hart Lane and Cheshunt. The overcrowding on the two coach unit led to the addition of the centre coach in 1917, and the auto-fitting of sister Y65 loco No. 1304 as a spare engine. Service demand on this line dropped after the end of the Great War and it was closed on 01/07/1919.

In 1920, Set 1 was then moved to augment the newly intensified Liverpool Street-Enfield ‘Jazz’ service by running a shuttle between Palace Gates and Seven Sisters. Y65 locomotives No.s 1304 & 1309 ran Set 1 & a new two-coach Set 2, with the original Y65 No.1311 kept as a spare at Stratford. Sister Y65 locomotives No.s 1303 & 1305 were then push-pull fitted in Jan/Feb 1921 and sub-shedded at Palace gates, with the final two-coach Set 3 added to the service in March 1924 by the LNER.

On amalgamation, the London & North Eastern Railway reclassified the GER Y65 class locomotives as LNER F7 and replaced their first numeral ‘1’ with an ‘8’. Their cabs appeared large and out of proportion to the rest of the engine, with a large spectacle plate front and rear. Capacious and well-glazed, they were nicknamed ‘Crystal Palace Tanks’ (or ‘Tomato Houses’ when some were later moved to Scotland). They were deeply unpopular with the crews, fitters and cleaners who had to work on them with complaints that they were under-powered and awkward to maintain. Ironically, the G5 0-4-4T Tank Engines that started to be introduced on the shuttle by the LNER from 1938 were 10-15 years older than the F7 locos that they replaced. The push-pull fittings were taken from the outgoing F7’s and similarly only fitted at the rear of the locomotive.

Sources:
LNER Push and Pull Coaches by Clive S. Carter, British Railway Journal No. 32, Summer 1990
Auto-Trains on the Great Eastern Region by Peter Paye, Back Track Special Issue No. 2, The London & North East Railway, 2001
The Palace Gates Auto Trains by Brian McCarthy, The Journal of The Great Eastern Railway Society, issue 34, July 1982

If anyone has copyright on relevant photographs appertaining to this article, please feel free to add them - Thanks.

[Greedy Boards]

Good to see mention of the three Worsdell G5 0-4-4T locomotives that worked the branch-line from 1938-1951, and thence to Cambridge, Saffron Waldon, and the Bartlow - Audley End service thereafter. Together with the GNSR connection for the Class, it does show that North Eastern locomotives did operate outside of their Region, and a push-pull combination would also be a good scenario to produce in RTR OO gauge, to compare against the Hornby M7 for Southern fans.

Regards

Greedy Boards

[Palace Gates]

A little lateral research led me to Nick Catford's excellent Disused Stations website where there are some fine images of the G5's and the auto-coaches in their twilight years on the Audley End, Saffron Walden and Bartlow pages. The stand-out auto-coach image (for me) can be found at the bottom of the page here:

http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/a/au ... ndex.shtml

Forgive my cynicism, but I suspect that we will see a full size G5 up and running before we see a RTR model on the rails!

http://www.g5locomotiveltd.co.uk/

[richard]

The G5 group need our help. That crank axle is a big expensive forging.

Perhaps not as glamourous as the P2, the G5 was historically more important...
(more of them, lasted longer, and a good representative of a big gaping gap in what has been preserved, etc)

[Palace Gates]

Amended following new information uncovered about the destruction of one of the driving cars during a collision at Palace Gates in 1923