The Green H Vans

[Westcorkrailway]

It certainly looks like that there was no back on the cab and that section was added on later or replaced later with a bit of sheet metal

 

similarly, I suspect Pat (cork coal loco) also wouldn’t have drawings, and when it first left (presumably inchicore) it would have been completely exposed, the timber cab being built with bits of timber and glass later on 

[Mol_PMB]

On 22/12/2024 at 2:02 PM, Mol_PMB said:

Another example which did keep its extended buffers is 18848, which was still lurking at Inchicore in brown livery in 1986 and 1988 as seen in these two photos:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53509013426

https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53511545930

I recently bought a slide on eBay which shows one of the former green H vans in later life. The same vehicle also appears in the two links above, that I posted previously. Here is the new image of 18848:

And a closeup of the extended buffers fitted to the green H vans:

I represented these on my models:

[Mol_PMB]

Something has long been puzzling me about the conversion of the green H vans. In 1967, Pender&Richards wrote with reference to the H vans in general:

Nos. 18542-18761 were built with vacuum brakes and can run on passenger trains. The group 18762-18861, which were built in 1958, were fitted with vacuum brakes in 1961/62. These wagons were painted green at the same time, though some have since been repainted in the standard grey livery. Fifteen of this group were fitted with sliding doors (for pallet traffic) at the same time.

But, there are photos of vans in the 18762-18861 prior to 1960, fitted with vacuum brakes. This one from Ernie dated 12 September 1960 is the clearest - on 18836 we can see the handwheel, clasp brakes, vacuum cylinder, vacuum pipes and linkage. No doubt at all this is vacuum-fitted.

But now I have access to the Irish Railfans News, I find that the contemporary description is more detailed, and fits the observations. This is in Volume 7.2, April 1961:

100 of the recently constructed vacuum braked covered vans (18762-18861) are being fitted with screw couplings in Broadstone works and are being painted green in Inchicore works. A number of these wagons have been seen in traffic on night mail trains.

This matches the photographic evidence. This batch of 100 were built new with vacuum brakes, and the conversion was to fit screw couplings (which would also have required the extended buffers I have illustrated previously, because screw couplings are longer than 3-link or instanter couplings.)

It's also notable that this report says that the coupling conversion was done at Broadstone while the green paint job was done at Inchicore. The latter statement is supported by photos of freshly-painted green vans at Inchicore in 1961. But perhaps not all of them made it to the second (painting) stage, which would help to explain why the green-painted vans were less numerous that the 100 total mentioned in both sources.