British Railways, Couplers and Trains

September 16, 2010

John has kindly sent in this story for publication:

Coupler problems is a subject very near and dear to me. On British trains the couplings on the older stock ( I am modelling the late 1940s) were screwed up tight. Coaching stock with gangways coach to coach were very close. If models are shop bought then they are designed for 2ft radius curves i.e. the toy market. But my layout will only have a few curves as tight as 3ft radius on turnouts ( sorry “switches” in your language). So not wanting my trains to have about 10ft between coaches I am working my way through my stock modifying couplings so as to have that “bunched-up” look to my trains. With experimentation I have decided to aim for about 5/32 of an inch between buffer faces. This gives satisfactory clearance for 3ft radius curves (00gauge).

The trains look really good at this and the gangways are so close as to appear joined. I know that joined-up gangways are available and perhaps I will at some point fit them. But I do have reservations in this regard not wanting to detract from the ease of changing coaches in a train.

The flexibility of the make-up (what I believe you call “consist”) was a feature of the old-fashioned loco-hauled trains of my era. If a train arrived at a junction station then one or two coaches could be added if there were through coaches from the branch or a coach or coaches could be transferred from the main line train to the branch. Luggage cars and parcels vans could be transferred from one train to another and so on.

The modern diesel (and electric) trains in their rigid formations have lost this flexibility, a flexibility which was responsible for attracting the public to use trains. The Great Western Railway was famous for its slip coaches for example.

Here in Britain we have lost all our branch lines, there is very little freight movement and I am sure that you will be aware that it is freight that makes a railway profitable. We have all but lost our manufacturing industry, factories close down on a daily basis, are dismantled and become supermarkets, housing estates and warehousing for imported, foreign-made goods which the British public in general, cannot really afford!. This is because everything we buy of a manufactured nature is made in China.

Mail, oil, food, even refurbished railway coaches, ALL go by road, even carrier racing pigeons are sent out by road now. Our roads are cluttered up with huge lorries far too large for our little thoroughfares.

Yet the railways are under ever increasing pressure to carry more and more passengers on a railway which is a bare skeleton of what our railways once were. I am sure that the press of numbers of passengers is not because the public is ATTRACTED to trains but simply because our roads are so crowded now that journeys on those roads have become so unpredictable due to the press of more and more cars. We are fast becoming the most over-crowded country in the world and soon the railway train will be the only satisfactory mode of travel. Even the skies have become overcrowded with aircraft!

I have rather got off the subject of couplings but hope you will understand that I want to model a REAL railway!