The Southern Railway following on from its constituents made use of Pull Push sets across the network and this practice carried on well into British Railways Southern Region days. Other railways companies also made of such although they were often also known as autocoach, motor coach or push pull sets on these other railways. Originally many of the units were converted from either ex steam railmotors, following early pre grouping experiments that found them to be inflexible and often under powered, and a mix of converted pre-grouping coaches.
Set 734 heads west past the shed at Fisherton Sarum
The main topic of this post are the nine Pull Push sets converted from ex LSWR 46′ 6″ Emigrant corridor stock in 1942/3 that created sets 731 to 739. The sets comprised of a Driving Brake Third and a Composite and they retained their corridor connection between the two coaches. Although converted at the same time there were differences between the sets: sets 731 to 4 were identical, sets 735/7 had a slightly different Brake Third, sets 738/9 shared the same style Brake Third as sets 735/7 but with a different style of composite; confusing I know! The sets were widely travelled over all three sections of the Southern network and survived until 1959/1961.
Set 734 arrives at Ashland
My model of Set 734 that appears on Fisherton Sarum from time to time, and occasionally Hornby Magazine’s Ashland is a Northstar Models built set. Unfortunately Northstar Models that manufactured a number of limited ready to run ex LSWR coaches are no longer available. They were a Christmas present to myself a few years ago now.
Kernow Model Centre has commissioned the ex LSWR ‘Gate Stock’ Pull Sets numbers 363, 373/4 to be produced and hopefully these will make an appearance in early 2014, further details can be found here.
The Southern Region also created 20 Pull Push sets from late 1959 to mid 1960 as replacements for earlier Push Pull sets of SR and pre-grouping design. They consisted of two Maunsell vehicles, an ex-diagram 2403 BCK and an ex diagram 2005 SO. These sets have now been produced by Hornby and my review can read here, they do not run on Fisherton Sarum as they outside my usual 1946 to 1949 modelling period.
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I am very much looking forward to making amends with attendance at their show next year, Basingstoke is of course on the same ex LSWR / Southern South West mainline as Salisbury. The Steam shed at Basingstoke was also of the same turn of the century LSWR design style as Salisbury along with Eastleigh and Plymouth Friary. Therefore Fisherton Sarum should feel quite at home at this show and my exhibition diary page on here has also been updated to reflect this addition to the list of shows that Fisherton Sarum will be attending.
