On 999550, the Platform 5 Departmental Coaching Stock Books of 1984 and 1985 list it with the TOPS code QXB, i.e. air-braked and vacuum-piped.
So maybe they only had room for a through pipe and not the rest of the VB equipment.
Anyone have any refs to photos of it running between DMU cars? I've a photo of it in a 45-hauled train of Mk2s on a St Pancras-Sheffield service, and another of it between two SR 2HAP units, but I've never seen a photo of it in a VB service.
I am aware that is what is in the published 'spotting' books but to my knowledge it was fully AB and VB not just through VB piped. I may be wrong, but at the moment I'll stick my head out and say that book was wrong (and quoting a TOPS code does not prove it is right, they might have got that wrong too), OR it was altered at some stage.
What I am aware of is people taking what is in those books as 100.000% accurate - I know they are not that accurate : in 1980s P5 days I did more than some proof reading for them and there were numerous corrections in every edition, and some items remained uncorrected across several editions e.g. if you look in late 1980s through 1990s you will see 442s are always listed as having ex-4Rep motor
bogies which they never did. Even now people look this up and believe it was correct. But this fact was not corrected in the P5 book until early 2000s.
http://taillampphotography.com/DMU Classes 101_117.htm
took me less than 10 seconds to find that.
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Nick
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t between two SR 2HAP units, but I've never seen a photo of it in a VB service.
It never ran in
service on SR if you mean in the sense of a passenger carrying service, even if it did so in other areas.
On SR it could run between anything but usually in a short train, either between spare Hasting DEMU motor coaches, or 2car units, and more often than not one of these 2car units would be the two spare refurbished 4Cep motors usually usud as a tractor. Later when 7153 (the proto refurb) was disbanded its motors too became a 2car tractor, and both could haul 999550 although I never saw that.
SR DEMU did haul 999550 in service on LT tracks, LT hired it to cover the surface lines, and one time it covered the Chesham branch in public service, there being no other path. I knew about this in advance and was on my up from Coventry where I lived at the time to go on it. The 81 or 85 I forget which I had chosen to come Up with failed north of Bletchley, and after getting propelled by the following 86 hauled service into Bletchley platforms a single 25 dragged us to Euston, well late, but, added bonus, we went into Euston via the Up Empty Carriage line a.k.a. the Rat Hole so I can claim a rat in the rat hole. The DEMU move was well out the question by that time.
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Nick
