Toad At Derby!

[RichmondCommu]

G'day everyone,

Whilst looking through some old photographs at the weekend I came across a picture which on the right hand side shows a GWR designed Toad brake van on the freight lines opposite platform 6 at Derby station. Given that I was focusing on my friend standing in front of 08178 the Toad is really there by lucky chance and I can't tell whether its on the rear of a train or not. However the brake van does have a lamp attached to it which suggests to me that it may well be running through the station as part of a train.

I'm really interested to know whether a Toad brake van running as far north as Derby was pretty much a one off or whether that kind of thing would have been a regular occurrence. The picture was taken in November 1975 and I would also be interested to know how many Toad brake vans were still running on the network at that stage. From all the photographs that I have I've not seen any other brake vans other than the BR standard type.

Any thoughts / stories of brake van operation / inter-regional freights would be much appreciated!

Kindest regards,

Richmond Commuter!

 

[eastwestdivide]

Have a look at Paul Bartlett's wagon photo site - here's a direct link to a GW single-ended brake van at York in 1988:
http://paulbartlett.zenfolio.com/gwrbrakevan/hf1c2f80#h2d60c88b

Apparently most were taken out of general goods use much earlier (1960s), but many lingered on in departmental use - most of the ones in his photos are prefixed DW-, indicating departmental use, and a lot are modified for other purposes, e.g. mess vans, brake vans for cranes.

Apart from the GW ones, there were plenty of LNER, LMS and SR brake vans running round the system into the 1980s, although far outnumbered by the BR ones, and the majority of pre-BR ones were in departmental use.

 

[RichmondCommu]

Have a look at Paul Bartlett's wagon photo site - here's a direct link to a GW single-ended brake van at York in 1988:
http://paulbartlett.zenfolio.com/gwrbrakevan/hf1c2f80#h2d60c88b

Apparently most were taken out of general goods use much earlier (1960s), but many lingered on in departmental use - most of the ones in his photos are prefixed DW-, indicating departmental use, and a lot are modified for other purposes, e.g. mess vans, brake vans for cranes.

Apart from the GW ones, there were plenty of LNER, LMS and SR brake vans running round the system into the 1980s, although far outnumbered by the BR ones, and the majority of pre-BR ones were in departmental use.

Many thanks for this, I've only had chance to have a quick look through but will have more time for that tonight. One picture shows a Toad at Nottingham as late as 1983 so clearly there were one or two knocking around the East Midlands.