Who invented the gangway tender?

[DavidB-AU]

Before anybody says Gresley in 1928, this is a Queensland Railways drawing for a proposed gangway through tender dated 22 July 1913.

 

 

 

Cheers

David

[PatB]

Interesting. Do you know whether it was actually built? Given Australian distances and long journey times it makes a certain amount of sense, although I'm not sure how long the longest non-stop stretches would be. Even remote areas seem to have had a myriad of tiny settlements, trains for the service of.

[PatB]

As far as I know, when Flying Scotsman visited Australia in 1988 she was hauling a train of coaches ( not sure how many ) + an auxiliary water tank wagon and broke the non stop record she achieved in 1928 which was 393 miles from London - Edinburgh.

 

On the run down under she achieved a non stop record of around 430 miles beating her own uk record by at least 37 miles.

 

I was thinking more in terms of regular service trains rather than one-off specials. Here in WA there were once some quite long passenger runs. Perth to Geraldton, Perth to Kalgoorlie (still in existence as The Prospector) and Perth to Albany, for example. However study of old timetables indicates that trains on these routes stopped pretty much everywhere and so didn't actually run non-stop for more than maybe a couple of hours at most. Even now, with the decline of many small towns, the Prospector has frequent stops until east of Southern Cross, beyond which there's nothing very much until you get to Coolgardie, a couple of hundred kilometers closer to Kalgoorlie. Although I'm not familiar with Queensland's rail system I'd assume it to have been similar.

[kevinlms]

Interesting. Do you know whether it was actually built? Given Australian distances and long journey times it makes a certain amount of sense, although I'm not sure how long the longest non-stop stretches would be. Even remote areas seem to have had a myriad of tiny settlements, trains for the service of.

It wouldn't have been built in that form, for two reasons.

 

WW1 would have stopped it.

 

It would be pretty pointless anyway. There was obviously no provision for an additional water tank and there were certainly no water troughs, anywhere in Australia. So the loco would have to stop to pick up water, so you may as well change crew at the same time.

[DavidB-AU]

Interesting. Do you know whether it was actually built?

Yes it was built in 1915, but not because of distance. It was used on a quiet branch line with minimum crew and the gangway was to allow the fireman to walk back and check tickets.

 

Cheers

David

[2mmMark]

It was invented so every "grandad who drove the Flying Scotsman" could take their turn on the footplate.  The LNER provided a reserved coach or several just behind the loco for all of them.