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The International N Gauge Show (TINGS) is a highlight of the exhibition calendar for many N Scale enthusiasts and Bachmann Europe Plc today (Saturday 14th September) selected the 2024 event as the location for its next Graham Farish New Tooling Announcement, unveiling brand new models of the BR Mk1 POT Post Office Tender (Stowage Van) in N Scale.
The railways were first conceived to transport goods, and the General Post Office was an early adopter of this new transport technology, with the first mail moved by rail as long ago as 1830. Soon, dedicated vehicles were built to transport and sort mail on the move creating trains known as Travelling Post Offices (TPOs), some of which included vehicles that could pick-up and offload mail without stopping using specialised lineside exchange equipment. When the railways were Nationalised in 1948, British Railways inherited postal vehicles from all the Big Four railway companies but soon, standard vehicles were being designed using the BR Mk1 coach as their blueprint.
Two main types of BR Mk1 postal vehicle were built, Post Office Sorting Vans (POS) and Post Office Tenders (POT), with the POS built to 9 different diagrams by various builders whilst eight types of POT were ordered. With their wide spread of designs, no single vehicle diagram was built in large numbers. Of the eight POT designs, two versions included a brake compartment however these were extremely limited in number and many TPOs ran with general brake vehicles like Brake Gangwayed (BG) or General Utility Vans (GUV), as already produced by Graham Farish.
As their names suggest, POS vehicles were designed for mail to be sorted on the move whilst the POTs were used for storage and were commonly referred to as stowage vans. Among the various diagrams some POSs and POTs were fitted with mail exchange apparatus – traductor arms to offload mail on the move and nets to collect it – whilst others had only traductor arms and several types had no exchange apparatus at all. Once mail exchange on the move ended in 1971, the traductor arms and nets were gradually removed from those vehicles so fitted.
With a POS vehicle already modelled in N scale by Graham Farish, the POT was an obvious candidate to join the range enabling more accurate Travelling Post Offices to be composed than ever before. The POT selected is the diagram 732, of which ten examples were built in 1968 by BR’s York Works. The dia. 732 vehicles were fitted with three large loading doors on each side; on one side the outer pair were flanked by recesses in the bodyside into which traductor arms could be fitted but none would ever receive this mail exchange apparatus. Eight of the vehicles remained in traffic until the final TPOs ran in 2004, with one being withdrawn the previous year and the other a decade earlier – two would go on to be preserved.
The new Graham Farish model captures the iconic profile of the BR Mk1 and is adorned with intricately moulded details from the roof vents to the door handles and even the window ventilator grilles. Detailing extends to the ends too, with corridor connections, emergency brake apparatus and brake and heating connections present at either end along with a separately fitted grab handrail. The BR B5 bogies are expertly reproduced, including brake blocks and tiebars, and metal wheelsets are employed for smooth running. Standard N scale couplings fit into NEM pockets mounted on close-coupling mechanisms, whilst the model is completed by the underframe equipment, each a separately-fitted component portraying the brake systems, battery boxes and ancillary gear which all fits neatly around the truss rod frames.
Production of the first models is nearing completion and the liveries and identities of these initial releases will be revealed in the Winter 2024 British Railway Announcements on Wednesday 6th November 2024.