Hornby ’Toad B’
Hot on the heels of the ‘Toad E’ brake van, its predecessor is now in the Model Rail office.
◆ GAUGE ‘OO’ ◆ MODEL Hornby R6833 LNER ‘Toad B’ brake van No. 140422, LNER goods brown PRICE £21.99 ◆ AVAILABILITY Hornby stockists or www.hornby.com
Hot on the heels of Hornby’s LNER ‘Toad E’ brake van is its predecessor, the similar-looking – and similarly named – ‘Toad B’. Unlike the Great Western Railway, with which the LNER shared the telegraphic code ‘Toad’, the LNER had no standard brake van in 1923. It completed a batch of North Eastern Railway ’vans, which became ‘Toad A’, and then set to work on designing a standard vehicle. The result, the ‘Toad B’, was a combination of NER and Great Northern practice. It was larger than the ‘A’ – 22ft 5in over buffers – and its wheelbase was 6in longer, at 10ft 6in. Given the diagram number ‘34’, 711 ‘Toad Bs’ were built by the LNER and outside contractors between 1924 and 1929. Hornby has initially produced two ‘Toad Bs’, both in LNER goods brown. We were kindly supplied with No. 140422, which was one of 190 built by Birmingham Railway Carriage & Wagon Co. in 1925. Last issue’s review of the ‘Toad E’ mentioned how photographic evidence of specific wagons was fairly thin on the ground. Luckily, there’s a fine ex-works portrait of No. 140422 in Peter Tatlow’s LNER Wagons: Volume 4B, which makes a direct comparison between prototype and model quite straightforward! Hornby has modelled No. 140422 exactly as per the photograph, even down to the fact that the ’van has yet to be fitted with sanding gear (Tatlow suggests that this work would have been carried out by the LNER).
DUCKET DETAILS
The most obvious difference between the ‘Toad Bs’ and ‘Es’ was the planked duckets of the former. Hornby has executed this well, even down to the curious angled handrails. The fit between the ducket and the body is much better than that on the ‘E’, with only a fine gap at the bottom to give the game away. All other details are present and correct, from the planked, windowless veranda doors to the split axle boxes and lamp irons on the outer ends to carry spare lamps. Like the ‘Toad E’, the glazing is excellent throughout, with a representation of the interior, and the ‘torpedo’ roof vents are superbly moulded. It does, however, have similar flaws in that the safety bars across the doorways are too thick and there’s no attempt to replicate the planking on the inside edges of the outer ends. The finish is to a standard you would expect. The brown body is topped by the grey roof, with white handrails brightening the whole appearance. The solebar printing deserves special mention for the exceptionally fine LNER and BRCW worksplates. One issue raises an interesting question: how did the LNER avoid the bodyside lettering from ‘disappearing’ into the gaps between the planks, as per Hornby’s model? Were individual numbers and letterings cut into the bodyside, or was an extrathick paint applied? Tatlow’s book suggests that both options might have been used. Either way, when such issues on a model catch your attention, you know that the rest of it is very good indeed! The fit of the ducket, together with its distinctive planking, makes the ‘Toad B’ an arguably better model than the ‘E’. But full credit to Hornby for offering modellers of the steam era such choice in what to use to bring up the rear of their goods trains. And here’s an interesting postscript: the ‘Toad Bs’ and ‘Es’ gained a reputation for poor riding on high-speed goods services, so the LNER borrowed a GWR ‘Toad’ in 1928 for a series of trials. The resulting design, the ‘Toad D’, with its 16ft wheelbase, became the forerunner of BR’S Standard 20t brake van.