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Good morning. Can anyone help me identify this car? It looks like a stock car with a "dog-house" attached like you would see on a tender. I don't run tinplate, but this caught my eye and it found it's way home to me. Thank you.

Paul



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Yes on both accounts.......it is a tinplate O gauge early Marklin (you can tell by the couplers), and we did call them "guards vans" and sometimes "brake vans" here in the "land down under".

Marklin is my "arch nemesis", as it is German, and I collect/run Buco, which is Swiss. Both were produced at around the same time, but in my humble opinion, Buco is much better made (mechanically), and more life-like to the prototypes......i.e., that monstrous looking guards cabin perched way up high???

Here is how Buco did it:

DSC03612

Peter.....Buco Australia

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Just to clarify a couple of the above items:

In the days before continuous automatic train braking there was often a need for braking effort, especially on descending gradients, to supplement the locomotive's brakes.  In Britain this was met by a Guards Van(s), which was a heavy vehicle manned by the Guard [ of course ! ].  On the Continent however brakemen were usually distributed throughout the train, and the shelter was provided for them.  In Germany this was called a Bremserhaus = Brakeman's House;  the elevated position, as on the OP's photograph, was originally standard pre WW I on 'house' cars, and often on others as well, of the various German state railways to have better observation forward to the locomotive and signals -- just as we had cupolas on cabooses here.   After the war, new build practice had lower brake huts, similar to the Buco cars, on those that received them;  fewer cars needed them as air braking was expanded. Cars with the high position hut could still be readily seen after WW II though.

The Swiss seem to have used the low position since before WW I, perhaps due to clearance or weather issues.

Note that German railways in the steam era did have on almost all freight trains a vehicle sometimes described in English as a brake van, but it was normally coupled directly behind the locomotive and served as, inter alia,  the location of the conductor and his paperwork -- just like a US conductor with his waybills, etc.

Does that help ?

Best, SZ

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OGR Publishing, Inc., 1310 Eastside Centre Ct, Ste 6, Mountain Home, AR 72653
800-980-OGRR (6477)
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