An exotic day out for Sheffield zoology students - 1930s style

Also in the 1930s the first university students were admitted in groups, with a lecturer, at a reduced rate. At this time, for instance, the Sheffield University Zoology Department annually hired a passenger coach, which was slipped from the London express to deliver its complement of students for a day at the newly opened Whipsnade Zoo*.

The method of delivery of the students is interesting since it illustrates a long-gone railway operation. A slip coach (and sometimes coaches) was at the rear of the train. Some distance before the station a guard in the slip coach would pull a lever to ‘slip’ the coupling with the carriage in front, apply a little braking, to make sure the rest of the train would draw ahead and then slowly brake the coach to come to a stop at the station platform, while the express train steamed to its final destination. The whole operation was a routine on some routes but there were hairy moments and a notable crash (the driver thought the slip coach had not detached and stopped to check while his rear vision was obscured by smoke; the slip had detached and so ran into the back of the stopped train). There is a video of a slip operation here. At the end of the day though the slip coach must have been attached to a local train and pulled, presumably, to a station on the line at which it could be attached to the end of the train bound for Sheffield. 

Once at Whipsnade, our predecessors as students by thirty years might have sent a postcard like these shown below by Frederick William Bond (1887-1942) who was not a professional photographer but a member of staff of the accounts department of ZSL.

*Bullough WS, Hamilton F. 1976. The role of education. In, The Zoological Society of London 1826-1876 and Beyond. Ed. Zuckerman. Symposia of the Zoological Society of London 40, 223-231.