Rails

[Stephen Chambers]

So in fact what Wheatstone called "rails" we would call "hand-bars"

Exactly so ! The traditional name for the "hand-bars", at Wheatstone's, was indeed "rails".

 

Thus ,the Salvation Army client aksed for an Aeola with hand-bars/rails and duet straps(but are these different from anglo straps ?)

I would suspect that "duet straps" probably infers that these were what Steve Dickinson (at Wheatstone's) still refers to as "new-style" straps, which have a cutaway to accomodate the hand, and both ends fasten onto the rails, as opposed to "old-style" (traditional anglo) ones which are straight and held by a topscrew, on the side of the instrument.

 

The red-herring was assuming that what we saw on the concertina were rails.