[Arran]

I have owned a few battery console sets over the years, some I wish I had kept like a Grimes-Phonola built "Serenader" from 1937. I suspect that the reason they don't show up on fleabay is much the same reason that AC consoles don't show up as much as table sets, the shipping costs, with the battery power being an additional handicap. In fact I don't see 1/2 of what I used to see on that site as I did even ten years ago, maybe 1/4 what I did 15-20 years ago, between craigslist, and fakebook marketplace there is just no advantage is selling on fleabay, in fact it's a lot of hassle.
I can name one feature of a battery console model that they have over a table model, there is lots of room for a power supply as they typically had a shelf in the bottom for battery storage. When the 2 volt tubes were common many had a built in rheostat, and volt meter so you could power the tube filaments from a 6 volt car battery, the Serenader had one of those, though one could just use a pair of the taps on the car battery to get the 2 volts, but maybe they just wanted a bit of headroom as the cells discharged.
Another type of "A" battery I have seen mentioned in battery sets is an Eveready "Air Cell" which put out 3 volts, so the set had a pair of screw terminals, with a dropping resistor on the backside, when you used a wet cell you used a wire jumper across the terminals, when you used an "Air Cell" you removed the jumper. I think that the "Air Cell" was just a pair of carbon zinc dry cells in series, hence the 3 volt output.
Canada never had a "New Deal" with a rural electrification program in place, so battery powered tube radios were around longer, and designs taken more seriously by manufacturers. Quite a few sets, even with the 1.4 volt tubes, had tuned RF amplifier stages, or extra IF amp stages, shortwave bands, and the odd higher end model had either push pull , or parallel audio output stages. The reason for the parallel outputs was that the owner had the option of turning one of the tubes off to save battery life. Electrification did take place in rural areas, but it was piecemeal, and it was often a provincial owned power company that did it, like between one of the big cities, and a hydroelectric power dam, or some other industrial project, where they would be building transmission lines anyhow.
Anyhow I looked up the schematic of that Philco model 35, it does follow the concept of the model 70 pretty closely, including a tuned RF amplifier stage. The power output is a single ended #33 pentode, so pretty similar to a single ended #47, though I think the #33 sounded a bit better fidelity wise. The #33 was a popular choice in many 1930s battery radios, right up until 2 volt octals came out in 1938. My Stewart Warner vibrator radio uses one, and in theory they can put out over a Watt, since the vibrator supply can put out up to 180 volts on the plate and screen grids, on a straight battery set they usually topped out at 135 volts. When I get that set working I am planning on powering it from a SLA, a sealed lead acid battery.
Regards
Arran