GWR Open Wagons - Top Rail

[County of Yorkshire]

I am currently in a kit-building phase and as part of this I have decided to next commence a GWR O4 O2 7-plank open by Coopercraft. This kit comes fitted with end holes and brackets for the top rail, and indeed a piece of .45mm brass wire for the rail comes included. What I wanted to ask more knowledgeable RMwebbers than I is whether these wagon rails lasted into the 1940's? I do not recall seeing post-war GWR era images of wagon's with top rails and so I do not know whether they were still around or not. 

 

Any advice before I carve off the moulded rail brackets would be much appreciated. 

 

Cheers, 

 

CoY

Edited December 15, 2017 by County of Yorkshire

[eastglosmog]

Don't think I have seen a photo of an O4 post 1940 with a tarpaulin bar.  I carved the bar supports off of mine when I finally built it earlier this year, the kit having been in my drawer for some 30 years.

[PaulT]

 

Any advice before I carve off the moulded rail brackets would be much appreciated. 

 

    Keep the rail, add a tarp and model pre-war or better still, pre-grouping 

[Fat Controller]

I recollect hearing something about the GWR removing the sheet-supports when these wagons became Common User, as they had a habit of 'disappearing' when they went on to other railways.

[eastglosmog]

I recollect hearing something about the GWR removing the sheet-supports when these wagons became Common User, as they had a habit of 'disappearing' when they went on to other railways.

The tale I have read (in the Atkins bible?) was that the GWR didn't see why they should supply superior, more expensive, wagons with sheet support when the other companies got most of the benefit!  Consequently they removed the tarpaulin bars whenever the wagons came in for repair.

[Mikkel]

The tale I have read (in the Atkins bible?) was that the GWR didn't see why they should supply superior, more expensive, wagons with sheet support when the other companies got most of the benefit!  Consequently they removed the tarpaulin bars whenever the wagons came in for repair.

 

Yes. And later the issue of sagging wagon sheets (with water collecting in the middle) became less of a problem anyway, as there was increasing use of vans for the kinds of goods that might have been damaged from this.

 

PS: To be pedantic the Coopercraft 7-planker is an O2. The O4 is the 5-planker.

[David C]

I've got an open wagon on my layout with a tarp cover over a rail making the distinctive "roof". This was inspired by a colour photo of a goods train headed by a GWR 2-8-0 going through somewhere in the Birmingham area in BR days. Quite where I saw it, I can't remember after so many years! It must be in one of those colour albums or in a prototype mag of which I have a great many. They're very useful for weathering purposes - and for confirming that some GW wagons still retained their tarp rails post nationalisation! I don't know what diagram this particular wagon was.

 

David C

[eastglosmog]

I've got an open wagon on my layout with a tarp cover over a rail making the distinctive "roof". This was inspired by a colour photo of a goods train headed by a GWR 2-8-0 going through somewhere in the Birmingham area in BR days. Quite where I saw it, I can't remember after so many years! It must be in one of those colour albums or in a prototype mag of which I have a great many. They're very useful for weathering purposes - and for confirming that some GW wagons still retained their tarp rails post nationalisation! I don't know what diagram this particular wagon was.

 

David C

Well, not actually evidence that O2's and O4's retained tarpaulin bars until BR days.  BR fitted quite a few wagons with hybars in the late50s/early60s, LMS type D2094 for example and some BR standards among others, even I believe some ex GWR O44's.  Of course, the O13 china clay wagons did retain their bars into BR days.

[swampy]

There's a 1959 photo of a non-fitted O2 with a tarpaulin bar in Larkin's "pre-nationalisation wagons" booklet.  Photo quality isn't that good, but I can't see a vac cylinder. It's numbered W29636, in bauxite, marked "Hybar", and DC3 brakes I think. The bottom 2 end planks have been replaced by steel U-channel section to minimise shunting damage if the load shifted. It has 3 plank top doors, so can't be modelled using the Coopercraft kit.

 

It could be that the tarp bar was removed by GWR, and added later by BR, as mentioned above in #8.

 

29617 in Atkins is a vac-fitted O10, with sheet rail, and 3 plank door, so presumably from the same batch, as they are only 18 numbers apart.

 

Can't have been many left by then, having been built in the 1900s.

 

HTH

 

Pete