West Country China Clay Co peak roof wagons

[drduncan]

In the late Victorian and Edwardian periods the West Country China Clay Co had peaked roof wagons for transporting China clay. They were built as broad gauge wagons and converted to standard gauge after 1892. A drawing of the standard gauge version is in the Gloucester wagons book.

 

Does anyone have any information, photos or better still drawings of these wagons as built ie broad gauge? Even the BG width and info on the construction on the wagon ends (ie no of planks, bracing etc) would be a great help.

 

DrDuncan

Edited April 29, 2018 by drduncan

[drduncan]

Bump!

[wagonman]

I

 

Bump!

 

 

As far as I know they aren't mentioned in the one surviving BG Register of Freighter's wagon there is no mention of china clay wagons of any description, probably because the wagons were registered before the GWR took over the associated companies. Could you not try extrapolating from the standard gauge rebuilds and sort of reverse engineer them? The relationship between the solebars and the side sheeting would probably have been the same with just the cross timbers being cut down. BG wagons were usually between 8' 7" and 9' 0" wide though there were a few outside that – Sneezum of Cardiff built some that were only 8' 3" wide so almost narrower than the solebars. Don't forget that they would have had 'elastic' buffers. The big question is would it have been taller with a similar slope on the roof or the same height and with shallower slope?

 

Have you tried contacting the BGS?

[drduncan]

Dear Richard,

Many thanks for the reply. I was planning on making the wagons 9ft wide if no other info comes to light, but as you note the key issue is height and resulting slope. The SG drawing in the Montague book shows the ends are sheeted with partial height external braces. This suggested to me that the height was unchanged but the slope increased as the width was reduced on conversion - hence sheeting over with metal. What do you think?

 

Nothing that I’ve found in the BGS publications.

 

Best

 

Duncan

[wagonman]

Dear Richard,

Many thanks for the reply. I was planning on making the wagons 9ft wide if no other info comes to light, but as you note the key issue is height and resulting slope. The SG drawing in the Montague book shows the ends are sheeted with partial height external braces. This suggested to me that the height was unchanged but the slope increased as the width was reduced on conversion - hence sheeting over with metal. What do you think?

 

Nothing that I’ve found in the BGS publications.

 

Best

 

Duncan

 

 

I think you're misreading the drawing – the end view is part elevation, part cross section. The right hand half is the elevation which clearly shows full-height stanchions – though for some strange reason it doesn't show the planking (which I take to be the same 10.5 in used elsewhere). The cross sectional half of the side view clearly show the ends are planked. What you take to be "partial height braces" are I suspect washer strips (strapping). None of this helps us to determine the original height. The drawing oddly states the height from floor to underside of roof ridge to be 3' 5" which is actually the height of the side sheets alone. Most odd. I doubt the original height was much greater than the converted, due to operational constraints (opening the hatch) as much as loading gauge issues.

 

That's my sixpenn'th.