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BR unfitted open wagon liveries


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  • RMweb Gold

Danger! Minefield!

 

My involvement on the 12T fitted van topic has led to me opening this one, as I am now questioning my approach to open merchandise wagon liveries.  Cwmdimbath (follow the continuing and exciting saga on Layout Topics under South Wales Valleys in the 1950s) is a BLT set in the 1948-59 period, and I make a deliberate attempt to include as much variety of livery as possible.  For open merchandise wagons this mean an ideal of having at least one example of each late big 4 livery, fitted and unfitted where there was a difference, and of them in BR liveries, and the BR standard wagons.

 

It has transpired from the van topic that wooden bodied unfitted open merchandise wagons may not have been given grey unfitted livery until 1959, the very end of my period, and I may need to consider repainting some of mine in unpainted wood livery, if painting an unpainted livery makes any sense that is.  It means that a grey painted wooden bodied open merchandise wagon would have been something of a rarity if the wood was not painted until 1959, as by that time most such wagons would have been either scrapped (wooden ones were easy victims; you could burn the body and sell just the chassis for scrap, and many were in poor condition anyway) or upgraded to fitted or piped  wagons in the bauxite livery.  

 

When were opens first painted grey by BR? If the answer is 1959, then a livery I had previously thought only lasted as long as the austerity regulations and died out in the early 50s was much longer lived than I had supposed, and probably all bar a token one of my such wagons needs to be in plain wood (the steel stanchions were painted grey AFAIK).  Were any unfitted vans unpainted, and when did this practice stop; I am under the impression that vans received the grey livery from the outset, but this may be wrong.

 

The attraction of modelling this particular time frame is the variety of liveries that can be included, but it is not always as straightforward as it looks!

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Looking at wagons in 'Wagons of the Early British Railways Era' by David Larkin, it would appear that new unfitted Opens were being delivered with woodwork unpainted until at least 1953. I found the following vehicles in this paint scheme:-

B483772, delivered from Derby in 1952 (note that this wagon was delivered with the two lower end planks replaced with steel U-channel)

B495159, delivered from Ashford in 1953 (photo shows spoked wheels.)

B494990, delivered from Ashford in 1952( corrugated ends, delivered with spoked wheels)

B483683, taken in 1968, with timber still apparently unpainted- this was one of the 5-plank dropside wagons.

B731490, taken in 1953- 22t Tube wagon

B740000, taken in 1949- 12t Pipe. DL suggests that the steelwork is Bauxite. It's certainly not wagon grey or black. It could just be primer.

I also looked though a couple of Bradford Barton albums of steam in South Wales;  frustratingly there are some unfitted five-plankers in all-over grey, but the relevant photos are undated.

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As mentioned it's a real minefield.

 

I have taken to wagon spotting in books with good quality colour pictures, where the wagons are in the background.

 

If the picture is in black and white I'm looking to see if the lettering is on a black patch and if the wood looks the same colour as the ironwork.  Some wood may have been painted in the deep and distant past but is just quite dark, not sure if that's dirt, old paint or a mixture of both.

 

For example I have a picture Templecoomb showing an ex PO 7 plank mineral with end and bottom doors, number looks like P?15777.  Looks to be painted grey as the interior is much darker as are 3 replacement planks on the fixed end.  Its next to another P250607 where the planks are much darker and un-painted.

 

I suggest that this page is useful for such photo references.

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  • RMweb Gold

Many thanks for the responses, gentlemen.  As it is such a minefield I am not really expecting any definitive answers to this one, but the more information I can glean the better; in the end I may have to wing it a bit with Rule 1.  But 1953 is much earlier than 1959.  I appreciate that black and white photos, especially the usual ¾ front view which does not show the side of the wagon in detail, are difficult, as once the wagon is dirty it is difficult to distinguish the livery without clear view of the black background for the numbers, and I'm not sure all unpainted wagons even had that.   It was introduced in very early days after the white numbers were found to be difficult to read against some of the lighter shades of grey that unfitted vans and steel minerals were being painted in, but reading white numbers against a plain wood background may not have been as difficult.

 

I certainly need to incorporate unpainted unfitted wooden open wagons on my layout, both 5 and 7 plank.

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You've omitted an important difference with the opens - whether the frame is wood or steel. It is the wood framed wagons which went unpainted (officially) until 1959. Steel framed ones had their bodies painted earlier, although I would also be interested to know when.

 

Paul

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...I have taken to wagon spotting in books with good quality colour pictures, where the wagons are in the background...

 That's my method too, in order to supplement memory. Something I very strongly recall in repairs to the older wood construction wagons on which the body work was unpainted is how clearly repairs would be evident. The older timber had weathered to that elusive silvery grey shade with additional filth, new replacement was in the pale yellow to light brown range of more recently sawn wood, and slowly transforming itself in traffic to eventually become grey too, if there was enough time before the scrap line.

 

In consequence my default colour for the old wooden wagons is simply BR's pale grey, then some filth. There's a few specimens of the effects we liked as kids, the old large company lettering still showing as a 'ghost' in what paintwork remained for example.

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You've omitted an important difference with the opens - whether the frame is wood or steel. It is the wood framed wagons which went unpainted (officially) until 1959. Steel framed ones had their bodies painted earlier, although I would also be interested to know when.

 

Paul

The wagons I listed were all types with features like corrugated ends/ steel channels vice wood/steel stanchions, yet were all photographed at the building works with only the steel painted. Looking through the various DL albums, there was one five-plank dropside which still only seemed to have the ironmongery painted in the very late 1960s, yet another photo of the same type of wagon, taken at the beginning of the same decade, was painted (freshly) in all-over grey. 

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There are enough books around showing new construction in the early 1950's being given unfitted BR grey from new. Equally, there are enough pictures showing the grey only being applied to metalwork only (this applied to fitted Red Oxide livery too).  Wagon painting was clearly not a priority and so Big-Four and ex.Private Owner wagons carried on as before with perhaps the addition of newly painted number with appropriate pre-fix, sometimes on a black panel if necessary....sometimes not. Nevertheless, some workshops did turn out Big Four repaints in BR grey.

 

The LMS had adopted bauxite before the war for unfitted and fitted wagons, so in the BR scheme of things they looked like fitted wagons and fitted goods brake vans when they weren't. Many of the wagons I saw in the extensive yards a Oldham Clegg Street, Royton Junction and Diggle in the early to mid 1950's provided a picture of various greys and browns, much of it weathered with the usual track dust that was prevalent in steam days. The 'stand-out' grey wagons were the steel minerals.

 

With the introduction of DMU's en-mass from 1958-9, modernization seemed to be creeping into every other area of BR as well and it was noticeable that more goods trains consisted of red-oxide wagons, so maybe BR started to paint wagons grey at that time in order to make it obvious to yard men which were the unfitted ones.

Edited by coachmann
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  • RMweb Gold

That's a good point, Coachmann, and your very considerable knowledge of all matters BR steam era commands attention.  I think that, in addition to the fitted wagon identification issue, paint was more readily available than it had been earlier in the 50s, and the IWC's work was by 1959 visibly impacting the scene; the sort of older wagons that were not painted were starting to be thinned out.  But it is difficult to pin things down definitively in such a fluid period in respect of liveries; even the WR's locos were not painted uniformly and plain black 5101s and 56xx appeared apparently randomly among lined green examples, so what hope is there of a a rigidly enforced centralised policy among mere wagons!

 

But a general picture is perhaps starting to emerge; unfitted opens and wooden bodied minerals unpainted until 1953, then steel/iron framed ones painted grey with wooden framed remaining unpainted (couldn't have been many left by then) until 1959 when all unfitted wagons are painted grey.  I will work to this general principle for now.

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I was given to believe there was a lot of surplus wartime grey about in the later 1940's. Certainly everyone seemed to live off army & navy surplus trousers and bed blankets etc.

It would account for the differing shades of grey, the Grey Funnel Line using at least three, depending on what camouflage scheme was used.

The Army Surplus stuff lasted well into the 1970s! I had a gas-mask bag to carry my snap in then.

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There are enough books around showing new construction in the early 1950's being given unfitted BR grey from new. Equally, there are enough pictures showing the grey only being applied to metalwork only (this applied to fitted Red Oxide livery too).  Wagon painting was clearly not a priority and so Big-Four and ex.Private Owner wagons carried on as before with perhaps the addition of newly painted number with appropriate pre-fix, sometimes on a black panel if necessary....sometimes not. Nevertheless, some workshops did turn out Big Four repaints in BR grey.

 

The LMS had adopted bauxite before the war for unfitted and fitted wagons, so in the BR scheme of things they looked like fitted wagons and fitted goods brake vans when they weren't. Many of the wagons I saw in the extensive yards a Oldham Clegg Street, Royton Junction and Diggle in the early to mid 1950's provided a picture of various greys and browns, much of it weathered with the usual track dust that was prevalent in steam days. The 'stand-out' grey wagons were the steel minerals.

 

With the introduction of DMU's en-mass from 1958-9, modernization seemed to be creeping into every other area of BR as well and it was noticeable that more goods trains consisted of red-oxide wagons, so maybe BR started to paint wagons grey at that time in order to make it obvious to yard men which were the unfitted ones.

 

BR minutes only 3 months after nationalisation show they agreed to follow on freight stock red for power braked and piped wagons and grey for unfitted. With white for refrigerated and insulated wagons when such paint became available, stone being used in the interim. But the works were chocker with out of action stock, which got worse as the early part of the 1950s progressed. The instructions for painting all of a wagon, as against steelwork were introduced piecemeal and no one seems to have come up with the instructions for the early and mid 50s when at some stage painting of steel framed wooden bodied open wagons began.

 

Similarly, I've not managed to find when the D prefix began to be applied to ex revenue wagons being used by the engineers. Yes, the D was on pucca departmental wagons from new but I haven't found a D prefixed revenue wagon earlier than the late 50s, perhaps even later.

 

 

Paul

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Thank you for this response, Paul; I could hardly ask for a more authoritative one.  You have confirmed what I suspected that the decision to use the bauxite and grey liveries dated to quite soon after nationalisation, and that things got under way immediately, but not universally with some workshops being unable to source paint and in any case all being overloaded with stock needing attention.  The matter wasn't really sorted until the late 50s, and by then rapidly falling traffic levels were playing a part in eliminating the older wagons and those in poor condition.  

 

But it is becoming clear that Cwmdimbath has work for at least one unpainted 5 planker!

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Dear All,

 

please excuse the thread revival, however, British Railways in the early-to-mid-1950s is a new subject for me (should've stuck to 1900 GWR!).

 

For works of reference, I have on order a copy of British Rail Wagons: The First Half Million by Don Rowlands, and I'm bidding on a copy of Wagons of the Early British Railways Era (1948-1954) by David Larkin. I would also like to find a copy of An Illustrated History of BR Wagons. I would, of course, be very grateful for suggestions for any other useful references!

 

In the meantime, however, I have a couple of Parkside kits on my workbench - they were an impulse buy, and are the cause of all this! One is the 5-plank open merchandise to diagrams 1/039 and 1/044, the other is the 12-ton goods van to diagram 1/213.

 

In reading through the various threads I've found that touch on early BR-era goods stock, it seems to be a very convoluted subject - a minefield as The Johnster put it in his opening post, despite:

 

On 23/05/2018 at 20:12, hmrspaul said:

 

<snip> BR minutes only 3 months after nationalisation show they agreed to follow on freight stock red for power braked and piped wagons and grey for unfitted. With white for refrigerated and insulated wagons when such paint became available <snip>

 

(thanks, Paul).

 

Insofar as the period between Nationalisation and 1955 is concerned, my reading of the situation vis-a-vis good stock (and please correct me where I go wrong!) is as follows:

  • generally, remaining "Big Four" goods stock continued to carry their pre-Nationalisation liveries, suitably amended, unless there was a good reason for a re-paint. Presumably, any minor repairs would have gone unpainted?
  • generally, on newly-constructed composite wagons, i.e. wooden bodied on a steel underframe or wooden-bodied on a wooden underframe, steel components only were painted, wooden components were unpainted (with Paul's caveat with respect to wooden underframed wagons going unpainted until 1959 etc).
  • newly-constructed steel wagons were painted overall

So, using my 1/039 5-plank open as an example, if it is to represent a wagon running in the period 1950-1955, its more than likely that the planked sides would have been unpainted, while the corrugated steel ends, side stanchions and underframe would have been painted?

 

Lastly, I'm fascinated by the idea that 

 

On 23/05/2018 at 20:12, hmrspaul said:

<snip> white for refrigerated and insulated wagons when such paint became available, stone being used in the interim<snip>

 

(my bold - thanks, again, Paul).

 

Presumably, the stone livery would have been applied to "new build" refrigerated/insulated stock as well as any pre-Nationalisation wagons that were in need of major overhaul and overall repaint.....? Do we know what shade it was?

 

Many thanks for your patience in guiding a newbie to this particular subject!

 

With kind regards,

 

Mark

 

PS By the way, does anyone know what the SNCF livery used on the 16-ton minerals was? Following repatriation, did any survive in that livery on BR metals?

 

Edit 1:

 

Stone Livery

 

with regard to the stone livery applied to refrigerated/insulated vans, although a secondary source, the following has come to light:

 

British Railways (1948-64) Livery

 

the pertinent paragraph being between the side profiles of the ore tippler wagons and the ex-LNER "Blue Spot" fish van.

 

Edit 2:

 

Stone Livery

 

How pertinent is this thread:

 

https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/71497-sr-insulated-van-colour/

Edited by 2996 Victor
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I understand that P.O. wagons technically remained the property of their owners, merely receiving black panels with their new number etc. as they were got around to*. At nationalisation, the paintwork would date back to around 1940 when they were pooled and so would be well worn already. I don't recall seeing any recognisable liveries in the fifties, despite being train mad and living next to a railway coal yard (Clifton Down, Bristol - now buried under a supermarket I gather!). Railway owned wagons tended to follow the grey/bauxite colours, but were generally rather scruffy. I do recall a van in the distance proudly bearing the letters 'G W' in the late fifties, but this was the exception and whether it had never been repainted or the paint had worn off I don't know. It did appear dark grey, but it was quite a way off and seen from a moving train

 

* I believe there was some sort of compensation scheme and the wagons received a new number when the paperwork was sorted. Perhaps someone knows better?

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On 29/07/2019 at 17:14, 2996 Victor said:

Dear All,

 

please excuse the thread revival, however, British Railways in the early-to-mid-1950s is a new subject for me (should've stuck to 1900 GWR!).

 

For works of reference, I have on order a copy of British Rail Wagons: The First Half Million by Don Rowlands, and I'm bidding on a copy of Wagons of the Early British Railways Era (1948-1954) by David Larkin. I would also like to find a copy of An Illustrated History of BR Wagons. I would, of course, be very grateful for suggestions for any other useful references!

 

In the meantime, however, I have a couple of Parkside kits on my workbench - they were an impulse buy, and are the cause of all this! One is the 5-plank open merchandise to diagrams 1/039 and 1/044, the other is the 12-ton goods van to diagram 1/213.

 

In reading through the various threads I've found that touch on early BR-era goods stock, it seems to be a very convoluted subject - a minefield as The Johnster put it in his opening post, despite:

 

 

(thanks, Paul).

 

Insofar as the period between Nationalisation and 1955 is concerned, my reading of the situation vis-a-vis good stock (and please correct me where I go wrong!) is as follows:

  • generally, remaining "Big Four" goods stock continued to carry their pre-Nationalisation liveries, suitably amended, unless there was a good reason for a re-paint. Presumably, any minor repairs would have gone unpainted?
  • generally, on newly-constructed composite wagons, i.e. wooden bodied on a steel underframe or wooden-bodied on a wooden underframe, steel components only were painted, wooden components were unpainted (with Paul's caveat with respect to wooden underframed wagons going unpainted until 1959 etc).
  • newly-constructed steel wagons were painted overall

So, using my 1/039 5-plank open as an example, if it is to represent a wagon running in the period 1950-1955, its more than likely that the planked sides would have been unpainted, while the corrugated steel ends, side stanchions and underframe would have been painted?

 

Lastly, I'm fascinated by the idea that 

 

 

(my bold - thanks, again, Paul).

 

Presumably, the stone livery would have been applied to "new build" refrigerated/insulated stock as well as any pre-Nationalisation wagons that were in need of major overhaul and overall repaint.....? Do we know what shade it was?

 

Many thanks for your patience in guiding a newbie to this particular subject!

 

With kind regards,

 

Mark

 

PS By the way, does anyone know what the SNCF livery used on the 16-ton minerals was? Following repatriation, did any survive in that livery on BR metals?

 

Edit 1:

 

Stone Livery

 

with regard to the stone livery applied to refrigerated/insulated vans, although a secondary source, the following has come to light:

 

British Railways (1948-64) Livery

 

the pertinent paragraph being between the side profiles of the ore tippler wagons and the ex-LNER "Blue Spot" fish van.

 

Edit 2:

 

Stone Livery

 

How pertinent is this thread:

 

https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/71497-sr-insulated-van-colour/

Diagram 1/213 were always bauxite livery, all BR goods vans were as they were all vacuum fitted.

 

Diagram 1/039 were always bauxite livery, again they were vacuum braked. I think they must have been introduced after BR stopped just painting the metal work.

 

Diagram 1/044 were again bauxite livery, except the unfitted batch built at Ashford, these were painted grey.

 

Photos in David Larkin's Wagons of the Early British Railway Era (both volumes) showing works photos of new built wagons. 

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