Wagon numbers

[JohnR]

I was wondering what the typical numbers of wagons needed for a branch line terminus are - and what types. Obviously to a certain extent it will depend on whether there are any specialist traffics on offer, and of course, the numbers would have changed over time.

 

But say for 1950s/60s, would you have say 5 mineral wagons (2 steel 16T, 3 ex-PO), 3 vans and 2 4T containers? Any other types that would be seen on a regular basis pretty much anywhere?

[Fat Controller]

I was wondering what the typical numbers of wagons needed for a branch line terminus are - and what types. Obviously to a certain extent it will depend on whether there are any specialist traffics on offer, and of course, the numbers would have changed over time.

 

But say for 1950s/60s, would you have say 5 mineral wagons (2 steel 16T, 3 ex-PO), 3 vans and 2 4T containers? Any other types that would be seen on a regular basis pretty much anywhere?

Don't forget the 12t merchandise Opens; all-wood, wood with steel ends and all-steel. There might also be cattle vans and oil-tankers; the latter would be unloaded directly into road tankers, or perhaps into barrels and drums, using hand pumps.

[chaz]

There are plenty of books about (maybe thousands!) that include photos of goods trains running on branch lines. Might a study of some of these give you an insight into what wagons were typical? 

 

Chaz

[Poor Old Bruce]

The answer to your question is as long as a piece of string. It all depends on what traffic your line is used for. Thing were changing dramatically between the 1950s and '60s anyway. My own BLT was built nominally for stone traffic but other traffics came along with time. When designing the track layout I wanted ti fit in the stone traffic (obviously), passengers trains, a bay platform for parcels vans and to get the passenger train out of the way, dairy (milk tanks or vans), cattle, covered goods shed, open goods landing, end-loading bay, domestic coal and a yard crane. some other traffic will originate on the branch which will mean some wagons e.g. grain vans arriving at the terminus just to go back again towards the junction.

 

The maximum train length on my layout is ten standard length wagons plus a brake van so I have about 30 stone wagons (ten each in the quarry, the exchange siding and the fiddle yard). the rest are to cope with the above mentioned traffic:

 

Two cattle trucks which come and go.

Vans in and out of the goods shed.

Parcels or Newspaper vans to and from the bay platform by passenger train.

Five milk tanks (two in / three out etc) but the number could be variable.

Open wagons in and out of the yard.

Coal wagons.

Grain vans and/or oil tank wagons from down the line.

Containers for crane transfer.

 

There are some traffics which I don't cater for like whiskey or a coal mine.

 

The rest is up to you and your imagination. There are books about with photos of branch trains which should give you some idea of train consists.

[JohnR]

There are plenty of books about (maybe thousands!) that include photos of goods trains running on branch lines. Might a study of some of these give you an insight into what wagons were typical? 

 

Chaz

 

Its more about the rough proportions, rather than the exact mix - which could obviously vary from day-to-day and location to location. It was prompted by my wife saying "Havnt you got enough of those wagons already?" when another parcel of 16T grey minerals arrived. (I know, rookie mistake, opening the package in front of the rest of the house!)

[The Johnster]

Poor Old Bruce is right, piece of string.

 

A typical goods yard consisted of two roads, one of which served a goods facility of some sort, (shed, provender store, loading platform).  The other, set 18 feet away because that was the turning circle of a horse drawn cart, is for the coal staithes/drops and 'mileage'.  Now, we get in to how goods traffic was dealt with according to the rates paid.  The basic service is 'mileage', the charge for which is set by government and not the railway.  The customer is charged per mile and loads or unloads the van or wagon himself, or provides staff to do so, on to his own lorry or van direct off the railway vehicle.  Next stage up and a bit more expensive is To Be Called For, TBCF, what it says on the label.  Railway staff unload the wagon and the customer turns up to pick the stuff up.  Then you can pay a higher rate for delivery, which means that the railway unloads the goods and delivers it wherever you want in ta railway lorry or van.  

 

Extra charges, which the railway would be keen to promote, were brought in to play for traffic needing specific vehicles, such as shocvans or lowfits, and in addition to this there would be container traffic.  It is not impossible for containers on conflats to be used as ordinary vans if nothing else is handy and they can be spared.  In the case of a BLT, nearly all traffic is incoming, with any outgoing originating from a specific local industry if there is one; a creamery or dairy is typical, and will have it's own siding.

 

Mineral traffic connected with a mine or quarry also has it's own sidings, and usually runs in block trains rather than being included in the pickup.

 

In modelling terms, this means that the pick should consist mostly of 5 plank opens and 12 ton vans, to be shunted into the shed or mileage road as the operator sees fit, and nearly always a raft of loaded coal for the staithes,  Opens should have loads or at least tarpaulins pretending to cover loads on the inward run, and be empty when they leave except for the tarp folded up in the bottom, and the same goes for coal.  Some vehicles have been collected on the way up the branch by the pickup or are to be delivered on the way back because of the way that siding faces, so a portion of the train simply arrives behind the loco, is not shunted to anywhere on the layout, and then departs along with the wagons collected at the terminus.  

 

Livestock, if your layout has facilities, usually comes in special trains but the odd cattle wagon may be a part of the pickup.  Note that I said 'mostly' 5 plankers and 12ton vans for the pickup; the odd lowfit with a tractor or bogie bolster with pipes for a drainage job up the road is acceptable, so long as it doesn't dominate the daily operation.  For a 1950s layout I'd suggest about half of your general merchandise traffic in opens and half in vans, but vans tended to dominate as time progressed, and the figure should perhaps be a third and two thirds respectively for the 60s.

Edited December 13, 2018 by The Johnster

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

The scaling of how many wagons hinges directly on the size of the community served, any industries present, and the state of other transport access and supplies. If your BLT is in some rural wasteland with no good roads and not on mains gas, you might reckon 30cwt of coal annually per modest household, and then add to that estimates for any 'big houses' and local industries, and work it out at 10T coming in per mineral wagon, averaged over the year. (Coal merchants stockpiling as much as possible at lower summer prices.)

 

In addition to suggestions in posts above, you can have very occasional visits from more exotic wagons too. Lowmac bringing in large farm or industrial machinery, small  bolster wagon with the strutural steelwork for the prefab 'dutch barns' and the like that replaced traditional farm buildings, even a presflo for some ambitious local undertaking some major concreting. (This latter I know of directly, a dairy farm in the depths of North Devon wanting a modern all paved yard. The wagon was worked to the nearest rail location (Halwill Junction) and then a very dinky road tanker used to shuttle the concrete powder through the tiny lanes about 8 miles northward as the crow flies to the site, a major difficulty being the weak bridges over the Waldon and Torridge. Sand and ballast all locally quarried for the mix.)

[kevinlms]

I was wondering what the typical numbers of wagons needed for a branch line terminus are - and what types. Obviously to a certain extent it will depend on whether there are any specialist traffics on offer, and of course, the numbers would have changed over time.

 

But say for 1950s/60s, would you have say 5 mineral wagons (2 steel 16T, 3 ex-PO), 3 vans and 2 4T containers? Any other types that would be seen on a regular basis pretty much anywhere?

You could create a system using this software. Ideal for using on an old PC. I've never actually got around to using it, as I have no layout!

 

http://www.wagonflow.co.uk/

[The Johnster]

You can ring the changes with the vans as well; you may have a situation that needs ones with sliding doors because there is no space to open 'cupboard' doors; provender stores are typical of this.  Or shock absorbing vehicles for fragile goods; perhaps your village has an antiques dealer who has job lots delivered.

 

The presflo for any job needing a quantity of cement is a good idea; my South Wales mining valley terminus has only one goods and one private (industrial estate) siding, but occasionally the pick up brings up general goods for the colliery, which is off stage and not modelled except in my imgagination.  Pit props come in opens, and occasionally materials for building work going on down there; it is the 1950s and the NCB are making good on their promise to provide pit head baths everywhere.  Concrete for the foundations for this is justified, as well as bogie bolster with the supply and drainage pipes.  

 

There is a cold storage facility and a sawmill down the valley, so refrigerated vans and opens with plank loads can come and go, and the industrial estate siding takes an occasional fuel oil tank.  There are no coal facilities, however; the locals pick theirs up fresh from the colliery land sale office!  A good number of them are NCB employees with concession coal, and the place isn't worth it as far as a coal merchant is concerned.

 

Containers should be on conflats, but in the real world weren't always; lowfits should not be used as they were not capable of safely containing the load, but 3 plankers are used on my layout.  If you are using 5 plankers, you need a crane or hoist capable of lifting the container out of the wagon, and I don't reckon my crane has the capacity, so I keep it to 3 plankers.  One of my mileage customers has a lorry that can only be loaded on to from a sliding door van because it has fixed sides.  

 

An end loading dock can be used by the likes of lowmacs and lowfits, but also any open with drop sides and ends, and vans with end doors such as GW Mogo.  If you don't have a goods shed, you will need a goods office and a lock up store.

[Guy Rixon]

The answers will change across the indicated span of time. In 1950, there would presumably still be general goods traffic, including smalls consignments. I think almost all of that was gone by  1969. I remember reading that livestock traffic largely left the railway over that period. Even the flow of house coal would be decreasing by the end of the 1960s as houses started to switch to gas or electric heating.

[sharris]

...there would presumably still be general goods traffic, including smalls consignments... 

 

An underwear wagon, now that's an idea. 

Edited December 13, 2018 by sharris

[The Johnster]

Underwear had to be transported somehow, sharris.

 

Guy Rixon's point about date is pertinent; a major change occurred in 1963, the wake of the Beeching report, when many of the smaller yards on branches and attached to small main line stations were done away with; the smalls traffic was concentrated on larger depots and road delivery, and BR concentrated on bulk loads in block trains, still the core of the freight business.  Beeching is not entirely to blame, as the trend was for traffic to be falling to uneconomic levels at many of these places anyway, and in commuter belts there was a lot to be said for attracting season ticketers by ripping them out to make car parks; you made more money that way, and arguably served your community better.  What was there in 1950, or even 1960 was gone or going by the late 60s.  

 

Livestock, local smalls, pigeons, seasonal stuff like brocilli or sugar beet, newspapars, and eventually mails all went to road sooner or later, some of it almost given away if it didn't fit the modern block train image and business plan.  Containers have of course replaced the smalls and most of the general goods traffic, and some can still be seen on trains, but not at local goods depots.  Mileage is gone with government agreement, a major loss maker correctly identified by Beeching; the railways had always thought it was a profit killer and an imposition, and Beeching made the point that the demurrage charges were not sufficient to prevent many customers taking advantage of the free warehouse on flanged wheels in the local good yard by simply not bothering to unload them until they had to.  

 

This situation had developed over the 50s against a background of a wagon and van surplus, so the railway tolerated it for far too long.  The customers it was trying to mollify were already using road transport for anything urgent, and would abandon the railway as soon as the free warehouse was denied to them.  It blocked sidings, prevented vans and wagons from earning their keep, and was becoming an issue in the early 60s after the enormous cull of older wagons and vans that took place in the 50s.  Some of those hardly saw much use anyway, spending most of their lives rotting in blocked sidings but running hot or causing other problems when they were pressed into service.

[Nick Holliday]

What complicates this question are the substantial changes that occurred over your chosen decade. Not only did the traffic patterns change, with a progressive decline, but the wagons used changed as well.

At Nationalisation there were over half a million wooden ex-private owner wagons dealing with the coal trade, but BR started replacing them with the 16t steel minerals, at such speed that the wooden coal wagons had almost disappeared by the mid-fifties.

For general merchandise the five plank was a popular vehicle, initially from the big four, with a few pre-grouping survivors. Again BR built replacement wagons over the years. Many sensitive materials would have been carried in opens, covered by tarpaulins but vans became more popular for this type of traffic over this period, for various reasons.

As others have said, livestock movement declined rapidly and had virtually finished by the end of the fifties, and, in general, the smalls traffic tailed off, so that by the end of the decade many goods yards only saw coal traffic in steel opens, and that also died down in the sixties.

[N15class]

The answer to this question starts with are you following a prototype. Are you following prototype practice, or are you making a trainset. If the first one you need to basically follow what traffic the prototype had. If the second you need to decide what sort of station you are modelling. If a city station it will be more commercial, not likely to have cattle pens. If a country station you are unlikely to have vast quantities of oil tankers, very little coal, unless you've a gasworks. Possible milk pickup and cattle. No big parcel sorting just what comes in the guards van. If totally imaginary. What ever you like. But don't forget there needs to be a reason for it there. Crocodiles with forth bridge size lumps of iron on them look silly in a 2 siding country station.

At the end of the day it's your choice. But following prototype practice will lead to better models, a more believable scene, and far more knowledge for yourself learning the history of a line from its beginnings to the era you wish to model. You need the history to know why and how it got to the way it is.

Edited December 18, 2018 by N15class

[sharris]

The answer to this question starts with are you following a prototype. Are you following prototype practice, or are you making a trainset. If the first one you need to basically follow what traffic the prototype had. If the second you need to decide what sort of station you are modelling...

 

Maybe I misunderstood, but I think the argument 'If it's not a model of a prototype, it's a trainset' doesn't really follow. I've seen plenty of models which, although fictitious, are recognisable as of a particular region and plausible in operation, well beyond what I would consider a trainset. 

Edited December 18, 2018 by sharris

[PenrithBeacon]

I was wondering what the typical numbers of wagons needed for a branch line terminus are - and what types. Obviously to a certain extent it will depend on whether there are any specialist traffics on offer, and of course, the numbers would have changed over time.

 

But say for 1950s/60s, would you have say 5 mineral wagons (2 steel 16T, 3 ex-PO), 3 vans and 2 4T containers? Any other types that would be seen on a regular basis pretty much anywhere?

I think you’ve got it right there, but do you have a crane for offloading the containers? An open merchandise wagon or two might be a useful addition as would the occasional specialist wagon.

[Wheatley]

Maybe I misunderstood, but I think the argument 'If it's not a model of a prototype, it's a trainset' doesn't really follow. I've seen plenty of models which, although fictitious, are recognisable as of a particular region and plausible in operation, well beyond what I would consider a trainset. 

 

Agreed. You can follow prototype practice without modelling a prototype location. Buckingham, the various Borchesters, Wibdenshaw and others all follow prototype practice but none are models of real (railway) locations. In all those cases the builders decided what the local industries/markets and traffic flows were likely to be, then copied what the prototype would/might have done in that situation.

Edited December 18, 2018 by Wheatley

[The Johnster]

I suspect that what N15class meant (happy for him to correct me if I'm wrong!) was the question of whether or not you are modelling prototypical practice, which can be done on a model that is not a representation of any real prototype that ever existed. My own South Wales valleys 1950s effort, Cwmdimbath, is 'set' in a real geographical location that never had a railway or a mining village (these are thin on the ground in South Wales), but the operation and appearance are loosely based on a real place, Abergwynfi 2 valleys over.  I operate to the 1955 Rule Book and WR practice of the day, and attempt to provide a goods service to my imaginary villagers and their various businesses in a fleet of vans and wagons which serves their needs and is representatives of the vehicles seen at the time at such places and tries to maintain a reasonably prototypical ratio of vans to opens, and fitted to unfitted.

 

I do not regard this as a trainset; it is a real railway serving a real community as realistically as my compromises allow, only small and 60+ years ago!

 

If you are concerned with getting the numbers and types of your wagons 'right' I would respectfully suggest that you are past the train set stage!

Edited December 18, 2018 by The Johnster

[tomparryharry]

The answer to your question is as long as a piece of string. It all depends on what traffic your line is used for. Thing were changing dramatically between the 1950s and '60s anyway. My own BLT was built nominally for stone traffic but other traffics came along with time. When designing the track layout I wanted ti fit in the stone traffic (obviously), passengers trains, a bay platform for parcels vans and to get the passenger train out of the way, dairy (milk tanks or vans), cattle, covered goods shed, open goods landing, end-loading bay, domestic coal and a yard crane. some other traffic will originate on the branch which will mean some wagons e.g. grain vans arriving at the terminus just to go back again towards the junction.

 

The maximum train length on my layout is ten standard length wagons plus a brake van so I have about 30 stone wagons (ten each in the quarry, the exchange siding and the fiddle yard). the rest are to cope with the above mentioned traffic:

 

Two cattle trucks which come and go.

Vans in and out of the goods shed.

Parcels or Newspaper vans to and from the bay platform by passenger train.

Five milk tanks (two in / three out etc) but the number could be variable.

Open wagons in and out of the yard.

Coal wagons.

Grain vans and/or oil tank wagons from down the line.

Containers for crane transfer.

 

There are some traffics which I don't cater for like whiskey or a coal mine.

 

The rest is up to you and your imagination. There are books about with photos of branch trains which should give you some idea of train consists.

So, a king on the down 'Inter City' is a bit too much, then?

[tomparryharry]

For me, it's still wagons: Coal, and then some. Full downhill, empty uphill. The goodly proportion of covered wagons, with any sort of small work. Flour had its own traffic, and, hops. Pontypridd had 2 breweries in recent years, right up 'til the 1960's. Cwmavon,on the Pontypool-Blaenavon line had it's own brewery, which covered a wide area.

 

Meat traffic was widespread. Glamorgan had several slaughterhouses within the county. Although unsavoury, the 'knacker' did horses as well.

 

Ships anchors & chain were covered here as well. Brown Lennox turned out many long-wall face cutters for the coalfield, as well as the Admiralty.

 

I always reckon on researching the local town history first. You'd be sometimes amazed what went on. I'd dearly love to build a layout based upon anywhere between Cardiff & Abercynon, but I know full well I couldn't do it justice, and I'd get frustrated. Sometimes, you need to be true to yourself.

 

However! I've seen many, many layouts & dioramas that will blow your socks off. Inspiration is just around the bend. Some say I am around the bend.....

 

Ian.

[N15class]

So, a king on the down 'Inter City' is a bit too much, then?

Not if that is what floats your boat. But to me that's playing with a trainset. Not modelling the railways.

[tomparryharry]

Not if that is what floats your boat. But to me that's playing with a trainset. Not modelling the railways.

What floats my boat is (are) long lines of 16t minerals, interspersed with the odd 7-plank wagon. The EE type 3 hadn't yet arrived, so my collection is very limited to 56xx, panniers of several types, etc.

 

The track is 4 main lines, with up & down main, and up & down permissive. Every signal on the main was, often or not, a 'double pegged' affair. Jobs would line up at Pontypridd Junction to 'go over' from the down branch main, to the down goods. Although partially permissive, it didn't start properly until Treforest Junction, with a clear down run to Radyr.

 

Blocking back was the norm, and the telephone was going to find out if the next down Aberdare job was a 'good un', or was he being 'turned inside'.

 

Margins were constantly consulted. Will it clear in time? "I've got one blowing up for the board!" A 56xx job from Tymawr comes by, with a good few of the wagons banging their heads off, as the flats on the wheels meet the brake block; the unpegged brake handle jumping up & down in time with the revolution of the wheel.

 

Maesmawr had (ISTR) the demarcation between Radyr & Abercynon jobs, although both sheds covered the diagrams on control jobs.

 

Playing trains? Yes, I guess so really....

 

Kings were seen on a regular basis, on the packs of playing cards...

[The Johnster]

According to the Mountford book, one almost made it to Caerphilly Works but was stopped actually en route!

 

It is difficult for those not old enough to remember how intensive valley working was even into the 1970s, and the queue of loaded coal trains backed up the valley towards Maesmawr on the down goods from Radyr that took most of the late afternoon and well into the evening to clear in to the yard.

[Steamport Southport]

An underwear wagon, now that's an idea. 

 

So a BRA then? 

 

https://paulbartlett.zenfolio.com/brborail  

 

 

 

 

 

Jason

[Poor Old Bruce]

So, a king on the down 'Inter City' is a bit too much, then?

 

Unless your branch line is 'Double Red' route availability and a diversionary route between Paddington and Wolverhampton.