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Night Freight


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Here depicted the latest of my 3D labours for model railway use.

 

post-8031-0-93798300-1332338753_thumb.png

 

This to find out whether larger flat areas print well. If they do then I'll consider making it available somehow. The bogies and buffers are meant to be added later. The underframe detail could be cut away and replaced with something closer to scale.

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Interesting vehicle. What's the story behind it? It looks like a GW type.

Short version:

Yes, it's GWR (the iron mink ancestry is fairly obvious).

 

A few of these were built in the early 1900s, probably influenced by American usage of large bogie freight cars. They were used principally on fast night freight trains, between London, Birmingham and Bristol.

 

No more were built after the first couple of (small) batches. I've seen it said that they didn't really fit the traffic patterns, which were moving towards smaller/lighter loads. I suspect it might also be related to the switch from iron to wood for van production on the GWR around that time - various series of wooden "large" vans were built around that time and subsequently, though smaller than these Mink Fs, and using 4 wheel chassis rather than bogies.

 

David

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Guest Max Stafford

Thanks David. It's an interesting design and would probably have still looked modern fifty years later.

 

Dave.

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Also a lot in South Wales. The stuff I found when I was doing the etched kit for one said the GWR found them unsuited to most traffic of the time as it was hard to get a load that filled the van.

 

There are actually two subtly different variants. The original 1902 pair were unfitted, the 1911 build were vacuum fitted. Other minor details to watch are that the wheels were spoked until the early 1930s then disc wheels were fitted.

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As I understand it these vans worked between two or three major goods depots (Paddington and Bristol definitely, possibly also to Brirmingham?) so I find the comment that it was difficult to find a load to fill them very odd as even then there were large amounts of 'goods smalls' traffic which would make it quite easy to fill them on the Bristol route if nowhere else. I suspect the comment about lack of traffic was more likely used to avoid other explanations, whatever they might have been so 'Gingerbread' may well have hit the nail on the head with his comment about changes in construction. And I wouldn't be surprised that having bogies might have been a problem which meant they couldn't be more widely used? I wonder if we will ever know - maybe there's an old file lurking somewhere?

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The other possibility that occurs to me as a reason for not building more is that the big difference between this design and the other "large" Minks is one of weight capacity, rather than volume capacity. Perhaps there were few large loads which were dense enough to require the additional weight capacity (30 tons) of the Mink F, and in most cases the lower weight capacity of Mink B/C/D/G(10 to 20 tons) was adequate.

 

As a hybrid of this explanation with Mike's theory - perhaps the bogies didn't have a specific problem, but the additional complications (in particular the brake system) weren't justified by the additional weight capacity that the configuration offered.

 

David

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The other possibility that occurs to me as a reason for not building more is that the big difference between this design and the other "large" Minks is one of weight capacity, rather than volume capacity. Perhaps there were few large loads which were dense enough to require the additional weight capacity (30 tons) of the Mink F, and in most cases the lower weight capacity of Mink B/C/D/G(10 to 20 tons) was adequate.

 

As a hybrid of this explanation with Mike's theory - perhaps the bogies didn't have a specific problem, but the additional complications (in particular the brake system) weren't justified by the additional weight capacity that the configuration offered.

 

David

I think you might be getting nearer the answer. I don't know much about 'goods smalls' in the Edwardian period although I would have expected crates and barrels judging by photos but even with a full floor load I suspect it would bulk out before getting anywhere near weight limits (that was even the case with BE Vanfits). I would have thought the bogie vans were very unlikely candidates for full loads right from the off so wouldn't even consider them in that respect and the bogies would not have helped, nor, probably, would their length.

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looks good. should work out okay in FUD.

 

Hope so. I'm wanting to find out whether you can get flat areas that look flat enough.

 

Nice work - I'll be interested to see how visibile the rivets come out in FUD!

 

They came out okay on my previous attempt. You can tell they are there. My photographic means are not as good as I would like.

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  • 3 months later...

My interest is whether there was any distortion in such long planes: are there interior

fillets?

 

I still haven't ordered one yet :oops: so I don't know. There are some internal ribs in the model, which should keep things reasonably to shape.

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The Metropolitan 'rigid 8' third I printed is a similar kind of length and in FUD it bowed in the middle quite a bit. That was without any ribs as its designed to be dumped in hot water and then fitted over a polished FUD chassis block, but it suggests the ribs are needed.

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