Goods liveries in proportion between the Big Four to be found in Cornish goods workings

[Dale]

Speaking in very generic term’s, what’s the sort of proportional breakdown between goods rolling stock from the big four to be found in a mixed goods train, down in Cornwall from the 30’s through to Nationalisation.

 

Again I am speaking in fairly loose terms here, just so that I can have approximately the right representative total proportion of LNER, LMS and SR wagons amongst my GWR stock.

 

Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.

 

D.

 

 

['CHARD]

First thoughts suggest considering traffic patterns, and I had in mind some sort of mathematical equation that would churn out approximate min-max percentages.

 

Then I thought photographs - but surely you've tried this avenue and there's precious little to be found....?

[petethemole]

The proportion of different companies' stock on a mixed goods would vary from day to day. As a general guide, among open merchandise wagons LMS would be most common, followed in order of numbers by LNER, GWR and SR. The SR had such a small fleet that it was not unusual for trains on the SR to have no SR wagons. Some GWR vans were not in common use so you could increase the proportion of those, and wagons for specific traffic (fruit, cattle, fish) would be from the GWR.

 

Pete

[Kris]

In Cornwall the normal break downs of wagon numbers don't seem to hold true. I suspect that this is because of the distance to another company. Something to remember is that coal traffic in cornwall was limited as most came in by sea.

[Dale]

Thanks for the replies folks.  Very helpful and certainly answered my question.  

 

I did of course, trawl through all the GWR books in my railway library before posting my question but as you suspected 'Chard, that offered up not a single picture of a goods working in Cornwall...

 

thanks again lad's

[Rail-Online]

Hi,

 

I agree the photos I have seen show a mix of merchandise (vans and opens) from all of the Big Four, with LMS and LNER most common. Watch out for vans though as the GWR had quite a few on fixed routes and others branded 'Non Common User' (a tinplate painted sign sometimes being attached).

 

Don't forget that for the most part the GWR opted out of the pooling agreement for Cattle Vans.  IIRC they briefly joined the scheme around 1921 but quickly exited from it, so all cattle vans in the 1930s up to real pooling in 1939 would be GWR. The only exceptions would be through movement of cattle to other railways, which I guess would be very rare and probably confined to whole farm 're-locations' which did occasionally happen. 

 

This is worth noting for non GWR modellers, GWR cattle vans would not usually be found off their patch.

 

 

 

Tony

[jwealleans]

Dale,

Have a look here for a discussion on this very subject and a detailed list of the makeup of a GWR goods train in 1933. Not in Cornwall, though.

Somewhere on here someone has given the percentages of wagons for each of the Big Four by numbers of wagons, but you'd almost always get more of the 'home' wagons on any given railway. Wagons not in the Common User scheme (denoted by an 'N' at the bottom left and right corner on each side) are much less likely to wander and if they did go off their home system would be returned empty to the nearest point on their owning railway (Edit - but see 34C's post below). The GWR, of course, did things differently and their 'Not in Common User' patch is quite an elaborate black and white marking with the text spelt out in full.

If you're modelling a real location, it's worth investigating any specific traffic which might bring unusual wagons into an area regularly - Siphons taking rabbits to Sheffield or Yugoslavian vans taking furniture to somewhere like Axminster spring to mind. In the example above, 'LNER bogie goods van' raised an eyebrow. We eventually decided it must be an ex-NER G7 Road Van, which did go into general traffic later in life. Had you not seen the proof though, you'd never have dreamed of running one of those on the outskirts of Bristol.

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

...I did of course, trawl through all the GWR books in my railway library before posting my question but as you suspected 'Chard, that offered up not a single picture of a goods working in Cornwall...

You can perform the analysis by inference. Examine pictures from all around the UK in the time period of interest. See the GW common user vehicles on the other three big four company lines?  Since they are not on the GWR, and since such vehicles were supplied by each company in direct proportion to their ton-mileage share of the traffic to be handled, logically the other company's common user vehicles must have substituted. Essentially the common user fleet was 'all mixed up' by the action of being loaded for 'any destination required'. (By counting the visible common user wagons in the pre-war photos in 'The Big Four in Colour' - easier to do because they are colour photos - you get the answer. LMS And LNER wagons everywhere, with more LMS; a few GWR, almost no SR.)

 

The non-common user vehicles went off system too, as the freight destination required it. And there were rules for return, the gist of which was that they could carry a load on a route which took them closer to their owning system. As I recall it from the RCH rules read many years ago, there was no 'immediate empty return' requirement for any but those specially constructed vehicles for which no return load would be likely.

[Siberian Snooper]

I read somewhere a long time ago that if you work on roughly the 5 LMS, 4 LNER, 3 GWR and 1 SR vehicle ratio you are not far wrong plus lots of private owner wagons, Devon and Cornwall not having many coal wagons as most of it was shipped although in Devon there were one or two running from dockside in Plymouth to on or two destinations and Torquay gasworks coal came up from Kingswear.

 

SS