Dungrange

Whilst that makes some sense in the context of a small station, I was primarily thinking of the models of largish stations with maybe 6 platforms, yet there often just seems to be one DMU that circulates in just one direction (with no return working). It's not that the fiddle yard isn't full - it's just that there are more rail tours and freight trains than what I'd call 'bread and butter' unit services. In many ways I suppose it's no different to the market for named locomotives and celebrity liveries being favoured over owning multiple plain old BR blue or EWS liveried locomotives.

In the case of the Midland, Great Northern and Great Eastern, that change that you refer to seems to have resulted in drop in Merchandise and an increase in Mineral traffic of a similar order of magnitude, which would imply that one or more commodities that were once categorised as Merchandise were subsequently considered to be Mineral traffic. Given that all the companies were making this change at the same time, I'd have assumed that this an instruction passed down from above by the Board of Trade. I don't suppose you now what that traffic was? It was obviously something that the Midland conveyed lots of, the GNR and GER less so and wasn't a significant flow in some parts of the country.

Thanks - that's really interesting to see. In 1852, Merchandise was being moved an average of 32 miles and Minerals just 14 1/2 miles. That really highlights how 'local' traffic movement was at that time. However, even just comparing 1851 to 1852, there has been an increase in the average trip length. It would be interesting to see how this changed over a longer time period. Even if the average trip length increased by just 1/4 mile each year (as above), that would be equivalent to 2.5 miles per decade and therefore about 15 extra miles by the start of the Great War. Of course it's not robust to draw long term conclusions from just two data points. Well, there was quite a significant tonnage conveyed, but it didn't account for a significant proportion of the GER's Gross Receipts, which for 1913 were given as: Passengers - £2,805,502 17s 10d Passenger rated Merchandise - £ 433,532 14s 8d Goods rated Merchandise - £1,563,069 3s 0d Livestock - £ 92,081 0s 0d Coal etc - £ 772,266 6s 1d Other Minerals - £ 275,756 11s 2d Total - £5,942,208 13s 9d That means that coal and other minerals accounted for just 17.6% of receipts, which is at the lower end of the sample of companies that @DenysW posted graphs for.

These figures were taken from Table XIV in the Statistical Returns, which doesn't specifically state whether they are net or gross figures, but the figures in the same table for total Receipts for the year match the figures in Table 10 of the Accounts, which are titled 'Receipts and Expenditure in Resect of Railway Working.' The column in this table explicitly states Gross Receipts. However, it is worth pointing out that in this table, whilst there is only one figure for each of 'Livestock', 'Coal, Coke and Patent Fuel' and 'Other Minerals' the figure for Merchandise is stated before and after Collection and Delivery Expenses and it's the after figure that falls into the Statistical Returns. As such, I'd say that the Coal and Mineral figures are Gross, but the Merchandise figure is net of collection and delivery expenses. The net figures after allowing for Maintenance, Locomotive running expenses etc would be much lower across the board.

Looking at the GER accounts for 1913, the average receipt per ton was 5s 5.6d for General Merchandise, 3s 0.5d for Coal, Coke and Patent Fuel and 2s 3.2d for Other Minerals. I would assume the rates for other companies would show a similar pattern.

Was coal always included within 'Minerals' in that time period? The GER accounts for year ending 1913 lists 'Coal, Coke and Patent Fuel' separately from 'Other Minerals'. Since the GER wasn't a mineral railway I'm assuming that was a national reporting change circa 1911? How is this information conveyed? Is this just the division of the total train miles (in Abstract G) by the number of trains run (in Abstract H) as referenced above. Was it common to include details of the total number of trains run in the earlier accounts (they don't seem to be in the post 1913 accounts that I have for the GER and it would be an interesting comparison to make).

That piece of analysis by the LMS Society may be simplistic, but it's probably perfectly adequate for the time period that the document discusses: 1939. For anyone modelling from the 1930s onwards, the majority of wagons probably were foreign at all but the most rural backwaters - certainly by the late grouping period. That's also therefore relevant to those who model the British Railway period. However, the world changed a lot over the 40 years between 1899 and 1939, so what holds at one point in time isn't really a useful guide to a different point in time. At the start of the 20th century, the country appears to have been very much a collection of local economies with little national distribution of general merchandise (although there clearly was some national distribution beginning to develop in the Victorian era). Each pre-grouping company was largely competing with its neighbours and they kept their stock to themselves. As such, the number of foreign wagons may be relatively low in this period (as the Sheffield Park data shows), but would have varied a bit by location. Wagon pooling, was an innovation of the Great War. In essence it was a major step change from each company having their own stock, to the creation of a national fleet of wagons that all companies could use. That therefore allowed wagons to wander from their home territory and be replaced by foreign wagons. From this point in time, foreign wagons would begin to increase from what the data shows was an overwhelming majority of local company wagons at Sheffield Park in 1899 to what the LMS Society paper is highlighting as a plausible breakdown on a secondary mainline at the outbreak of WW2. Between these dates was a period of change. Whilst we don't know how quickly the company fleets mixed post-1917, the continued development of national distribution infrastructure during the inter-war period would have resulted in steadily increasing trip lengths as the rail network changed from primarily local towards predominantly national distribution. This probably had the impact of mixing the pre-grouping fleets quicker as time went on. I think the longest rail journey you could have made would be from Lybster (HR) to Penzance (GWR) - a distance of circa 800 miles. If a typical journey in 1899 was just 33 miles, then it would have taken about 24 separate journeys for a wagon to have wandered that far (if a pooling agreement had been in place at that date). If however by the outbreak of WW2, the average trip length had grown to say 100 miles, then a wagon could travel that far in as little as eight trips. Consequently, the rate at which the fleets mixed would have increased over time as the economy transitioned from predominantly local to regional and then national distribution. The final important point is Grouping itself. It's easier to mix the stock owned by four large companies than it is to mix the stock of 20+ smaller companies. To give an example, Upwell is approximately 500 miles from the territory of the Highland Railway but it is only 30 miles from the territory of the LMS (of which the Highland was a constituent). By the 1930s, there was presumably a lot of LMS wagons on the Wisbech and Upwell tramway, but that doesn't mean that there were any Highland Railway vehicles. But that's based on the fact that you presumably model different periods in history. Since your user name contains the initials LMS, I presume your interests are in the post-Grouping period, for which that split would be appropriate. However, since @Compound2632 is modelling 1902, that sort of split is likely to have been highly un-prototypical in the Edwardian period. Both of these comments make sense, but they are very time period specific. If modelling the Grouping period, then a mix of different company wagons is acceptable and these should outnumber specialist vehicles for the conveyance of say out of gauge loads. However, if modelling the Edwardian period, then it's difficult to justify a foreign wagon from the opposite end of the country. Therefore, if modelling Penzance in 1900 you'd probably see many more specialised wagons from the GWR than you would have seen a wagon from Scotland.

I've never ordered anything from them but the navigation on the English language part of the website isn't working for me - even if I follow @Kylestrome's suggestion. However, if navigating the German language part of the website, I don't seem to have any issues and once I've found a product, clicking the Union Jack does give me an English translation of the product.

I think it's just the difference in livery and whether or not the orange line follows the roof or not that makes it appear that way. In two photographs the orange line follows the roof, in the others it drops down to the top of the door.

Indeed, as someone who has grown up in an age where rail is really only competitive for regular high volume longer distance traffic, it seems strange to imagine rail doing the job that would now be in the hands of 'white van' man. Perhaps the increase in road competition post-WW1 for shorter distance trips with the resultant loss in some of the shortest distance traffic was the start of the railway companies looking for longer distance traffic. I agree that's something I need to look at to get a better breakdown of different types of wagons. Where such products are sourced from would appear to generally be quite local, so that's the reason for starting with a breakdown of foreign company wagons. It's easy - just double the amount of stock that you own and you don't need to worry about 1/2 wagons!! 🤣 Seriously, given the uncertainties that result from making lots of assumptions (some of which may be more accurate than others), I think it's important not to get too hung up on apparent precision. If I was to purchase 50 (non-coal) wagons for a representation of a GWR line in Dorset in 1908, then I'd probably be looking at buying something like 36 GWR wagons, 12 LSWR wagons, and one wagon from each of the MR and the S&DJR. Perhaps add in a LNWR wagon for a bit of variety if desired. However, it seems fairly obvious that two companies would have dominated a Dorset branch line prior to the Great War. In my case, I think I probably want about 40% of my stock to be foreign. Perhaps about 25% if I was modelling pre-Great War (because there were five railway companies operating in the 'local' area) and because post-pooling, the proportion of foreign wagons would have increased (but to what extent I'm still not certain). So therefore, if I want a pool of 50 wagons (which is probably what I should aim for), then I probably need about 30 GER wagons and 20 foreign wagons (plus some PO wagons). The question is then what foreign wagons? Obviously the closest companies, but how far can I realistically expect something to have been common? Post pooling, there also becomes a need for foreign wagons from the largest companies as well. My current thoughts are that pre-Great War, in addition to the GER, wagons from the GNR, LNWR and MR would have appeared virtually every day. A M&GNJR wagon may have turned up most weeks and a wagon from the NER, GCR, GWR and L&YR may have turned up most months. Wagons from any of the other companies would have been few and far between (and I can probably ignore them, or pick just one company to represent 'the rest of Great Britain'). However, after the Great War, I suspect that I'd still just see GER, GNR, LNWR and MR wagons on a daily basis, but that wagons from the NER, GCR, GWR and L&YR would all have been seen every week rather than just monthly and a typical month could probably have thrown up examples from the SECR, NSR, LSWR, H&BR, NBR, CR and the CLC. They're not really frequent enough visitors to say I need to buy a wagon from each company, but I should probably have a representative wagon from at least one of these companies. I'd say that realistically, if I'm looking for 50 wagons, then I probably want 30 GER wagons, 8 GNR wagons, 4 MR wagons, 3 LNWR wagons, 1 GWR wagon, 1 GCR wagon, 1 NER wagon, 1 L&YR wagon and 2 other foreign wagons to represent the rest of the pre-grouping companies. On that basis, I know I've already bought one too many GWR wagons and I'm already maxed out on wagons from south of the Thames. That would also be my approach, but one could argue that it is at odds with the careful and complex statistical approach being discussed here, and its attention to multiple factors that may shift the percentage a little one way or the other. For should we not then also consider (i) the time of year, (ii) the day of the week, (iii) the time of day, (iv) the length of the operating/viewing session, etc. I think that's what we all do. Most of us own more stock than we really need. Some of the more common wagons will make more than one trip into the scenic area (appearance on stage) during an operating session and the more obscure wagons will make less frequent appearances. I'd like to consider time of year and day of the week, but it's hard enough finding annual data, so further disaggregation becomes even more difficult. I don't think that most traffic stayed on it's home ground - but it would appear that most general merchandise was moved over relatively short distances in the pre-grouping period. Coal was a different matter, as it appears that could have been moved from one end of the country to the other. The GN&GE joint was certainly desired by the GER because it provided access to coalfields and coal seems to have been one of the the most lucrative commodities due to the tens of millions of tons moved each year. I guess the first stage of any expansion would have been the ability to transport regional produce to London. Presumably it was some time later before inter-regional traffic became commonplace and a national distribution capability became common.

Presumably coal from the port would be exclusively a factor's wagons, whereas coal brought into the area by rail from the midlands would be a mixture of foreign company, colliery and factor wagons, with more colliery wagons than those belonging to coal factor. Great, I'm glad that my ramblings are of some use to someone. One of my reasons for approaching my 'research' this way is that I'd like to know how many wagons ran along the tramway each year (as well as a breakdown of what types they were and who owned them). That way, I can provide some focus to my buying / building. At the moment, my current estimate of 10,000 wagons per annum is ballpark, but no more than that. Whilst I have details on annual revenues and average revenue per ton, the only way to use that information to estimate demand (in tons and ultimately wagons) is to determine the average end-to-end trip length. That's why I'm interested in what was meant by 'local', because it's quite different from the modern railway where most flows are 100+ and often 200+ miles. Back in the pre-grouping period, such long distance trips seem to have been very much the minority. Ultimately, I know that the SECR, GWR and LSWR wagons that I've bought probably wouldn't have been frequent visitors to Upwell (even in the post-pooling period), but all could have visited and I think understanding probabilities helps with establishing a plausible fleet. Besides, I now know that a delivery of beer from Canterbury is my excuse for owning a SECR wagon (not just because Rapido made one and ready-to-run pre-grouping wagons are rather sparse). 😀 However, it also highlights that I need to find out about more than just GER wagons, but with the exception of the GNR, MR and LNWR, I suspect that the wagons I end up with will be largely just a token representation of each company based on whatever the ready-to-run manufacturers offer to sell us.

Agreed. That's why I think it's wrong to look for a general 'rule of thumb' to say 90%+ of wagons should be home company wagons (in the pre-pooling period). I don't think we can be that simplistic. That may have been true in NER territory (which was fairy self contained) and appears to be the case at Sheffield Park, which isn't on the periphery of LB&SR territory. However, elsewhere, I'd expect a higher percentage of foreign wagons (unless modelling a city where different companies had their own goods stations and you're modelling one of those). Looking at a map, I'd agree that seems logical. For your longer distance traffic, I'd assume the Midland Railway would be the most likely conveyor of distant produce owing to their share in the S&DJR. Are circa 3% of your wagons from companies other than the GWR / LSWR, or are you assuming that most longer distance traffic would primarily still come from these two companies? In my case, I have the following companies that were operating within 60 miles of Upwell: GER, M&GNJR, GNR, LNWR, MR. These therefore become my 'local' traffic operators, with presumably a very small percentage of traffic coming in from further afield. Creating a graph of cumulative proportions, it would have to look something like is shown below. This has 1.3% of trips greater than 180 miles (as per the Sheffield Park data), but 92% of trips greater than 60% (so would represent more 'middle distance' traffic than there seems to have been at Sheffield Park). If Sheffield Park is genuinely typical, then the curve between the steeply sloping line and the nearer horizonal line would have to become tighter (less rounded). Presenting the same assumptions as used above, as a trip length distribution graph, would yield the following. If the Sheffield Park data is really typical, then the curve below is too high in the circa 50 - 120 mile range (as indicated above), which would imply that there should be a less curved transition from the sharp drop at 40-50 miles to the negligible long distance traffic. In the above, working from Upwell, the first peak corresponds with Wisbech (6 miles), the second peak with Kings Lynn (22 miles) and Peterborough (28 miles). Cambridge is 44 miles distant and is the point at which the above curve drops quickly. Cities like Northampton (72 miles away) and Leicester (80 miles away) appear to be too far away to generate much traffic at Upwell if a 60 mile local trip threshold was typical. However, central London is only 45 miles from Sheffield Park, so it would seem much easier for all of the needs of Sheffield Park to be met within 60 miles than in a much more remote location, since the choice of services that London offers is much greater than many provincial towns and cities. I'm wondering how transferable such a trip distribution is between different locations without a similar dataset from elsewhere, since I suspect that the Sheffield Park data may be skewed by its proximity to London. The above corresponds with an average trip length of just 33 miles.

Thanks - I make Burton around 180 miles from Sheffield Park, so if I combine the six Midland Railway wagons, with the two NER wagons, then that equates to about 1.3% of goods being delivered to Sheffield Park having travelled 180 miles or more. That means that in the context of establishing a plausible trip length distribution, it appears that: 97.7% of inbound (non-coal) traffic travelled less than 60 miles (what is conveyed in LB&SCR wagons) 1.0% of inbound (non-coal) traffic travelled between 60 and 170 miles (what is conveyed in the the foreign (non coal) wagons, excluding the Midland and NER wagons) 1.3% of inbound (non-coal) traffic travelled greater than 170 miles (ie MR and NER non-coal traffic) I wonder how typical that was of elsewhere.

Thanks for reposting this. Whilst I'm sure that the percentage of foreign vehicles varied a lot by location and I'm not too interested in generalisations, what I note from this is just how short distance a lot of railway traffic must have been in these days. If we subtract the coal traffic (which may have travelled quite far) and the empty wagons that were brought in for loading, we're left with a sample of 607 wagons conveying inbound (non-coal) goods of which 593 (ie 97%) are LB&SCR wagons. The LB&SCR served a relatively small and compact territory and looking at a map, it appears as though there was no LB&SCR station more than circa 60 miles away from Sheffield Park. That therefore means that in trying to derive a typical trip length distribution, I've been overestimating the demand from 'further afield' and need to assume a shorter average trip length. I hadn't really appreciated how 'local' local was at the dawn of the 20th Century- ie most needs met within a 60 mile radius and little national distribution. By and large the presence of the foreign wagons isn't that interesting, because we know nothing about where they have travelled from - most may have come from somewhere in the Greater London area. However, I do find the presence of two non-coal NER wagons interesting. Although they only represent 0.3% of traffic at Sheffield Park, it's clear that they must have travelled in excess of 250 miles to get to Sheffield Park, so there was clearly a small number of consignments that did travel over very large distances. It's possible that one or more of the MR wagons may have travelled a similar distance, but we can't be sure because the MR seemed to manage to serve most of Great Britain.

This one's the same - you get the price if you click through to the product category. https://buckiemodelcentre.com/product-category/plaxton-panorama/

The Railway Yearbook 1922 gives figures of 58 Goods Train vehicles and 171 Service vehicles for the S&DJR as at 31 December 1921. The Goods Train figure presumably includes Goods Brakes (don't know how many), so the fleet of retained revenue vehicles was obviously small. Yes - me too. As the M&GNJR operates very close to the W&U tramway, I initially assumed I would need a few M&GN wagons - until I realised how few they had. I can only assume that they relied quite heavily on the parent companies for wagons for longer distance exports. That is, for seasonal produce that was to be sent to stations in Midland territory, the MR provided the M&GNJR with a number of empty wagons, with the GNR doing the same for exports to GNR territory. The small fleet was maybe sufficient for the 'internal' traffic between stations on the M&GNJR serving a very sparse population and outside the seasonal peaks in agricultural produce. The most useful breakdown that I've found of the M&GNJR stock is what is listed in one of the Tatlow books based on a survey as at November 1919: High sided goods - 49 Lime wagons (covered) - 3 Open fish truck - 3 Ventilated covered van (Westinghouse Pipe) - 45 Machinery wagon - 4 Single bolster wagon - 18 Double bolster wagon - 4 Large cattle truck (vacuum pipe) - 135 Ballast wagon - 61 Ballast brake van - 8 travelling crane & runners - 4 High sided for lime - 3 Covered packing van - 4 Signal & works van - 2 Signal & works wagon - 1 PW carriage - 1 Telephone wagon - 1 Mess & tool van - 2 stores van - 1 Weights & measures - 1 Dirt wagon - 3 Refuse high sided wagon - 1 Twin gas tank - 2 10T Goods brake van - 16 What I note though is that whilst there were allegedly no low sided goods wagons in 1919, the same publication states that 31 low sided goods wagons were transferred to both the LMS and LNER in 1928, implying that they had 62 low sided goods wagons by 2028.

Yes, it appears so - all the numbers I've checked tie up with those in The Railway Yearbook 1922 (which relates to 31 December 1921). Interestingly, the summary table in The Railway Yearbook combines the LNWR & L&YR, but they are still both listed separately in the LNWR 'chapter' and those figures tie up with the above. The column headed 'Wagons' would appear to be the combined total for goods wagons and service vehicles (which are generally categorised separately in The Railway Yearbooks).

Thanks - I'm not paying £100 for a second hand book on E-bay, but I note that the National Library of Scotland (NLS) have a copy, so I'll have a read the next time I'm there. I'm assuming the glasshouses would have been for some of the fruit. I hadn't given much thought to that being where some of the coal was used. I'm not aware of any maltings in the vicinity of Upwell, but I clearly need to spend more time reading up about the local industries. My assumption was that most of the coal was either for household consumption (principally in winter) and for the various pumping stations across the fens (which required year round deliveries). My assumption was that coal traffic from Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire would dominate, but that was based on proximity rather than understanding that coal is not a uniform product. I do have a list of known PO wagons, but I'm not sure how biased that list is, because I'm presuming it was just what has been observed in a photograph. What we have photographic evidence of definitely travelled the tramway, but of course the absence of a photograph doesn't mean that there weren't other PO wagons that may have been more regular visitors (just never captured on film). Thanks - that's what I was hoping existed, albeit it doesn't have a geographical split. It does however indicate that at least 85% of PO wagons conveyed coal and PO wagons that weren't a simple open wagon were relatively rare. I had been hoping that I could adjust my trip length distribution by removing stations that aren't in coal producing areas to create a regional breakdown of PO coal wagons, but if as @burgundy has highlighted distance and fleet size are not the main determining factors, I probably don't need anything more than an appropriate balance between colliery and factor wagons.

I see nothing wrong with that, provided that is what you set out to model and don't claim that a one off event is a 'typical day'. Whether it is easier to model a specific day or not depends on whether the information is available to allow you do that - eg is there a record of a special timetable for the event? The 'commerce on the railway' didn't change much over the first 30 years of the 20th century. In the post-grouping period, I'd guess that you'd still find that close to 90% of the traffic at Sheffield Park originated at a station on former LB&SCR territory, with the other 10% arriving from further afield. The traffic patterns themselves probably didn't change radically. What did change radically was the wagons used. In the pre-pooling period (ie pre-1917), something being transported from 10 miles away in Lewes would always have been loaded in an LB&SCR wagon, whereas post-pooling, it could be loaded into any suitable wagon that happened to be available in Lewes irrespective of who owned the wagon. The 90% of 'local' traffic would therefore arrive in wagons belonging to a mixture of companies. Initially, this would have been biased towards local companies, but over time, random wagons from the other end of the country would turn up conveying produce on a 10 mile local trip from Lewes to Sheffield Park. Therefore in the context of 'how many foreign wagons' it represents a significant change. At busy rail centres there would have been a literal step-change in the late pre-grouping period, but in rural backwaters, the change would have tended to be more gradual. That's something I'm aware I haven't taken account of in trying to estimate how many foreign wagons I'd need. The problem is knowing what percentage of the time a back load could be found within the required timescale for returning the wagon. I'd guess that the majority (but not all) wagons returned empty. It's one reason why I'd never expect to get to a scenario where there was a totally even spread of the various companies wagons across Great Britain by the Grouping. There is also the issue of maintenance. Presumably wagons were returned to their home territory for maintenance at regular intervals and therefore, it means that wandering wagons weren't being continually mixed up year after year. There is then the issue of new builds, which of course always start off on their home turf, so like maintenance the scrappage and replacement with new wagons will also tend to 'reset' the mixing of wagons that pooling created. I agree it can become a bit of a rabbit hole - I've still to look at seasonality and better estimate a disaggregated demand (which was part of the reason for trying to create a trip length distribution) as to get demand from the company accounts, I really need to know the average trip length. Agreed. In pre-grouping days, an 'average' goods tram on the Wisbech and Upwell tramway would have comprised nine wagons and a goods brake. Of these nine wagons, around seven wagons would probably have been from the GER, one from the GNR and the final one most likely from either the MR or the LNWR. Every so often, one of these wagons could be swapped for something more exotic. However, for me, that's the purpose of the exercise. I've already purchase an SECR wagon and two GWR wagons, just because Rapido made them and an LSWR wagon because EFE Rail have produced one. None of these would have been regular visitors. All could plausibly have traversed the tramway in 1921, but chances are, they never all appeared in the same train. It will seem obvious to everyone that I can't produce a plausible W&U fleet without GER wagons, but I'd say that it's just as essential to have GNR, MR and LNWR wagons in my fleet, as whilst these may not have appeared in every train, there was most likely at least one wagon from each of these companies on the tramway every single day. However, if no-one produces a model of a Furness Railway prototype, I don't really care - I'm not planning to own a model of every single wagon that may have appeared. Perhaps not, but it is another question. I've actually ordered a model of a 'vintage tractor' from Scale 3D along with some figures (https://www.scale3d.co.uk/products/copy-of-old-farm-tractor-1). I believe that this a model of the Fordson F, which was first imported into the UK from the USA in 1917. A local production plant was subsequently set up in Cork (which at that time was part of the UK) and 'domestic' production commenced in 1919. If one arrived in East Anglia in 1921, it would most likely have been one manufactured in Cork and then shipped to Great Britain. I will therefore need a suitable wagon of the company that operated the port in which it would have been 'imported'. I suspect that it would be unlikely that it would arrive on a GER wagon, although I don't know how they were distributed in these early days. No doubt that could become another 'rabbit hole'.

Unfortunately, I can't both agree and laugh at the idea of Mr Blobby Rail. 🤣 Obviously FIA wagons with logos other than RfD/EWS/DB are going to fictional and I guess Mr Blobby Rail is no more fictional that adding Colas, Freightliner or DRS logos to a Bachmann FIA (which is a DB wagon). Once into the world of fantasy modelling, you can basically do what you like. 😀

What is the space between the second and third tracks on the left of your plan? It looks a bit narrower than the spacing that you have elsewhere formed by two points with an ST-203 in between.

Thanks Andy - I think you make a few very good points, some of which are quite subtle, but which highlight why it’s not possible to have an accurate ‘rule of thumb’ generalisation that applies everywhere (as some have already highlighted). Since there are few photographs of freight traffic on the Wisbech and Upwell tramway in 1921 and my wagon spotting skills are well below the observational skills of some, like @Compound2632, my approach has been to try and ‘forecast’ what I’d expect to see, and I’ve been adopting a two-step approach to that. The first is to try and forecast the pre-war situation (based on trip lengths to the nearest stations, company ownership of the nearest stations and both the breakdown and size of each company’s fleet) and then try to consider how that may have changed post-pooling as company fleets mixed. What I had identified is that the variable that my 1921 forecast is most sensitive to is the question of how quickly the fleets mixed - it's the biggest uncertainty I have. I must admit that I hadn’t really considered that the speed at which the fleets mixed would vary across the country and be related to the intensity of freight traffic. At a location that saw the arrival of 1,000 loaded wagons per day the impact of pooling would probably be obvious ten times quicker than a location that saw only 100 loaded wagons per day and 100 times quicker than at a location that saw just 10 loaded wagons per day. It makes sense: I just hadn’t thought about it. It doesn’t mean that comparisons at places like Birmingham Central aren’t useful, but means that when drawing conclusions about the impacts of pooling, one needs to be aware of the relative traffic levels and adjust accordingly, so as well as requiring fairly accurate dates for photographs post-1917, there is a need to understand the difference in freight intensity between the photographs being looked at and the location being modelled to fully understand the impact of pooling at a given date in the twilight years of the pre-grouping period. I think this is also an interesting observation and I can see its relevance. A lot has been written about pooling in the post-grouping period with an accepted general rule of thumb being that the number of LMS, LNER, GWR and SR wagons on a layout should be broadly in proportion with the size of each companies’ pooled fleet, so even a layout in the south of England should have more LMS than SR wagons. However, whilst this might be true when considering just four companies, the same probably isn’t true when considering 20+ pre-grouping companies (in the same way as there are 20 countries that use the Euro). I guess the question then becomes, what is the equilibrium point? For my own forecasts I was assuming that I needed to weight each company’s fleet breakdown by the average distance to all stations on their network. This means that I’m biasing the impact of pooling in favour of the local companies because whilst a Highland Railway wagon may have ended up in East Anglia, it would most likely get there having made dozens of shorter journeys, each of which present the opportunity for it to be sent back in the direction from which it came. Therefore, even although pooling may have resulted in a HR wagon being spotted at Upwell, I think it would still have been rare (in the same way as certain Euro coins are still rare in rural France). I guess that raises another question for me – should I be weighting the company fleets by distance (as I have done) or by something like the square of the distance, which would result in the expectation of fewer Scottish foreigners, with the foreign wagons being more heavily biased to the neighbouring companies? That's a bit of a rhetorical question. Again, a subtle point that I hadn’t fully appreciated. My approach to trying to derive a pre-WW1 forecast has been to start with an assumed deterrence function. The local traffic (ie traffic travelling less than 10 miles) would be my baseline and the further away a station is, the less traffic it would dispatch. For example, I was assuming that the average station 100 miles away may produce just 1% of the traffic that would be generated at Wisbech (which is just 6 miles away). I then looked at counting how many stations are 10-20 miles distant, 20-30 miles distant etc. I did this accurately for stations within 100 miles, and then very crudely after that because it's less important. Combining these then gives me a trip length distribution. I was hoping that I could find data to calibrate this (since it would be virtually impossible to calibrate the deterrence function directly). The trip length distribution that I’ve derived is highly plausible (the most common trip length is circa 30-40 miles, approximately 2/3 of traffic is travelling less than 50 miles and about 95% of traffic is travelling less than 100 miles). However, what you’re highlighting is that the distribution of trip lengths will vary by location and whilst at some more urban locations perhaps 10% of traffic may have travelled more than 100 miles, in a sparsely populated areas there is probably a much lower proportion of long-distance traffic. Again, the approach that I’m taking isn’t necessarily wrong, but I’ll need to give thought to calibrating the likelihood of the longer distance trips. Whilst there was a lot of long-distance exports from Upwell, it doesn’t mean that there was a similar proportion of long-distance imports. The resultant mix that I’ve derived as an annual pre-WW1 estimate for Upwell is as below, which overall, I think is plausible, although I’m still looking to make refinements. Although that's an assumption that I would need about 21% of stock to be foreign, it's worth highlighting that the assumed likely foreign stock is very heavily biased to the local companies that were operating within 40 miles of Upwell. I'd therefore expect a lower percentage of foreign stock at a location deep within one company's territory and a higher proportion of foreign stock at a yard on the periphery of a company's territory. Unfortunately, it sometimes feels like this is an unanswerable question, but I suppose if none of us know the answer, there is no-one who can definitively tell us that we are wrong. My next task is to look at the Private Owner wagon fleet!!! Unfortunately, that's the answer that I though you might give. I'm aware that the L&Y Railway Society also have some details on their website of L&Y registered wagons - https://lyrs.org.uk/lyr-private-owner-wagon-register/. I'm assuming that the registers for the other companies, where these are available, will convey similar information. I was hoping that there may be some high level breakdown of the circa 650,000 wagons by geography and/or wagon type, because going through each companies registers would be a mammoth task, which would probably be of little real value. That's very true, but with 650,000 prototypes to choose from, is there really a need for fictitious liveries? My interest is really, of the PO coal wagons that turned up in Upwell, how may plausibly came from Scotland, South Wales, the North East etc (which would be related to the size of the PO wagon fleet in each area).

I'm going to raise the same issue as I have previously. Between 2 and 2A you have a short straight between the points to increase the gap between the tracks, but between 3A and 9 you seem to be down to the Streamline track spacing of 2". That therefore makes me question what the spacing is between the tracks 10 - 9 and 10 - 3 and what sort of collision risk you have here. I think my other question is about the size of your operating voids. The pointed parts of each opening are not usable (because humans are quite round: some more so than others). Do you actually intend to be able to stand in these voids or are they just going to be so that you can stick your head / an arm through? Will your body / head / arm fit? Given the overall dimensions are given as 8' x 5', they don't look particularly big.

I agree with that, but statistically the likelihood of a wagon being a GER one would have declined over time, because that was the outcome of pooling. If the Midland Railway were sending out a wagon from Birmingham Central Goods Depot in 1895, then they would almost certainly have dispatched a MR wagon. However, if they were to dispatch a wagon in 1922, the probability of them sending out a MR wagon would have been much lower (as we can see from looking at the photographs on warwickshirerailways.com). What we don't really know is the speed at which the probability changed, but which is actually quite important if trying to replicate the immediate post-war period anywhere in the UK.

I think most of it left the GER. Yes, some fruit went to London, but I believe the majority went to northern English cities and both Glasgow and Edinburgh received fruit from Upwell at the height of the season. I believe that quantities increased over time, so I can't be sure about traffic operation in the pre-grouping time period, but I have a copy of an LNER Traffic Notice for 1947, which gives a special timetable for the fruit season. There were six weekday afternoon departures from Upwell at 3:15, 3:20, 3:30, 4:15, 4:45 and 4:50. The 3:15 departure was 'to convey traffic for Newcastle and Scotland'. It connected with a Magdalen Road to Peterborough service, which was marked as only to convey 'Passenger rated traffic for Newcastle and Scotland'. The 3:20 and 3:30 services were both marked as being 'to convey passenger traffic for Joint Line and Peterborough, also goods rated traffic (in vacuum fitted vehicles) for Newcastle (New Bridge Street) and Scotland'. The 4:15 service was marked as 'To convey traffic for via Joint Line and Peterborough' The 4:45 service was marked as 'To work Joint Line traffic except Newcastle (New Bridge Street) and Scotland' The 4:50 service was marked as 'To work Peterborough and London traffic. To connect with 7:35pm to Peterborough and 7:00pm (altered to 7:55pm) to Spitalfields. To leave Upwell formed: - Engine, via London, via Peterborough, Brake'. As only the final train of the day mentions London, and it is distinguished separately from Peterborough, I think it's fair to assume that produce was exported to most of the major cities in the UK in 1947. Peterborough would have acted as hub for traffic to the west (ie towards Birmingham, Coventry, Leicester, Nottingham etc), while the GN&GE Joint Line would have been used to convey the traffic to Yorkshire and Newcastle / Scotland where so identified. I believe that most of the agricultural produce travelled quite far and would have resulted in a lot of GER vehicles getting all over the country. However, it's important to highlight that much of the fruit would have been conveyed in passenger rated vans or fitted covered goods wagons, which were obviously not pooled. I don't know how wide the distribution was for say potatoes or other vegetables, which would have been conveyed in pooled vehicles was. The Wisbech and Upwell Tramway wasn't really a rural backwater - just a relatively sparsely populated rural area that produced goods sent far and wide.