56c

Interesting stuff, Jon, well done, Keith Bristow, who is leading the research on this, plans to go through various LMS committee minutes at Kew but people who've been there before have drawn a blank. The best source (Derby) lost a lot of its material during a fire. At the moment exactly what happened in 1929 is tantalisingly out of reach. Steve www.steve-banks.org

Here's a picture of one of the LMS side-discharge hopper wagons as-built during a demonstration for the press in 1929. Possibly my favourite view, there's several more on the website that show modifications over the years. Steve www.steve-banks.org

I should first say that these hoppers "were built under licence" is supposition, for which there is no evidence. They were designed by the LMS at Derby and built by the Birminghan Rly Carriage & Wagon Co. Blaming BR for continuation of previous policy is the wrong target. Dvdlcs and Fat Controller are nearer the mark. When built, both the LMS and BRCW tried hard to get the concept adopted more widely but the size of the wagons required rebuilding of colliery screens designed for much lower wagons - and the fact is that in the UK there were some 3,000 collieries of which 90% were small. There was never any prospect of such a radical change being adopted - and for the LMS only two collieries went ahead. The NER had scaled up to bottom-discharge bogie hoppers before the Great War (likewise for dedicated runs) and 4w bottom discharge hoppers became the norm there and more widely thereafter with modern steel hoppers built by the LNER, LMS and BR. Continued construction of non-hopper wagons was for the needs of smaller companies not equipped for bottom-discharge. The side-discharge concept was eventually adopted (c1956 and c1971) but it was, like the LMS traffic, for strictly dedicated runs and not for coal but iron ore and gravel. Steve http://www.steve-banks.org

Thank you Jon, that's quite an education and rather well done. I shall put my partner in crime on the case... he's the real expert but I already know that it's come out of the blue to him too. How have we missed this development?! By the way, reading the small print, I notice clever applications of steel for the body that were not available when the previous generations of side-discharge hopper wagons were built by the LMS and BR. Creusabro steel is a high, wear-resistant grade while Corten is a grade that self-weathers with a pleasing, natural brown finish that obviates the need for painting, hence the warm brown appearance of the wagons in most of the service pictures. Corten has also been used architecturally because of this pleasing and maintenance-free finish, so quite why these wagons seem to have been delivered new painted grey is puzzling! Steve http://www.steve-banks.com

The LMS chose the design after visiting the US and Germany. This is described in Keith Bristow's 4-page article in Model Rail, February 2013. The same concept was used for the Tyne-Dock-Consett iron ore trains. As far as I know, these were the only trains in the UK to adopt the side-door concept. "Gravel to Chichester" is a new one to me, can you shed any more light, please? Steve http://www.steve-banks.org

Here's another picture from the '60s: http://www.flickr.com/photos/13296226@N02/13102409763/ The ex-LMS cast iron plates were still in place, but I'm not sure about the BCRW builder's plates in the middle, which do show in LMS and earlier BR-period pictures. Is anything available for either in 4mm scale? I've put detail pictures of the wagons on the website (http://www.steve-banks.org). See under "LMS coal - the 40T hoppers". Steve

There have been some developments on this one. In February 2013, Keith Bristow ran a constructional article in Model Rail with some excellent historical pictures. I've been chipping in on the historical front and have put up a series of pictures on my website that should help clear up the grey areas discussed above: www.steve-banks.org We should both be at the Ally Pally Show on my Coach Building demo.