wagonman

My records are far from complete... Richard

The GWR General Appendix (and presumably all the other railways' GAs too ) have detailed instructions for the care of animals in transit – feeding, watering, and milking where necessary, so they obviously assume that some journeys would be long enough. They don't seem to say anything about loading head to tail, or any other way, but where you have a full load of horned cattle it does seem to make sense – especially as they may not know from which side of the vehicle the animals would be detrained.

Indeed there were wagons ordered and built during the war, and as Jonathan said they went straight into the pool. I have a notion that the owners were still responsible for repairs, etc.. They would often have acknowledged their ownership by having the name written in small letters in the bottom left hand corner – presumably the RCH number takers still needed an identity. The pool effectively carried on after the war (how do you sort out half a million wagons?) until nationalisation and compensation by the BTC. Pooled wagons weren't taken over until the early '50s. Richard

I think much of the damage inflicted since 1980 is now pretty much irreversible. Take housing for instance – it's going to take time, a lot of money, and even more nerve to restore a functioning housing market/social housing supply. And that's just one of the problems... I don't see the Prussian army coming to our aid this time.

Reminds me of a tale my father (RAF Bomber Command 1941-3) told me of a Bomb Aimer: "left, left, steady, oops back a bit"

"Something for the weekend, Sir?" That takes me back...to when I had enough hair to bother with barbers.

Time spent chewing over things with Graham is rarely wasted.

I should have edited out the first line of Stephen's post...

I think you'll find that the Lefty Lawyers are an integral part of the Wokerati, whether they eat tofu or not. #Snowflakes

Ah, the old ones are still the best ones...

Ah yes, the end of Hilary...

It has what look like GWR oil axleboxes, though this could be incidental.

I read somewhere that cattle were usually loaded head to tail. Quite how they managed that I have no idea! Something to investigate perhaps... Richard

The outboard Stephenson's gear should be fun!

Ah yes, that is from the Glos official photo of the last one built and is accurate, except that the '12 tons' should be on the right hand side. Why the f**k has it come out with a red screen?

Annie, where did you get the R B Pullin wagons from? Ralph Bertrand Pullin was a Torquay based coal merchant active from around 1924 using a fleet of ten Gloucester built 12-ton wagons numbered 50-68 (even numbers only). They were built to 1907 design/dimensions. If you have other information about them I would love to hear it! Richard

I think it's a Mike Morton Lloyd drawing published in, I think, the MRC.

Except that in South Wales the sprung buffers were always at the door end...

Somebody who has consulted the Wagon Registers could probably tell us their condemnation dates – that person is not me – but I would assume they had all gone by the end of 1913. The GWR was busy building replacements at that time.

I have found a couple of photos with exCMR mineral wagons in them. You can see that the sides and ends are vertical. Unusually they have dumb buffers at the door end and sprung at the other. Here's a couple at the foot of the Newquay Harbour tunnel A few more in a familiar view of Fowey station this time loaded with barrels of clay. Richard

Sorry. Had my hearing aid turned off. Sharp wagon no.43 was a 10-tonner registered by the GWR in August 1900 (their 846). I don't know the builder. The wagon on the far right is indeed an exCMR wagon. These had iron bodies on wooden frames and an end door for tipping. They had been built by the Swansea Wagon Co in 1875, and often turn up in pre-WW1 photos of mid Cornwall. The photo is a detail from a commercial postcard of, I think, Bugle station in the Edwardian era. I'm pretty sure I have a copy somewhere but it's not been scanned. At the moment I'm up to my eyeballs in Devon coal merchants and have rather neglected the Cornwall end. Mañana. As for the cargo, whatever they used to fire the kilns at he dries... Richard

It looks vaguely G&SWRish – but I can't even be sure whose sheet it is. Does the next wagon along also have cupboard doors? Richard

Belatedly found this thread. Orthochromatic emulsions were insensitive to the red end of the spectrum and so UNDER exposed anything that colour. That is why anything red was rendered as a dark tone while things like the blue sky were OVER exposed and thus rendered very pale. The earliest film emulsion was only really sensitive to blue – orthochromatic film extended the sensitivity into the green part of the spectrum but it was not until the advent of panchromatic film in the early C20 that red sensitivity was introduced. I knew the three years I spent studying photography would come in handy one day! Richard

As the rest of the Bradwell Wood wagon is also in pristine condition could it have had a recent repaint – including the wheel rims for show? Otherwise I'm firmly in the "no white rims in service" camp. Richard

As a kid c1960 I lived for a while in darkest Wiltshire and would 'help out' at the local farm in the holidays. It was a mixed farm with a smallish dairy herd of about 12 head, mostly Guernseys but with at least one Jersey – for the cream content. The old Jersey was the matriarch of the herd and thus at the head of the queue come milking time.