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what can be used as pre grouping wagon loads


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In my post #150 (bottom of the page) at http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/107459-oxford-rail-announces-oo-gauge-4-plank-wagons/page-6 there's some metal scrap in the wagons, and what's that in the GCR wagon?

This is obviously taken in the yard of a company producing pipes and other metal fabrications.  I would suggest it the the ridged top for some sort of storage unit or the like.  In the background is a CR Dia 24 8T open wagon, but I can't make out what is in it.

 

Jim

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It's described as a Cambrian 3 plank wagon loaded with slates, but I agree that it looks more like a two plank to me (though I know nothing about the 'other' CR).

 

Jim

 

No doubt about it,  it's 2 plank. They have quite deep curb rails which aren't much thinner than the planks. There is a 3 plank of exactly the same dimensions and which uses thinner planks to keep the overall height the same. 

 

I'd initially have said slates too, however normal practice would be to have some sacrificial ones sticking out on top which are used to wedge the rest in place. Could perhaps be tiles, plenty of brickworks served by the Cambrian. Livery is pre 1899. 

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Of course, the staff did not always follow the rules, and this often led to damaged wagons. The book of GWR Wagon Loads (by Jim Russell?) shows quite a few of these, all with foreign wagons. (Because of course the GW would never load anything incorrectly. :jester:  )

 

 

You are indeed correct, it is by Jim Russell, Oxford Publishing Co., ISBN  0-86093-155-2.

 

(You are also spot on!)

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hi All,

 

Cattle vans are easy to load or even run empty as they did half of their time. Moreover they spent quite a while just sitting in a siding waiting so would look inhumane to have cows left marooned so better to leave them empty. However cattle vans take forever to build with all their slats etc.

 

If you fancy something a bit less common the Glasgow & South Western Assn have released a limited edition multi media kit for a 6 ton van. It's 7mm scale and features resin body lost wax brakes and sprung axleboxes. Only a few left and they will be available from stand 119 (Scottish lines societies) at Telford this weekend.

 

Sorry for the blatant plug.

 

Ian.

 

post-6089-0-79762100-1472460200_thumb.jpeg

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Thank you for the heads-up Ian. I shall be making a bee line for that stand. It looks a beautiful kit, and I want one. I'll think about excuses for running it later. My real excuse is that I like Scottish wagons, and the G&SW is one of my favourite 'foreign' railways. Had a fondness ever since being fascinated after coming across the remnants of Dunure station during a childhood holiday at a well-know establishment at Heads of Ayr.

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  • 4 months later...

Urine was collected from pubs, also for leather tanning. The poor collected their own at home to sell too.

 

Hence the phrases "taking the p___".

Also, the poorest of the poor "didn't have enough money for a pot to p___ in".

 

Was the piss supplied free or was there a charge for this ? The contract to collect piss from the pubs must have been quite lucrative ! Was it sent in barrels like beer ?

Edited by brian777999
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Was the piss supplied free or was there a charge for this ? The contract to collect piss from the pubs must have been quite lucrative ! Was it sent in barrels like beer ?

The money paid by the user would have paid for the collection and transport. The man who collected from Llanelli pubs didn't give the impression of earning much, but at least, my great-aunt used to say, he didn't ask for credit.

 Barrels would have been used; whether they back-loaded beer in the same barrels, I wouldn't like to say, but I suspect some might have..

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......  Barrels would have been used; whether they back-loaded beer in the same barrels,

I wouldn't like to say, but I suspect some might have..

Real Ales ?  :nono: 

Edited by Penlan
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The money paid by the user would have paid for the collection and transport. The man who collected from Llanelli pubs didn't give the impression of earning much, but at least, my great-aunt used to say, he didn't ask for credit.

 Barrels would have been used; whether they back-loaded beer in the same barrels, I wouldn't like to say, but I suspect some might have..

 

Happy that we now have a thriving industry in real ales, mini and micro breweries, and micro pubs.

 

When I started drinking some 40 odd years ago, some nights you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference, except perhaps the beer was fizzier...

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Happy that we now have a thriving industry in real ales, mini and micro breweries, and micro pubs.

 

When I started drinking some 40 odd years ago, some nights you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference, except perhaps the beer was fizzier...

Trouble is both nationally and in our local RBL Club, Lager is around 80% of sales, everything else (draught) including Real Ale, Guinness, Cider, etc., is in that 20% 'ish bracket.

Even though we have 3 different Real Ales* pulled through by bar pumps, in our Legion Club, according to our buyer he has more problems etc., (comments, requests etc.,) with this small part of the turn-over, than the rest of his sales altogether.  BUT the cellar is kept perfect, never a bad pint.

* We have 'Betty Stogs' (always available), Brains 'Rev. James', and Crowlas Brewery 'Potion 9' on tap today,

'Courage Best' followed by 'London Pride' are waiting in the wings....... with Wickwar's 'Bob' promised very soon.    Oooops, forgot we have Tetleys on tap (not pulled through) all the time too, but I've never thought of that as a real ale.

We only have 'Thatchers Gold' as the tap cider, plenty of variety in bottles though.

 

Simond, we often drift into the past on a Wednesday evening and recall the Party 7's etc., only Watneys available, blah blah......

Mind you when I went to work in Norwich in 1967, outside the main towns you could only get Cider or Mild anyway.

Bitter and Lager were unheard of.

 

MEANWHILE, back on topic, just looking at old photo's of the larger Goods Depots should at least help to spot most of the common loads.

 

Edited by Penlan
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I have a load of oil drums from a ww2 model set, but can I use them for pre 1923? As I am asking I might as well ask when too were wooden pallets introduced, the kind that fork lift trucks shift around and also the metal pressurized beer barrels ? Could I use these as time accurate pre grouping wagon loads too?

Many thanks

Richard

Looking for something else, as always, I came across an article in a bound copy of Railway Magazine for 1928 - the only one I have - on railhead distribution for industrial products. There are pictures of flat and wooden sided pallets in use then. I know it is a bit after grouping, but it does show that they do go back to the inter-war period. The manual pallet-lifters are referred to as 'jiggers'. They also have caged trollies that must have been the fore-runners of brutes. The article records that these were used for Cadbury's products and they were loaded 14 to a van. There is a double-page spread of L.M.S. closed and open containers - A,B,C,& D - and a table with their dimensions. The article concludes with statistics on claims for damage relating to containerized goods, which were being cited as low and supporting the benefits of using this method of carriage.

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Our neighbour was an estate worker for many years and as a younger man enjoyed listening to the older workers accounts.  He told me that if they needed to get rid of something awkward, a dead animal or a rotten post, folk used to wait on an overbridge and then chuck it into a passing goods train.  I don't suppose this information will create a market for 3-D prints of dead badgers or foxes.

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Our neighbour was an estate worker for many years and as a younger man enjoyed listening to the older workers accounts.  He told me that if they needed to get rid of something awkward, a dead animal or a rotten post, folk used to wait on an overbridge and then chuck it into a passing goods train.  I don't suppose this information will create a market for 3-D prints of dead badgers or foxes.

Come now, there's a growing interest in animated accessories - lobbing something as distinctive as a badger onto a passing open wagon is just asking to be mechanised. What's more someone will work out a digital programme with gps tracking to get the positioning just right. They did it in the 1960s with mailbags after all, without the benefit of gps..

Edited by phil_sutters
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According to the Castle Aching topic, I am reliably informed that manure would be a staple pre-Grouping wagon load.

 

Reproducing that should be easy.  Dried tea leaves in gunk perhaps.  Representing the steam coming off it might be more of a challenge.

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Googling "railway manure wagon" is quite revealing. Several companies built special manure wagons. The Midland built 100 at one point. The GWR built six, to diagram R1 in 1905, mainly for use with the Fishguard cattle traffic. One survived until 1953, by which time it was carrying beer (!). Otherwise the GWR seems to have converted old opens (Atkins et al). Think there must have been more to it than that. Manure must have been disposed of / utilised more or less since early railway times.

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1. What was so special about manure that a special wagon had to be built for it ? Would not the standard 5 plank wagon have sufficed ?

 

2. Who bought all this manure ?

1. It is runny sometimes so wagons might need sealing? No one wanted their goods in a gagon last used for manure so smelly traffic gets own wagon, a la fish.

2. Farmers for fertilizer or tannerys?

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Disposal of the manure that was collected off the streets in our cities was a big problem, so the conveyance of it to the country side was big business for the railways and the likes of the Thames barges. As Richard says it was transported to the farms who sent back the other way fodder for the horses to convert in to fertilizer for next years crop of equine nutrition. The internal combustion engine killed this cycle.

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1. What was so special about manure that a special wagon had to be built for it ? Would not the standard 5 plank wagon have sufficed ?

 

2. Who bought all this manure ?

 

 

In London, most of the manure went to Kent, to be used on the fruit farms and market gardens. The SECR moved it in sheeted opens. Having a dedicated fleet of manure wagons saves a lot of time and work cleaning out general-service goods wagons after carrying the manure.

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It's difficult to imagine in this day and age, but even though London was much, much smaller a century ago, the horse was as much of a problem as the car/van/truck/bus is now, in terms of pollution and congestion.

 

http://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Great-Horse-Manure-Crisis-of-1894/

 

Taking a reasonable & convenient figure for horse throughput, of 22.4 lbs per horse per day, 100 horses to the ton, and therefore the had to dispose of 500 tons per day - a fairly large trainload. And if the mortality figures are correct, as many as fifty dead horses per day to dispose of too, probably averaging around half a ton each, perhaps 3/4 ton for a drought horse - another couple of wagon loads...

 

And the future? I struggle to understand what level of short-sightedness allowed the removal of the trolley bus and its OLE, but I'm sure that electric traction will form a growing part of the infrastructure of cities in future.

 

Best

Simon

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