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How small where pre-group era wagons?


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I've negleceted the Pre-group section a bit, here's what I've been working on over in Kits and Scratching.

The picture is comparison of coal wagon sizes. 8 ton, 6 ton, 12 ton. I think that’s right.

I did not realise the Measham transfers where so wonky. It was one of those whole side decals , very old and dried out at the time of applying and I was tired and made a bad job of it.

 

post-6220-0-23662200-1440476407_thumb.jpg

 

That wooden block infront is my coupling heigth gauge.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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It depends how far back you want to go. In the 20th century fairly standardised designs had developed for the basic open wagons and general purpose vans. Open wagons often had 9ft wheelbases with an overall body length of around 15ft. Vans might be the same, but 10ft w/b were common. Specialist wagons varied enormously with huge bogie wagons for shifting boilers, big girders & ships propellors, through to tiny carriage trucks to take a single horse carriage or car on the back of a passenger train.

Although they are from one of the smaller companies, my album of Somerset & Dorset official photos at http://www.ipernity.com/doc/philsutters/album/512561shows some fairly typical stock from the end of the 19th century and early 20th.

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Thanks for the comments.

The red six tonner has kit ends and homemade plasticard sides. Kit solebars and spring/W iron units, strapping is from a Mainly Trains etch.

I use and modify as many kit parts as I can, there is a " How I did it thread over on Kitbuilding and Scratchbuilding " called......" 14 foot Mineral Wagon ".

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Pre-grouping is a huge generalisation of 100 years of railways.  By the end of the period some of the later wagons built by some companies (such as the L&Y, GW, etc.) were bigger than post grouping stock where the RCH lowest common denominator standards kicked in.

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Hi

 

The sizes of wagons produced between 1888 and 1923 can be very varied. The NER for example were still using 4/6t dead buffered hoppers at the same time the were running 50t bogie hoppers with air brakes.  Most wagons had a life of between 35 and 45 years so wagons built in the 1870's would still be running at the time of World War 1. The RCH demanded all dead buffered wagons should be removed from main line running by 1914 however the Maryport and Carlisle were still running 6t dead buffered hoppers in 1923. 

 

Marc

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Without the RCH to dictate what could or couldnt be built, it seems the pregrouping companies tried many things. The L&Y started with 9' wb stock, then started growing to 10', 12', and I think 14' WB wagons. And they even had a good few bogie opens and vans, long before any other major companies really adopted anything more than the standard 9 or 10' WB wagon.

 

The LNWR had a pretty standard 9 or 10' wb fleet, with not much going over. Same for the Midland.

(Yes there are boiler wagons, but those are specialized rather than general use)

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This was very true in the north east of England as the bogie hopper were only used to move coal from only one pit to the discharge staves on the Tyne. The NER did standardise on a 20ton hopper which was exactly twice as long as the old 6t hoppers.

 

Marc 

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Pre grouping era (but obviously not pre-grouping), the Pennsylvannia RR GLa coal hopper, built from 1904 to 1919. Over 30,000 were built to this design. Opposite to a 6 ton 4 wheeled unfitted dumb buffered wagon!

http://prr.railfan.net/freight/freightphotos.html?photo=PRR_167514_GLA.jpg&fr=clGLA

The London and South Western Railway had some large stone ballast hoppers just like the Pennsylvannia one in your link, but that was to tanship stone from their own quarry to the permanent way site needing it. Cambrian Kits do one of these.

http://www.cambrianmodels.co.uk/srimgs/sr1928j2.jpg

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One of the major constraints on increasing the size of wagons was the investment required to enlarge associated physical plant, for example, wagon tippers, wagon turntables, and loading screens. This was to prove a major thorn in the side for the grouped companies and British Railways, too, especially over coal traffic.

The Caledonian Railway ordered a fleet of 30T bogie coal wagons in 1902/3, but they were not a success due to the aforementioned infrastructure restrictions and they ended up as loco coal wagons or having their side doors removed and used for general merchandise.   A batch of 20 ordered from America and assembled on the dockside on arrival had to be cut up and rebuilt '.....as the workmanship was found to be so defective'!

 

Jim

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The NER built some 30t Ironstone hoppers (Dia. S3) to hopefully make workings more efficient after a study of US practice (this was alongside the increase in coal hopper size) but these weren't popular as the longer wheelbase struggled with the curves in the iron works, the next design, the S4 went back to a short 20t hopper.

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The GWR also tried bogie opens and vans but built very limited numbers for the same reasons.

 

At the small end, there were a lot of 8T coal wagons until quite late. Coal merchants liked them because it was the right amount of coal at one time for many of them.

 

The book on Gloucester built wagons has a 7T open belonging to a coal merchant, but the photo is not dated. And there are a few 7T and 8T coal wagons belonging to South Wales collieries, a very distinctive short wheelbase design. One is dated 1880 and another 1874.

 

And there were all sorts of different wheelbases, such as 8ft 7in, 8ft 9in, 9ft 3in etc. Real fun when it comes to making brake gear on a model. By the way, the short wagons mentioned above had wooden brake blocks. They took up most of the space between the wheels.

 

The RCH promoted at 15T coal wagon design with a 9 ft 9in wheelbase and 18ft long. It didn't catch on but some railway companies had wagons this size. After that the RCH went back to 9ft wheelbase 16ft long.

 

If you want to look at very early wagons there was a series of articles in the HMRS Journal.

 

Jonathan

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The book on Gloucester built wagons has a 7T open belonging to a coal merchant, but the photo is not dated. And there are a few 7T and 8T coal wagons belonging to South Wales collieries, a very distinctive short wheelbase design. One is dated 1880 and another 1874.

And they had dumb buffers at the fixed end and sprung buffers at the door end!

 

The early Caley mineral 'bogies', as they were called, were of 6 and 7 ton capacity.  The earliest ones (6T) were 11' over headstocks, with the later 7T ones 13'3", all on a 6'3" wheelbase. They were dumb buffered and outside framed with slightly sloping sides.

 

Jim

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