Dumb Buffered Wagons

[BG John]

I'm more interested in the percentage in 1905, and on the broad gauge in 1890. Going back further gives you an excuse to have more of them!

[Edwardian]

Someone recently posted a photo on Facebook showing two (I think) dumb buffered wagons in Wath yard. I think that picture would have to be dated to 1907-1914.

 

What would be really interesting would be to know the percentage of dumb buffered wagons in say 1910 or 1914. It would vary with the area, obviously, as there would be a lot more in Scotland. But if you'd been stood on a station in (say) early 1914, would these things have been a rare sight or quite common?

 

I suppose anyone modelling a colliery could have some as internal users well after 1914.

 

 

I would be interested in the proportions in 1910, and, also, 1905, though the percentage of dumb-buffer wagons in 1910 would probably provide a safe parameter for 1905 

[BG John]

Safe parameter? Who needs safe? I like dumb buffers, and want as many as I can get away with, and then a few more!!

[Ian Smith]

John,

I too like dumb buffered wagons, so made a couple for Modbury.  I used the plan of a "Sully & Co." one in"Private Owner Wagons from The Gloucester Railway Carriage and Wagon Company Ltd" by Keith Montague (ISBN 0-86093-124-2).  Obviously mine are Narrow Gauge ones, a couple of photos can be seen on my website www.modbury2fs.co.uk/WagonsOpens.html

 

Mine both carry fictitious liveries (poorly painted unfortunately, but since taking that photo both have been touched up and weathered so they look somewhat better now).

 

Ian

 

PS I've quickly checked the above volume for photos/drawings of BG wagons but unfortunately there are none.  The last two drawings (last page of appendix) show a china clay wagon and another Sully wagon both of which are annotated as being "converted from BG" though.

[JohnR]

Are we ever likely to see a model of a dumb buffered wagon RTR ?

[BG John]

Are we ever likely to see a model of a dumb buffered wagon RTR ?

I doubt it. But then it only needs a knife, a few offcuts of plasticard, adhesive and some paint to put that right! I was tempted to buy an Oxford 4 plank open when I sent an order to Hattons this morning, and it would have very likely ended up with them, but I didn't!

[Penlan]

The marshalling of Broad and Standard Gauge stock together? 

If done, they must have had a converter wagon that basically had a plank across the width of the wagon etc., 
Because, the standard gauge rail switched sides, depending on platforms, up & down tracks etc.,

and thus the Broad and Standard gauge stock buffers would be swinging across one another, as they ran over this cross-over for instance.

 

[wagonman]

 

 

PS I've quickly checked the above volume for photos/drawings of BG wagons but unfortunately there are none.  The last two drawings (last page of appendix) show a china clay wagon and another Sully wagon both of which are annotated as being "converted from BG" though.

 

 

Beware! Montague's captions are frequently erroneous – several wagons he claims were converted from BG clearly were not as no such conversions would have been carried out after 1892. The wagons in question were, if I remember correctly (and I'm away from home so can't check), all standard gauge wagons converted from dumb to sprung buffers in the 1900s. 

 

There were 25 BG Sully wagons extant in 1892 but these were converted by the GWR and became GWR stock and numbered 33873-33897 .

[wagonman]

Beware! Montague's captions are frequently erroneous – several wagons he claims were converted from BG clearly were not as no such conversions would have been carried out after 1892. The wagons in question were, if I remember correctly (and I'm away from home so can't check), all standard gauge wagons converted from dumb to sprung buffers in the 1900s. 

 

There were 25 BG Sully wagons extant in 1892 but these were converted by the GWR and became GWR stock and numbered 33873-33897 .

 

Mmmm, replying to my own posts! I have had a chance to look at my copy of Montague and the drawings referred to are official GWR ones. The Sully is one of the 1892 conversions I referred to before while the peak roofed clay wagon is new to me. In both cases the GWR has reused the old BG buffers, in the case of the clay wagon these have had to be packed out with a spacer block to bring the buffer faces to the required distance from the headstock (18").

 

As for proportions of dumb buffer wagons in service in 1905-10, wagon works were kept busy through the 1900s converting/reconstructing DB wagons so any still in use in 1910 would mostly be ones considered not worth the expense eking out their last days. A lot also depended on location: the South Yorkshire coalfield being newly exploited would have had very few; the Somerset coalfield by contrast, being mostly early and undercapitalised, could have had as many as 50% of DB wagons in use in the early 1900s. I'm talking PO wagons only here - company wagons would have had spring buffers exclusively, except for a few exPO wagons in MR livery

[Nick Holliday]

As for proportions of dumb buffer wagons in service in 1905-10, wagon works were kept busy through the 1900s converting/reconstructing DB wagons so any still in use in 1910 would mostly be ones considered not worth the expense eking out their last days. A lot also depended on location: the South Yorkshire coalfield being newly exploited would have had very few; the Somerset coalfield by contrast, being mostly early and undercapitalised, could have had as many as 50% of DB wagons in use in the early 1900s. I'm talking PO wagons only here - company wagons would have had spring buffers exclusively, except for a few exPO wagons in MR livery

There were still plenty of railway company dumb-buffered wagons, even after the cut-off date. All would have been in service use though, the LBSC building new dumb-buffered ballast wagons for quite a long time.

[wagonman]

There were still plenty of railway company dumb-buffered wagons, even after the cut-off date. All would have been in service use though, the LBSC building new dumb-buffered ballast wagons for quite a long time.

 

 

True, but I was confining myself to traffic wagons (in England) so as not to muddy the waters too much. :-)

[Caley Jim]

........The infamous Dr. Belching was simply doing what he had been told to do by the governments of the day,...

 

And who was the minister who brought him in? Ernest Marples, whose 'day job' was as a director of Marples Ridgeway who were busy building motorways! I rest my case M' lud.

Jim

[wagonman]

When Labour took over, they didn't do a lot to stop the process TGWU had more power than NUR/ASLEF.

Just as corrupt...

 

 

Castle stopped a few closures but her predecessor (Fraser) was totally supine.

[Compound2632]

I would be interested in the proportions in 1910, and, also, 1905, though the percentage of dumb-buffer wagons in 1910 would probably provide a safe parameter for 1905 

 

Apologies for getting back on-topic and also for posting this snippet again, but the exhibition "On Track" currently at Reading Museum & Art Gallery has a photo of Vastern Road low level yard in 1904. This seems to be principally a coal yard, with wagons from various Reading coal merchants – S. M. Sandy & Son, Abbey Mills, No. 2; George West Nos. 2, 3; T. Simmons & Son, No. 99; What [ ] Bros – two wagons, Nos. 61 & 73, both with the side door open so what bros they are is hidden from view; also wagons from further afield – a couple from W. Fardon of Rugby, Nos. 6 & 10, two from Cwmbran Colliery, and three from Wyken Colliery, Coventry, Nos. 322, 30?, and 441 – the latter is dumb-buffered. There’s a second rather decrepit-looking dumb-buffered wagon, with only visible writing being the number, 4064. That's two dumb-buffered coal wagons in a random sample of 14. The remainder are 5 or 6 plank, probably only 8 ton capacity.

[webbcompound]

Pretty well all the LNWR single and twin timber bolster wagons were still dumb buffered up to 1910. The Ratio PW set has the twin rail bolster. It is slightly shorter, and has "real" buffers but should be fairly easy to convert.

[Compound2632]

Pretty well all the LNWR single and twin timber bolster wagons were still dumb buffered up to 1910. The Ratio PW set has the twin rail bolster. It is slightly shorter, and has "real" buffers but should be fairly easy to convert.

 

Fellow recycler of steam, was Earlestown still building dumb-buffered timber trucks until 1910? Or do you mean they survived until then (before being rebuilt with sprung buffers)? All Derby's short timber trucks to D388, ordered 1878-1895, were built to a common drawing No. 366; the first lots were dumb-buffered so possibly all were. The first batch of long timber trucks to D389, ordered in 1882, were dumb-buffered; the next batch, in 1901, were built to the same drawing No. 559, so probably were too. No more were built until 1908, these look to have had sprung buffers from new. Many of the dumb-buffer long timber trucks received spring buffers; far from clear if any of the short ones did. (All this from Essery's "Midland Wagons", Vol. 1. The Midland Railway Study Centre has copies of the drawings, which might reveal more.)

 

Do the bolster wagons in the Ratio PW set represent an actual LNWR diagram or are they a work of fiction?

[webbcompound]

The D12 single timber bolsters were all completed by 1880, but identical dumb buffered replacement after accidents were constructed up to 1911. The decision to rebuffer was made in 1913. The same applied to the D13 twin timbers, which were built from 1875 to 1902. It is not clear when they started to have modern buffers but about half of them had them by 1913 when it was decided to rebuffer the remader, so it seems unlikely that those built in 1902 had dumb buffers.

 

The Peco wagons are D48 Rail Wagons, and seem likely to be accurate though I havn't checked them against any photos or drawings. The D12 was 14'10.5" long (each of the pair), whilst the D48 was 15'6". As long as you keep people with rulers away from the layout I'd doubt you could tell they were 2.6mm too long in 4mm/foot scale.

(all info from LNWR Wagons, v1, ed Chris Northedge, published for LNWR Soc by White Swan)

[Poggy1165]

I managed to locate that FB picture of Wath. Pity I can't put it up here, but the copyright rules makes that a no-no.

 

Anyway, one of the wagons belonged to Barrow Collieries. And the livery appears very similar to that worn by the wagons on p18 of Turton, volume 7. So if anyone fancies a prototype to run in South Yorkshire (or possibly Lancashire or some place down the London extension) this might have potential. Unfortunately the angle of the shot denies us the number and I can't even swear to the number of planks, though I guess five. It has two rounded ends. The photo is credited to the Phil Wydell Collection, with which I am not familiar.

 

If anyone wants to see it you'll have to join Facebook and Friends of the Woodhead Route Group. It was published there on 3 May.

[Compound2632]

There were converter wagons for running broad and standard gauge wagons in the same train,

 

Sorry to go back so far in this thread but I find this very hard to believe. As the drawbars of the broad gauge and standard gauge vehicles would be offset by about 14", the transverse force would drag the wagons off the rails. One might get away with it for slow-speed shunting of a single wagon but not for any sort of load at any sort of speed. Unless you mean piggy-back wagons such as the Leek & Manifold used?

[BG John]

Sorry to go back so far in this thread but I find this very hard to believe. As the drawbars of the broad gauge and standard gauge vehicles would be offset by about 14", the transverse force would drag the wagons off the rails. One might get away with it for slow-speed shunting of a single wagon but not for any sort of load at any sort of speed. Unless you mean piggy-back wagons such as the Leek & Manifold used?

The drawhook was on a sliding thingy that I've got a drawing of in a BGS Broad Sheet, but can't look up at the moment or I'll never this bridge I'm building finished! It works in 4mm scale too. I had a broad gauge loco happily pulling narrow gauge wagons on my first broad gauge layout, including sidestepping the narrow gauge from one side to the other.

[Compound2632]

The drawhook was on a sliding thingy that I've got a drawing of in a BGS Broad Sheet, but can't look up at the moment or I'll never this bridge I'm building finished! It works in 4mm scale too. I had a broad gauge loco happily pulling narrow gauge wagons on my first broad gauge layout, including sidestepping the narrow gauge from one side to the other.

 I think I can see how that might work. But whatever the details, there will still be a turning moment acting on the converter wagon which for, say a 9' wheelbase vehicle, would result in a transverse force on each axle of about 1/4 the force on the drawbar - i.e. easily many tons on the flange pressing against the rail. In 4 mm scale our linear dimensions are 1/72 of the real thing but our masses are around 1/100,000 (for a 50 g model representing a 5-6 ton wagon) so it's not surprising we can get away with it but I remain convinced the real thing would have been off the road in no time!

[Penlan]

Might take a little bit of work, but the New Oxford Diecast NB Jubilee wagon could be adapted to a Dumb buffered version.

I'm currently awaiting permission to use a 'copyright' photograph.

[BG John]

Might take a little bit of work, but the New Oxford Diecast NB Jubilee wagon could be adapted to a Dumb buffered version.

I'm currently awaiting permission to use a 'copyright' photograph.

You mean like this one?

http://www.buckhaven.info/assets/images/ba_1_b.jpg

 

That's one of the reasons I'm trying to resist the temptation!

[Penlan]

Not really relevant here, but just in case missed elsewhere on RMWeb, - http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/114755-unknown-location-1860s-cornwall-or-devon/&do=findComment&comment=2427902 - an unknown (for now) location of BG, with a couple of wagons... 

 

[Penlan]

It's Teignmouth circa 1882.