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More Pre-Grouping Wagons in 4mm - the D299 appreciation thread.


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I can speak only of reference to Burton. I've not yet seen a picture of what would be exotic Welsh mineral wagons around the breweries, nearly all coal to be observed in Midland era pictures is in D299s and D305s - I assume the Midland ex-POs mostly extinct by the time of the early photo/postcard picture era.  There are the odd 'locals' that do appear- Moira Collieries being one, which with Bass had a long-standing relationship with the chairman of the company.

 

One thing to note about this is that Bass had a coal stockyard and the Klondyke sidings behind Shobnall Maltings, well out of public view at the time, so any wagons tripped down from Leicester Junction would largely go unrecorded by your typical postcard photgrapher in the early years of the century.

 

Anthracite -  I shall quote from the good book, C. Shepherd, Brewery Railways of Burton on Trent, Chapter 7 pg 117-118:

 

"Anthracite mostly came in Great Western Railway Wagons, although some private owner wagons may also have been involved. Some wagons must have been regularly devoted to this traffic with Worthington because they carried small metal plates....reading: -

 

'Empty to Cwngwrach Colly

                  Glyn Neath GWR

                  For Worthington & Co

                  Burton on Trent'

 

Now what those GWR wagons would have been, speculate away.....

Edited by 41516
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23 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

Scraping off the moulded axlebox leaves just the hole in the axleguard for the bearing; I put that in from behind and glue the axlebox onto it, sandwiching the plastic axleguard.

 


I wonder if you’ve gone to the trouble of scraping  the axlebox off the W irons and springs whether an easier and more robust solution might just be to chop the axlebox off completely, pare back the W behind the springs and use a pair of MJT’s etched W units in their place, sticking the replacement boxes onto the W irons.

Edited by sharris
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17 minutes ago, sharris said:

I wonder if you’ve gone to the trouble of scraping  the axlebox off the W irons and springs whether an easier and more robust solution might just be to chop the axlebox off completely, pare back the W behind the springs and use a pair of MJT’s etched W units in their place, sticking the replacement boxes onto the W irons.

 

Yes, that would be the proper MRJ way of doing it! But I'm a cheeseparing bodger. Actually I have used the MJT axlebox units on various scratchbuilt wagons such as the Great Western 1870s quartet (still lingering in the paint shop) and the Pelsall and Drake & Mount dumb-buffer wagons, together with MJT cast axlebox/spring units. It's really not very hard to remove the moulded axleboxes. I'll give you robustness though: cutting off the axlebox removes some structural integrity from the moulding, so rather than sand down the back of the moulded axleguards, as I do with the Slater's Midland wagons, here I've just gone for chamfering the visible edges to give the impression of nearer-scale thickness. Probably not very visible in this progress report:

 

1101505244_SwanseaValePOwagonsunderframesWIP.JPG.40da11d564502e2d8b281da5d9050cb8.JPG

 

29 minutes ago, 41516 said:

Now what those GWR wagons would have been, speculate away.....

 

Thanks, that's very interesting. As to the Great Western wagons, that is a question since that company didn't have very many mineral wagons (apart from loco coal); seemingly it hired wagons in from the trade when it needed them.

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The era of anthracite in Mr Shepherd's book is somewhat vague, previous references to Bass buying anthracite in the 1860s and a reference to the appendix with a 'Memoranda on Anthracite" from April 1880, May 1880 and May 1886, before jumping to activity in the 1950s.

 

Assuming late 1880s has got me to reach for GWR Goods Wagons 3rd edition - Page 233, Table 12 gives the dimensions of GWR pre-diagram 8t and 10t wooden coal wagons of 1884 but no illustrative figures or photographs.

 

 

Edit:  I now realise my earlier quote and slight edit had possibly removed a clue.

"...regularly devoted to this traffic with Worthington because they carried small metal plates, charcoal grey in colour and with white lettering reading..."

 

Similar to the 'Not Common User' plates perhaps or assumes the plates were body coloured and well into the GWR grey era?

Edited by 41516
grammar
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2 hours ago, 41516 said:

The era of anthracite in Mr Shepherd's book is somewhat vague, previous references to Bass buying anthracite in the 1860s and a reference to the appendix with a 'Memoranda on Anthracite" from April 1880, May 1880 and May 1886, before jumping to activity in the 1950s.

 

Assuming late 1880s has got me to reach for GWR Goods Wagons 3rd edition - Page 233, Table 12 gives the dimensions of GWR pre-diagram 8t and 10t wooden coal wagons of 1884 but no illustrative figures or photographs.

 

 

Edit:  I now realise my earlier quote and slight edit had possibly removed a clue.

"...regularly devoted to this traffic with Worthington because they carried small metal plates, charcoal grey in colour and with white lettering reading..."

 

Similar to the 'Not Common User' plates perhaps or assumes the plates were body coloured and well into the GWR grey era?

 

At Club this evening, I was discussing this very question with my layout partner-in-crime, who happened to have his copy of Atkins 3rd edition with him, so we were looking at the very table you mention. His question was, quite rightly, to what period did the statement

 

4 hours ago, 41516 said:

"Anthracite mostly came in Great Western Railway Wagons, although some private owner wagons may also have been involved. Some wagons must have been regularly devoted to this traffic with Worthington because they carried small metal plates....reading: -

 

'Empty to Cwngwrach Colly

                  Glyn Neath GWR

                  For Worthington & Co

                  Burton on Trent'

 

apply? Are we talking Felix Pole 20 ton wagons here? Or those 8'6" wheelbase wagons of the 1880s or earlier?

 

It seems that Cwmgwrach Colliery opened in 1910; the history seems a little confused but this source seems to imply it was a re-opening of an older pit, or a new shaft to an already worked seam.

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Another L & Y wagon, this time, should the vacuum pipe stand above the single plank end, as per the one supplied or should I source a vac pipe that is just attached to the headstock.

 

1571855090_LY1Plank1.jpg.fcccd63be154de176285a11fa22dbbcc.jpg

 

I hope that you can discern from the destructions the vac standard on the right.

 

 

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1 hour ago, Siberian Snooper said:

the vacuum pipe

I don't actually see vac pipes in use on single plank wagons in the L&Y era, what diagram does your kit purport to be? And bear in mind that if this is a MAJ kit, they tended to load all the brake gear in there that any of their models might need, which is why I have a bits box chocker with L&Y brake gear left over from kits properly finished.

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1 hour ago, Siberian Snooper said:

Another L & Y wagon, this time, should the vacuum pipe stand above the single plank end, as per the one supplied or should I source a vac pipe that is just attached to the headstock.

 

1571855090_LY1Plank1.jpg.fcccd63be154de176285a11fa22dbbcc.jpg

 

I hope that you can discern from the destructions the vac standard on the right.

 

 

L&Y 1 plank wagons ( diagram 74 = 12' wheelbase; diagram 80 = 10'6" wb) were never vac-fitted, so you can leave it off.  

(Source: Noel Coates L&Y Wagons vol 1)

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Anthracite wagons from South Wales were found all over England and Wales. The anthracite coalfield extended from Pembrokeshire in the west to Glynn Neath in Glamorgan. The only other UK source of Anthracite was in Scotland so no South Wales wagons there.The below is from the Roy Burrows / Midland Railway Society collection. It shows Wigston yard and right in the middle is a Blaen Cae Gurwen wagon from a colliery between Brynamman and Cwmllynfell on the Swansea Vale Railway. There are lots of other photographs which show anthracite wagons well away from South Wales.

 

 

wigston with BCG wagon.jpg

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17 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

His question was, quite rightly, to what period did the statement apply? Are we talking Felix Pole 20 ton wagons here? Or those 8'6" wheelbase wagons of the 1880s or earlier?

 

I've got to be honest, I quite like the idea of hired in Charles Roberts or Gloucester minerals in non-quite standard GWR livery (black or grey with black ironwork as per Atkins et al p240-1) on a layout reflecting anthracite traffic to the Midlands to bring out the 'that's not right' crowd...

 

9 minutes ago, John-Miles said:

It shows Wigston yard and right in the middle is a Blaen Cae Gurwen wagon from a colliery between Brynamman and Cwmllynfell on the Swansea Vale Railway.

 

I don't think anyone is saying that Welsh wagons didn't venture far and wide, but more like finding photographic evidence of penny-packet numbers of wagons heading to or at the premises of specialised users beyond South Wales is always going to be challenging to find.

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2 hours ago, 41516 said:

I don't think anyone is saying that Welsh wagons didn't venture far and wide, but more like finding photographic evidence of penny-packet numbers of wagons heading to or at the premises of specialised users beyond South Wales is always going to be challenging to find.

And John Miles likes a challenge :jester:

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Here's a slightly sharper version of the Wigston photo:

 

881980041_DY2811WigstonSidings.jpg.da21fc9140948aec4498e5e840821c02.jpg

 

[DY2811, released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) licence by the National Railway Museum.]

 

It is the right-hand panel of a triptych, taken by the Midland's official photographer (whose name I keep forgetting) on 20 March 1905.

 

Here's the left-hand panel:

 

1452413734_DY2812WigstonSidings.jpg.a8caf1be47ee119de71fd908c88da0c4.jpg

 

[DY 2812, released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) licence by the National Railway Museum.]

 

The centre panel will be very familiar to anyone who has worshiped at the shrine of Midland wagonry:

 

1253104538_DY2810WigstonSidings.jpg.730b122cc464cca3df5e1d6b8e4d06fc.jpg

 

[DY 2810,  released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) licence by the National Railway Museum.]

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6 hours ago, swampy said:

L&Y 1 plank wagons ( diagram 74 = 12' wheelbase; diagram 80 = 10'6" wb) were never vac-fitted, so you can leave it off.  

(Source: Noel Coates L&Y Wagons vol 1)

 

 

Thanks, do you know if the brakes operate on all 4 wheels or just one wheel on each axle.

 

 

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I hope Stephen @Compound2632doesn't mind but I have for sale an unopened Cooper Craft kit of a GWR 04 Open Wagon on Classifieds. It came with a later 04 RCH Style and I only wanted the that one as my foreigner. 

 

Now gone to a new home.

Edited by Rowsley17D
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27 minutes ago, Rowsley17D said:

I hope Stephen @Compound2632doesn't mind but I have for sale an unopened Cooper Craft kit of a GWR 04 Open Wagon on Classifieds. It came with a later 04 RCH Style and I only wanted the that one as my foreigner. 

 

For 1902-ish, I really shouldn't have too many O4s. But, I confess, I did this morning snap up an O5 on Ebay...

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Now, thinking about those coal loads I've been making...

 

I spent a happy few hours last Wednesday at the Midland Railway Study Centre, transcribing some entries from a Mineral Inwards ledger from Skipton (MRSC Item 28948). I may have mentioned looking at this before; I now have a transcript of the entries for the month of October 1897. (The ledger runs to March 1900, so there's still some work to do...) In that month, a total of 1251 tons 3 cwt of coal was received, in 201 wagonloads. Of these, 107 were Midland wagons and 94, private owners.

 

For the Midland wagons, the mean load was 5 t 4 c 2 q, with standard deviation 7 c 3 q - that is to say, 68% of loads were in the range 4 t 6 c 3 q to 6 t 2 c 1 q. At this date, pretty much all Midland wagons in mineral traffic were of 8 ton capacity: on average, they were running at only 65% of their rated capacity. Moreover, with the tare weight of a D299 wagon at 5 t 2 c 3 q (the nominal figure given on the diagram) they were only just carrying more than their own weight. 

 

The efficiency with which PO wagons were being used was a bit better: the mean load was 7 t 8 c 1 q, with standard deviation 1 t 0 c 0 q - 68% of loads in the range 6 t 8 c 1 q to 8 t 8 c 1 q. These wagons were certainly of either 8 ton or 10 ton capacity; if one assumes they were all 10 ton, then they were on average loaded to 74% of their capacity.

 

The majority of the PO wagons were from a small number of collieries in the Yorkshire coalfield, as far south as Barnsley. However, the colliery from which the largest amount of coal was received, St Johns Colliery, Normanton, used Midland wagons exclusively. In that month, 330 tons 4 cwt were received in 70 wagonloads, for two customers: principally J.J. Robinson, who was receiving between two and five wagons every weekday, and T. Thornton, who received around two or three wagons per week. The mean load per wagon for this colliery was just 4 t 14 c 1 q, or 59% of the wagons' rated capacity, with standard deviation 6 c 2 q - only 16% of wagons were loaded with over 5 tons of coal. There are several examples of J.J. Robinson receiving consignments of around 18 tons or 19 tons in four wagons. (This does mean that the remaining 37 Midland wagons were being loaded a bit more efficiently: mean 6 t 3 c 3 q, or 77% of capacity, comparable with the PO wagons.)

 

There must have been some operational reason why wagons were being used apparently so inefficiently; I suppose one possibility would be that each wagon contained a different grade of coal. The majority of the collieries supplying Skipton were reported in the H.M Inspector of Mines Reports of 1896 (as quoted on the Durham Mining Museum website) as producing mostly household coal. I haven't hunted down Kelly's Directory but I suspect J.J. Robinson was a domestic coal merchant.

Edited by Compound2632
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18 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

There must have been some operational reason why wagons were being used apparently so inefficiently; I suppose one possibility would be that each wagon contained a different grade of coal. The majority of the collieries supplying Skipton were reported in the H.M Inspector of Mines Reports of 1896 (as quoted on the Durham Mining Museum website) as producing mostly household coal. I haven't hunted down Kelly's Directory but I suspect J.J. Robinson was a domestic coal merchant.

 

Best I could find was an 1881 Kelly's which does indeed list Robinson as a coal merchant – or rather as two: Henry Robinson & Son, coal & stone merchants of 94 High Street and 46 Newmarket Street, and William Robinson, coal merchant of Cross Street and the railway station. No doubt Ancestry could show what if any relationship there was. Kellys also had Thomas Thornton, coal merchant of Keighley Road.

 

There is an on-line source of old directories at http://specialcollections.le.ac.uk/digital run by Leicester University. Skipton in those days was in the West Riding of course.

Edited by wagonman
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5 hours ago, wagonman said:

Best I could find was an 1881 Kelly's which does indeed list Robinson as a coal merchant – or rather as two: Henry Robinson & Son, coal & stone merchants of 94 High Street and 46 Newmarket Street, and William Robinson, coal merchant of Cross Street and the railway station. No doubt Ancestry could show what if any relationship there was. Kellys also had Thomas Thornton, coal merchant of Keighley Road.

 

There is an on-line source of old directories at http://specialcollections.le.ac.uk/digital run by Leicester University. Skipton in those days was in the West Riding of course.

 

Now I hadn't mentioned W. Robinson, who does appear as receiving coal from New Sharlston Colliery, Oakenshaw (like St Johns, on the North Midland line), in the colliery's wagons. If J.J. Robinson was the son of Henry Robinson, his firm must still have been trading under his father's name, since the Midland PO Wagon Register* shows three 10 ton wagons registered to Robinson, Hy & Son, Reg. Nos. 23286, 23459-60. 

 

Another customer who also appears in the Register is T. Murgatroyd, who has 11 8 ton and 16 10 ton wagons listed (roughly up to 1902), along with one registered to each of S.H. and B.E. Murgatroyd, stated to be his daughters. Murgatroyd was chiefly a customer of Houghton Main Colliery, also on the North Midland line, receiving coal in a mix of the colliery's wagons, Midland wagons, and his own. Three of the latter are listed: 297, 299, and 344; the first two don't appear in the Register but No. 344 was one of a batch of five built by Beadman; side doors only, internal dimensions 14'6" x 7'0" x 3'6" with a 2'10" door - so a through top plank 8" wide, and perhaps six altogether, the lower five being 6.8" - a common dimension.

 

One wagon appears twice: Midland No. 100178, arriving on the 9th and 27th from St Johns, consigned to J.J. Robinson. (St Johns is in fact listed as Newland, being operated by the firm of Locke & Co (Newland) Ltd. HMRS has a photo of one of their wagons, built some years later than the period in question - a 12 ton wagon by Charles Roberts.

 

This is shaping up into an article for the Midland Railway Society Journal but on the basis of the time taken to transcribe October, another couple of months wouldn't hurt to enlarge the data set!

 

*I am indebted to Ian Pope for his Excel transcript of the first three volumes of the Midland PO Wagon Register, up to No. 24000 - covering the period from the start of the RCH wagon registration scheme in 1887 to roughly 1902-ish. 

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I was also going to mention the apparent lack of coal for the gas works - the only consignments listed are a few wagon-loads of lime from Craven Lime Co. at Stainforth; a glace at the OS 25" map shows that the gas work was along-side the Leeds & Liverpool Canal and indeed Historic England has a 1947 photo of coal being delivered by barge.

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I don’t know if this applies to British wagons, but in American wagons the limiting factor to the load rating of the wagon was the Journal size. It could be quite possible that when you filled the wagon up to the top with coal, it came in on the weighbridge as noticeably less than the rated load of the running gear. Kind of built in factor of safety after things like the prang on the MSLR west of Penistone in the 1880s, you know the one.

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From my own researches, and observations of modern wagons, I suspect that the wagons cubed out rather than grossing out to use modern terms. Coal is considerably lighter than stone. Modern hoppers for National Power had 3 bays for limestone and 4 for coal but had the same gross weight. Also the size of coal would affect the load as larger coal would have bigger air spaces in the load.    

 

By the way i have enjoyed reading the above as it fits in well with my own research into PO wagons from the dales north of and around Skipton.  The quarry owners sent lime out and brought coal back in the same wagons.  I will have a look at one of Donald Binns' books which has a plan of Skipton that has the coal merchants names I think.

 

Jamie

 

Edited by jamie92208
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