P.O. wagons - history

[bbishop]

Some of these wagons were a lot tougher than you seem to think Bill

 

 

 

The 30s recession and restrictions on capital spend would, counter to what I think you are suggesting, have probably lengthened the life of these wagons.  

1.  Their usage rate went down because of a reduction in demand for coal.

2.  Precisely because there was a tightening of capital spend, old wagons would be refurbished (revenue spend) to keep them in service.

 

WW2 however would have put a very heavy demand on wagons and repairs would have been for critical issues only.  

 

Of course not every wagon from the early era would have made it through to nationalisation.  Somewhere I feel sure however that I have read a statistic on pre-grouping wagons making it through to nationalisation.  I cannot now find it but I have in mind that LMS and LNER had something of the order of 40-50% of their wagons at nationalisation were built before grouping.  Railway companies and PO companies often used the same wagon builders and specifications, so I think the 40 year lifetime is a not unrealistic average-ish number.

Andy, that was exactly what I was saying.  Also, I think that mineral wagons had a harder life than freight wagons.

 

Bill

[Andy Hayter]

My apologies BIll if I misunderstood your post.

I agree that in general mineral wagons would have a harder life.  Statistics are frustratingly rare, but given the high level of use of open wagons compared with vans before grouping if 40+% of all wagons were pre-grouping in 1947, then I think we can be sure that a significant number must have been opens.  Of course an open does not necessarily mean mineral, but if you look at the link I provided, many of the examples given that survived in to 50s and beyond were minerals.

[corneliuslundie]

If you really want to understand the complexities of the South Wales coal industry you may like to look at a new book by Tony Cooke - he of the GWR and similar map books - from Lightmoor on the South Wales collieries: 

Gazetteer of the Coal Mines of South Wales & Monmouthshire.

It is not exactly bedtime reading and is not about wagons as such but will give you far more information than you ever thought you would ever want to know about the collieries - dates, types of coal etc. There are some photos with wagons in but not that many. And it has a 1600 page PDF with it on CD of information on the collieries listed. So if you want to know where a colliery was, when it operated, who owned it and what types of coal it produced - and many produced different types from different seams - then it may be worth referring to, though it is £30.

http://lightmoor.co.uk/books/gazetteer-of-the-coal-mines-of-south-wales-monmouthshire/L8375

Of course then you have the coal factors, wagon builders and hirers, shipping companies etc.

Jonathan

No connection with the author or publisher

[Compound2632]

If you really want to understand the complexities of the South Wales coal industry you may like to look at a new book by Tony Cooke - he of the GWR and similar map books - from Lightmoor on the South Wales collieries: 

Gazetteer of the Coal Mines of South Wales & Monmouthshire.

It is not exactly bedtime reading and is not about wagons as such but will give you far more information than you ever thought you would ever want to know about the collieries - dates, types of coal etc. There are some photos with wagons in but not that many. And it has a 1600 page PDF with it on CD of information on the collieries listed. So if you want to know where a colliery was, when it operated, who owned it and what types of coal it produced - and many produced different types from different seams - then it may be worth referring to, though it is £30.

http://lightmoor.co.uk/books/gazetteer-of-the-coal-mines-of-south-wales-monmouthshire/L8375

Of course then you have the coal factors, wagon builders and hirers, shipping companies etc.

Jonathan

No connection with the author or publisher

 

Does it tell us who the collieries' customers were? That seems to me key to understanding what wagons to pick for one's chosen location.

[corneliuslundie]

Unfortunately no. That would have made it twice the size!

Jonathan

[Garethp8873]

On the subject of Private Owner Wagons, update on Black Dwarf's Facebook page that Private Owner Wagons: A Fifteenth Collection is now at the printers. I look forward to adding this volume to the others

[corneliuslundie]

Looking back, I realise that we have not mentioned earlier wagon styles/designs. There are, or have been, some nice kits around for dumb buffered wagons, from Five & Nine Models, for example - unfortunately very limited current availability - and also some round ended older wagons from the West Somerset area, to mention two examples. Of course the dumb-buffered wagons were gone by the First World War except in Scotland, but some of the other designs lasted much longer, especially with coal merchants.

And I think I have to revise my earlier comment that a company not being in one of the published sources suggests that it is unlikely to have owned or hired wagons. I have been researching the wagons seen in photos of the Bishop's Castle Railway, and have found that none of the local coal merchants who owned wagons are represented in any of the published works. Looking at the wagons, they were probably bought second hand, which makes tracking things down much harder - but was common. Again, they may well have been on hire rather than owned anyway.

Jonathan

[VicZA]

Thanks everyone for a very informative discussion - I find this both interesting and very helpful.

 

If I may ask something else ... were PO wagons generally of the same design just different sizes (like 3, 5, 7, etc). For example if a company had some 5-plank wagons would they be the same as another company's 5-plank wagons or would they be different in design? The reason I ask this is I can imagine that the likes of Hornby, Bachmann and Dapol will not cover all (probably most) of the POW that were out there by company, but I see that some people create decals or stickers of other POW that may not have been produced by the Model manufacturers mentioned .... would it therefore be "historiacally accurate" to transfer these decals to the correct sized wagon (eg. a 5-plank)?

[MarcD]

You might struggle to find 2 wagons the same even if they rolled out of the works one after another on the same day. Regardless of the livery painted on them. The customer specified size and number planks, length, axle boxes, types of under frame, number of doors (side/end/bottom) and types of buffers. And that's before direction of the floor planks, hoppering, and other internal structures.

Having said that most people wouldn't be interested in what wagon the prototype was as long as it's was painted differently to the next one. 

Marc

 

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, VicZA said:

If I may ask something else ... were PO wagons generally of the same design just different sizes (like 3, 5, 7, etc). 

 

Increasingly so as the years progressed - the Railway Clearing House 1887, 1907, and 1923 specifications were successively more prescriptive. One can reasonably say that all RCH 1923 specification wagons of a particular type - say 12 ton end-door 7-plank wagons - differed only in the builder's plate - the object of the standard was to ensure that parts were universally exchangeable. Going further back, there's more variety - a Gloucester C&W Co. RCH 1907 wagon will have subtle differences compared to a Charles Roberts one of the same type.

 

That's not to disagree with Marc's comment, just to put a different slant on it. Even the RCH 1923 specification allowed for a variety of, for example, 12 ton 7 plank wagons: side doors only, side and end doors, bottom doors or not, according to the owner or hirer's specification - different users had different preferences.

Edited April 9, 2019 by Compound2632

[hmrspaul]

1 minute ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Increasingly so as the years progressed - the Railway Clearing House 1887, 1907, and 1923 specifications were successively more prescriptive. One can reasonably say that all RCH 1923 specification wagons of a particular type - say end-door 7-plank wagons - differed only in the builder's plate - the object of the standard was to ensure that parts were universally exchangeable. Going further back, there's more variety - a Gloucester C&W Co. RCH 1907 wagon will have subtle differences compared to a Charles Roberts one of the same type.

 

No.

 

As Furness Wagon says every detail could be different. There were hundreds of pages of drawings of acceptable standard components. Every item could be specified by the customer from these drawings to make up what might be a standard wagon for them, for a year or two, and then when they ordered another batch they could choose to change. As well as all FW says look at how the end doors could be hung differently. Wagons usually had some steel work supporting the planking, look at how they differed in position, how they joined the solebar, how many bolts held the metalwork to the wood. And although the basic frame for privately owned wagons were usually of wood there was the alternative of using steel - an alternative that in later years the some of the railway Companies took up when building RCH standard minerals for themselves.

 

Paul

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, hmrspaul said:

 

No.

 

As Furness Wagon says every detail could be different. There were hundreds of pages of drawings of acceptable standard components. Every item could be specified by the customer from these drawings to make up what might be a standard wagon for them, for a year or two, and then when they ordered another batch they could choose to change. As well as all FW says look at how the end doors could be hung differently. Wagons usually had some steel work supporting the planking, look at how they differed in position, how they joined the solebar, how many bolts held the metalwork to the wood. And although the basic frame for privately owned wagons were usually of wood there was the alternative of using steel - an alternative that in later years the some of the railway Companies took up when building RCH standard minerals for themselves.

 

Paul

 

Yes! We're still saying the same thing - a range of standard components used diversely, to make diverse types of wagons.