Private Owner wagon painting

[Norton961]

The general view is that most PO wagons had the ironwork painted black when first built and the wooden parts painted (usually red oxide, but not always) in the livery required. However was it common for the wagons to be be overhauled and repainted with the ironwork painted in the body colour? I am told that the GSWR did this with there grey wagons, built with black ironwork, but when overhauled the ironwork painted the body colour.

So the question is does this apply to PO wagons?

 

David

[Compound2632]

I'm no expert, I've merely read the writings of experts. My understanding is that, at least in their pre-Great War heyday and perhaps up to the pooling in 1939, PO wagons were repainted every three years or so - more frequently than railway company wagons. Many PO wagons weren't owned or maintained by their users - they were often on hire from and/or on maintenance contracts ("For Repairs advise...") with the wagon-building companies. It seems that ironwork was often painted black before the wagon was assembled but I also get the impression it would continue to be painted black at repaints. 

 

A variety of colours were popular for the woodwork - generally lead-based paints, particularly ones based on white lead, which had a waterproofing effect - so shades of grey; also black. Colours based on red lead were less common - red lead is a better preservative for iron and steel-work (think Forth Bridge) than wood, though it was used.

 

I've also commented on your Lilleshall thread.

Edited April 1, 2019 by Compound2632

[jim.snowdon]

All of the ironwork, on both PO and railway owned wagons, was painted before assembly simply because to not do so would have left exposed surfaces in contact with the wood that would rust. The only exception would have been where iron components were fitted to other iron components using hot riveting, when painting would have been done after the assembly was complete. Generally these parts were painted black, and I am sure I can recall a reference on the RCH drawings and specifications to "black japanned" (a finish many of the older generation may recall as common for wood screws). The outside surfaces of the wagon body and underframe were painted after assembly, and in the world of PO wagons a small number of colours - black, lead grey and red oxide dominate. Frequently the ironwork, or at least some of it, was picked out in black; generally the vertical items on the body but not the diagonals. The South Welsh coal trade seems to have been particularly parsimonious in respect of wagon painting, with all-over black being a very dominant colour, with plain white lettering, unshaded, being the order of the day.

 

The insides of wagons were not painted at all, save for the exposed ironwork, which was given a rough going over with black paint. 

 

What happened when a wagon came up for a complete repaint depended upon what the owner or hirer wanted, but a material factor would have been cost. No shading is patently cheaper than shaded lettering.

 

Jim 

[roythebus]

If I ever find my signed copies of the excellent AG Thomas books on lettering of private owner wagons I'll let you know what he has to say on the matter. It's worth looking out for these books. I think they were called something like Private Owner Wagons-a modeller's sketchbook. He made sketches of the wagons with lettering, styles and colours.

[The Johnster]

There were, as a very sweeping generalisation, 4 basic types of PO coal wagons; colliery owned or hired, large industry owned or hired (steelworks, mostly), wagon hiring companies, and coal traders.  Some traders were small concerns with only one or two wagons but others were large and distributed over considerable areas; MOY was a well known one that served the East Midlands and East Anglia.

 

As a very sweeping and generalised rule, the more colourful liveries beloved of RTR manufacturers, where they are accurate, tended to be a feature of the smaller fleets, though MOY was pretty colourful.  The big fleets tended towards black or grey.  Traders wagons did not usually have end doors, which were necessary for tipping into ships' holds at the docks.  The big fleets were usually seen in block trains of one livery, and the colourful coal trains of many an exhibition layout are, sadly, fantasty.

Edited April 3, 2019 by The Johnster

[jim.snowdon]

In a general sense, yes, but whilst colliery owned wagons might have predominated in trains as they originated from their parent pit, for obvious reasons, the distribution of wagons in trains would have varied the further away they got. Where modellers frequently get it wrong is by picking wagons by their prettiness, not by doing their homework.

 

Jim

[Wickham Green]

9 hours ago, The Johnster said:

There were, as a very sweeping generalisation, 4 basic types of PO coal wagons; colliery owned or hired, large industry owned or hired (steelworks, mostly), wagon hiring companies, and coal traders.  Some traders were small concerns with only one or two wagons but others were large and distributed over considerable areas; MOY was a well known one that served the East Midlands and East Anglia.

 

As a very sweeping and generalised rule, the more colourful liveries beloved of RTR manufacturers, where they are accurate, tended to be a feature of the smaller fleets, though MOY was pretty colourful.  The big fleets tended towards black or grey.  Traders wagons did not usually have end doors, which were necessary for tipping into ships' holds at the docks.  The big fleets were usually seen in block trains of one livery, and the colourful coal trains of many an exhibition layout are, sadly, fantasty.

Stephenson Clarke were another large operator with a colourful livery ( grey-green with red corners ) - but even they economised with plain black in the end.

Colourful coal trains would, in theory, have existed once the fleets were pooled during the war - but many wagons might not have strayed from their old haunts very quickly and by the time they were fully mixed their colourfulness would have been rather faded.

 

( I think it's fair to say that the vast majority of RTR manufacturers' PO wagon liveries ARE accurate ............................... shame they keep put them on the wrong bl**dy wagons tho'.)

[corneliuslundie]

It partly depends on the part of the country you are interested in. If it a colliery area then you will have trains of wagons for the colliery an its customers, plus coal factors. If you are somewhere like the LSWR main line then you will get more variety as different customers will have bought coal from different sources. They may have started a block loads but on the way they will have been split and mixed - though I think Stephenson Clark wagons might have predominated as it provided loco coal for the local railway companies - my memory is not telling me which but i think the LSWR and LBSCR - please someone correct me if this is wrong. In South Wales and the North East - where there were anyway few PO wagons - by far the majority of the traffic will have been in block trains from the colliery to a local port.

And as has been noted before, the South West Wales anthracite collieries would have sent wagons all over the country as anthracite had specialist markets.  For example there is a photo with an Amalgamated Anthracite wagon on the Bishop's Castle Railway. But also beware dates. The anthracite companies went from dozens to just one or two thanks to amalgamations over about 30 years.

I assume that you have the 14 volumes on PO wagons by Turton, the five by Bill Hudson, one by Mike Lloyd, one by John Arkell, one by Len Tavender, several by the Lightmoor Press team etc etc!!!

Jonathan 

[The Johnster]

Good points from Cornelius.  There were also the railway companies' own loco coal wagons, and the Royal Navy, which had it's own colliery in Tonypandy, manned by naval ratings who were kept in barracks during the riots and took no part, and ran block trains to Portsmouth and Plymouth.  I have no idea what livery the Navy's wagons were, but one would suspect grey with perhaps red below the waterline...

 

There were of course other private owner wagons, and still are.  Tanks of various sorts were never owned by the railway companies and are another source of colour, and general merchandise types could be private owner in the owner's livery as well, but were not as common as the 7-plank minerals by a very long chalk.  These would be usually in some form of circuit working.  Another situation is where railway owned vehicles carried slogans or branding in circuit working; the Palethorpe's Sausage vans being a well known example.  Blue Circle Cement hoardings on Presflos is another.  Milk tanks were railway owned frames but the actual tanks were privately owned; St Ivel, United Dairies and so on.  I have an idea the Murgatroyd's chlorine tanks that worked out of Dowlais over the Brecon and Merthyr route were in this category as well.

 

You can also put stickers on your vans and opens; Fison's fertilzer and various cement companies often did this.

[Siberian Snooper]

I believe a lot of the coal for Devonport came by sea, at least up until the 2nd war and after that there was gradual change to oil.

 

 

[Nick Holliday]

We seemed to have strayed rather a long way from the original question! The last few entries might be better in some of the other threads here.

[Wickham Green]

2 hours ago, corneliuslundie said:

............ 14 volumes on PO wagons by Turton, .................................

Volume FIFTEEN's out now !

[corneliuslundie]

I suggested the photo books because although many of the photos are of pristine wagons there are quite a few of wagons in a more worn condition which can be examined to check the OP's question. I agree tat the rest of my post was wandering away from the topic. As stated the three sketchbooks were usually drawn "off the wagon side" so will be of wagons in service. Unfortunately they do not include underframes, and it is often difficult to work out how much of the metalwork may have been black even when the caption says it was.

And thanks for the pointer about volume 15. One for the birthday present list.

Jonathan

[eastglosmog]

Round these parts, Baldwins ran block trains of iron ore in their own wagons along the Banbury and Cheltenham Direct Railway from the Oxfordshire iron ore field to their blast furnaces.  Their wagons were light coloured (not sure quite what) and the ironwork was painted the same colour as the bodywork.

[Wickham Green]

51 minutes ago, corneliuslundie said:

I suggested the photo books because although many of the photos are of pristine wagons there are quite a few of wagons in a more worn condition which can be examined to check the OP's question. ..............

The best published sources for 'in-traffic' wagons are Geoff Kent's '4mm Wagons' books ..... in particular the 4mm Coal Wagon.

[eastglosmog]

Just to add, the Baldwin's iron ore wagons were photographed in 1923 and heading to South Wales.  According to Montague's PO wagons of the Gloucester CRWCo (also a good source of as built PO wagon photos, usually with livery details) Baldwin's coal and coke wagons were painted black, at least in 1903.

[Norton961]

Gentlemen, thank you for your input. I have now decided that the ironwork for my Lilleshall Co wagons will have black ironwork and have now spent some time painting all the ironwork black. 

I have posted some photos of the wagons in the Industrial Railways section on the Lilleshall Co thread.

 

David

[asmay2002]

If you haven't already seen it there is a photo of Lilleshall 5 plank 1750 on page 52 of Turtons PO wagons volume 3.  White letters, red body, Vertical ironwork looks black, diagonal strapping in body colour.

[johnofwessex]

On 03/04/2019 at 13:11, The Johnster said:

Good points from Cornelius.  There were also the railway companies' own loco coal wagons, and the Royal Navy, which had it's own colliery in Tonypandy, manned by naval ratings who were kept in barracks during the riots and took no part, and ran block trains to Portsmouth and Plymouth.  .......................

 

Say more about that colliery.  Google knows nothing about it

[The Johnster]

It was called Naval Colliery actually in Penygraig not Tonypandy, and I believe it was manned by 'Bevin Boys' during WW2, but I don't know much more about it.

[wagonman]

The Naval Colliery Co eventually owned several pits in the Penygraig area, one, Ely Pit, being the site of the lockout that led directly to the Tonypandy riots of 1911. The colliery company was part of the Cambrian Combine, a cartel of owners formed in 1906 to control (ie depress) miners' wages. The men who worked the various Naval Colliery pits were locals and civilians: I can find no trace of any involvement by Royal Navy personnel.

 

Bevin Boys worked in most pits throughout the UK.

 

Naval Colliery wagons were painted black.