PO wagons brakes ???

[Edwardian]

1 hour ago, The Johnster said:

Elected representatives looking a bit more attractive now, aren't they?  

 

Well, funnily enough, democratic elections do look to be a better bet than a return to mediaeval kingship, but I'm afraid it takes more than a list of English monarchs to make the likes of Trump, Putin or Bosonaro even a little bit less unattractive!

[HonestTom]

All this talk of the superiority Kings and the President is all a little controversial for my taste. What if you’re not a GWR fan?

[Compound2632]

Well, talk about thread drift. 

 

In 1911, the Board of Trade issued regulations requiring that newly constructed wagons had to have brakes that could be applied from either side of the wagon and released from the same side only, with the brake lever always facing towards the right hand end of the wagon - i.e. diagonally opposite. A rather elastic timetable was permitted for older wagons to conform, eventually extending up to 1939 for the grouping companies by which time the majority of unconverted pre-1911 railway company owned wagons were life-expired anyway.

 

There were various solutions to meet this requirement. On ordinary merchandise opens and vans, the arrangement with a brake block to every wheel, driven off a cross-shaft that could be rotated by a cam driven by the brake lever (using the Morton cam arrangement on one side) became standard for new construction in the grouping period. A cross-shaft could not be used for mineral wagons with bottom doors, so for these, an independent set of brake gear was used on each side. This had the advantage of simplicity and cheapness - converting a pre-1911 wagon simply meant replicating what was already on one side on the other - but the drawback that the brake blocks would only be applied to the wheels on one side of the wagon, halving the braking force available and imposing uneven stresses on the wagon.

 

Once one gets into the study of wagon brakes, the US constitution looks straightforward.

[Wickham Green]

On 31/01/2020 at 22:46, Compound2632 said:

........ On ordinary merchandise opens and vans, the arrangement with a brake block to every wheel, driven off a cross-shaft that could be rotated by a cam driven by the brake lever (using the Morton cam arrangement on one side) became standard for new construction in the grouping period. ......

The majority of Morton brake installations - on unfitted vehicles - actually only had brake blocks on one side.

[Compound2632]

Now I look properly, I find that this is true of LMS unfitted designs such as the 12 ton high-sided open built in very large quantities in the 1920s.

[Flying Pig]

14 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

Now I look properly, I find that this is true of LMS unfitted designs such as the 12 ton high-sided open built in very large quantities in the 1920s.

 

Unusually, that drawing seems to show the reversing cam on the opposite side from the brake blocks.  This has the advantage that the arrangement on the braked side is largely the same as with independent brakes, so maybe was used when converting existing vehicles?  However, for some reason most wagons built with Morton brakes had the reversing cam on the braked side, which means the shaft rotates anticlockwise to apply the brakes and the pushrods have to be rearranged left over right.

 

The LMS design built in quantity was D1666 and from the photographs in LMS Wagons appears to have had independent brakes.

[Darryl Tooley]

4 minutes ago, Flying Pig said:

The LMS design built in quantity was D1666 and from the photographs in LMS Wagons appears to have had independent brakes.

They did.  Evidently the alternative arrangement offered in the scrap view in the drawing was the one that was in the event chosen.

 

This is going by what's in the photographic record, of course.  I haven't checked each and every single example of D1666.

 

D

[Compound2632]

I have to confess that LMS standard wagons are a bit outside my comfort zone - but not as much as all-steel 16 ton mineral wagons - so I'm grateful to posters who decrease my confusion!