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GER 10T Goods Van announced!


Garethp8873
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1 hour ago, MarkSG said:

But, statistically, the most common wagons at any location would be those of the "home" company, so an evenly split mix-and-match would be somewhat unrealistic. You do need a majority of your wagons to be from the company or region you are modelling (less so for BR than Big Four, but still a clear bias), and having some that are from the specific location is even better when it comes to effectively conveying a sense of place.

 

I'm afraid I have to argue that that is not the case after the Great War. There may be some bias towards the local company but, I would say, probably not an absolute majority - in fact at a typical GWR or SR location, wagons of the home company would definitely be in a minority. Certain locations with specific traffics would of course be different, justifying non-pool wagons of the home company. 

 

Sense of place is more realistically conveyed by the infrastructure, which will largely be of pre-grouping origin. Signalling is a particular definer. If a layout really has sense of place, it does so without any rolling stock.

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It's a slightly different argument, but this discussion around the makeup of goods trains has been had a number of times.   Roye England recorded the makeup of trains as part of his recording for what became Pendon and his notes show a distinct bias towards home company stock.  To save me posting again, here is my last discourse on the subject.

 

Of course, specific traffics to specific locations can alter what vehicles would be seen, but as a rule of thumb I'd err on the side of domestic vehicles.

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20 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

........ There may be some bias towards the local company but, ..........

Given a wagon from each of the four 'groups' and a load for each of the four points of the compass, I might be tempted to put the 'local' load in the native wagon and load the other three completely at random.

If, of course, the wagons were of pre-grouping origin, and not to RCH standards, any repairs that became necessary might have to be carried out on home turf ............. it's unlikely the guys on the ground would have had access to a full library of Jenkinson, Essery, Russell, Tatlow, King etc.etc. so probably wouldn't have been aware of such matters - UNLESS they'd been trained to look out for 'D' shaped number plates.

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3 hours ago, jwealleans said:

It's a slightly different argument, but this discussion around the makeup of goods trains has been had a number of times.   Roye England recorded the makeup of trains as part of his recording for what became Pendon and his notes show a distinct bias towards home company stock.  To save me posting again, here is my last discourse on the subject.

 

Of course, specific traffics to specific locations can alter what vehicles would be seen, but as a rule of thumb I'd err on the side of domestic vehicles.

Thanks, that's interesting. Particularly the train noted by Roye England, that's the sort of on-the-ground observation that's really useful.

 

I suspect, though, that both the location and the date would have made a difference. My assumption (which I'd like to see some evidence for, but seems reasonable to me) is that major freight hubs - such as Birmingham, in the photos on the Warwickshire railways website referred to earlier in the thread - would see a large number of "foreign" wagons, for the simple reason that they are likely to be the destinations of the loads they carry. I would imagine that it's places like Birmingham where wagons are most likely to find themselves being loaded and used by a non-home operator, just because they are there.

 

Also, though, the immediate post-war period (both wars!) is likely to have had a much bigger mix of wagons, as a consquence of the national wartime control which cut across company boundaries and distributed wagons across the network. Over the Big Four period, home wagons would probably have gradually returned to dominance (as noted by Roye England), partly because any new wagon would obviously start life at home and also because, as suggested by @Wickham Green too, they'd normally go home for maintenance. So you would expect to see a much higher proportion of foreign wagons earlier in the Big Four period than later - until WWII came along and mixed them all up again. 

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5 hours ago, jwealleans said:

It's a slightly different argument, but this discussion around the makeup of goods trains has been had a number of times.   Roye England recorded the makeup of trains as part of his recording for what became Pendon and his notes show a distinct bias towards home company stock.  To save me posting again, here is my last discourse on the subject.

 

 

I've looked through Roye England's list of wagons and after removing all the non-common user vehicles I find GWR: 7-10, depending on whether the opens carrying containers are fitted or not, LMS: 6, LNER: 2-3*, SR:2. This seem to me close to a likely random sample, given that some of the descriptions need interpretation. 

 

*The surprise is the LNER bogie van, which I guess, was an empty fish van being returned to Banbury/Leicester. 

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35 minutes ago, billbedford said:

The surprise is the LNER bogie van, which I guess, was an empty fish van being returned to Banbury/Leicester.

 

There was a lengthy discussion around this with Peter Tatlow and others; in the end we modelled a G7 van.

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On 14/04/2021 at 12:14, Compound2632 said:

 

Sense of place is more realistically conveyed by the infrastructure, which will largely be of pre-grouping origin. Signalling is a particular definer. If a layout really has sense of place, it does so without any rolling stock.

 

Totally agree. A few items peculiar to the area or company will set the tone. Loading gauges, signage, buffer stops, signals as well as the obvious buildings etc painted appropriately will convey ownership without the presence of locos or stock.  

 

 

Rob

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On 14/04/2021 at 12:14, Compound2632 said:

 

Sense of place is more realistically conveyed by the infrastructure, which will largely be of pre-grouping origin. Signalling is a particular definer. If a layout really has sense of place, it does so without any rolling stock.

 

I think it was C J Freezer who said, presumably in reference to just such company infrastructure, that one ought to be able to identify the owning company without any trains present on the layout.

 

Incidentally, he also admonished freelancers for creating whimsical lines under the influence of Ahern.

 

On this basis, my layout is twice-b*ggered before it starts!

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11 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

 

I think it was C J Freezer who said, presumably in reference to just such company infrastructure, that one ought to be able to identify the owning company without any trains present on the layout.

 

Incidentally, he also admonished freelancers for creating whimsical lines under the influence of Ahern.

 

On this basis, my layout is twice-b*ggered before it starts!

Yes, but yours identifies its location without consideration of railway anything, which is perhaps a greater feat.

 

One of the "bijoux problemettes" with joint lines is which of the partners built which parts. If the signals and buildings are provided by different companies, as can easily be the case, then it can look a bit mongrel.

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2 hours ago, Edwardian said:

 

I think it was C J Freezer who said, presumably in reference to just such company infrastructure, that one ought to be able to identify the owning company without any trains present on the layout.

 

Incidentally, he also admonished freelancers for creating whimsical lines under the influence of Ahern.

 

On this basis, my layout is twice-b*ggered before it starts!

Nowt wrong with whimsy, as long as it doesn’t claim fidelity to prototype.  Unless of course the prototype is whimsical...

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On 11/04/2021 at 13:09, bigherb said:

Oxfords photo I have lightened to show more detail. Wouldn't know about accuracy, but it looks like a very detailed moulding1935487369_OxfordGERVan.jpg.27561a2283ed209d653025b6f2623034.jpg

 

That does look nice. Likewise, I'm not expert on GER so no clue as to any mistakes on there, but it looks good enough to go on the wishlist for a bit of variety.

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I am not at all sure about the concept that company pooled wagons had to be returned to their home for repairs.

 

For a start, it wouldn't have been possible for wagons that had been red-carded which had to have sufficient repairs on-the-spot to allow them to run at all - and, even after that, it was often only an upgrade to a red/green card which allowed haulage to the nearest wagon repair facility and not beyond.

 

However, one of the apparent great puzzles of Southern Railway wagon stock is that a tiny proportion appeared in traffic painted grey and not the standard brown. Back in the days when there were still workshop men around who had worked on SR wagons, they insisted that the grey paint hadn't been acquired at any SR facility, so the only possible explanation is that these were wagons that had required repair elsewhere, and a sufficient repair to require a repaint at that, and that they had been dealt with somewhere (possibly a main line company works, possibly a wagon repairers) that was unable to replicate the SR brown paint and had used a more common grey instead. If one assumes that pooled wagons eventually got distributed over the whole British network, then SR (and to a lesser extent GWR) wagons were more likely to require repair far from any possible home base.

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Wagon and van full overhauls (which were the only times they were repainted), as opposed to running repairs, were carried out at the owning company's workshops and at specified time intervals, the vehicle being removed from traffic as soon as convenient when it's overhaul was due.  Running repairs took place as, when, and where necessary, but did not feature repaints.

 

I wonder if your 'mystery' Southern grey vehicles are in fact GW or LMS vans built at Ashford to the Southern standard design during WW2.  This was done under the direction of the wartime Ministry of Supply, who were responsible for the macro-management of the nation's strategically important raw materials, which included wood.  At the outbreak of war, Ashford had a large stock of planks pre-cut for their '2+2' designs, which included the 12ton vans and which were of limited use for other purposes, so it was decreed that this stock should be used up before the other railways were given permission to build 12ton vans of their own designs.  All the other railways had some of these vans and the GW and LMS ones were in those companies' grey liveries.  TTBOMK, though I cannot state that it is a certainty, these vans were sent to their new owners unpainted, and numbered and painted in the appropriate livery on arrival.

 

You will find photos of 'Ashford' 2+2 vans in BR livery, both grey unfitted and bauxite fitted for vans that had been 'improved' by BR, with the correct, but apparently anomalous, W, M, or E prefix to the running numbers.  They certainly lasted into the 1970s.  I have never seen this stated, but wonder if the depletion of the precut timber at Ashford was the reason for the Southern building a plywood bodied version of these vans in the post war era. 

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47 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

Wagon and van full overhauls (which were the only times they were repainted), as opposed to running repairs, were carried out at the owning company's workshops and at specified time intervals, the vehicle being removed from traffic as soon as convenient when it's overhaul was due.

 

How did the companies keep track of the wagons in away that they knew when they should be removed from traffic?

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1 hour ago, The Johnster said:

Wagon and van full overhauls (which were the only times they were repainted), as opposed to running repairs, were carried out at the owning company's workshops and at specified time intervals, the vehicle being removed from traffic as soon as convenient when it's overhaul was due.  Running repairs took place as, when, and where necessary, but did not feature repaints.

 

I wonder if your 'mystery' Southern grey vehicles are in fact GW or LMS vans built at Ashford to the Southern standard design during WW2.  This was done under the direction of the wartime Ministry of Supply, who were responsible for the macro-management of the nation's strategically important raw materials, which included wood.  At the outbreak of war, Ashford had a large stock of planks pre-cut for their '2+2' designs, which included the 12ton vans and which were of limited use for other purposes, so it was decreed that this stock should be used up before the other railways were given permission to build 12ton vans of their own designs.  All the other railways had some of these vans and the GW and LMS ones were in those companies' grey liveries.  TTBOMK, though I cannot state that it is a certainty, these vans were sent to their new owners unpainted, and numbered and painted in the appropriate livery on arrival.

 

You will find photos of 'Ashford' 2+2 vans in BR livery, both grey unfitted and bauxite fitted for vans that had been 'improved' by BR, with the correct, but apparently anomalous, W, M, or E prefix to the running numbers.  They certainly lasted into the 1970s.  I have never seen this stated, but wonder if the depletion of the precut timber at Ashford was the reason for the Southern building a plywood bodied version of these vans in the post war era. 

Good point about the SR pattern vans built for the GWR and LMS.

 

IIRC, shortages of timber also caused the GWR and LNER to switch to plywood for van construction during and after WW2. Can't immediately recall any LMS examples, though.

 

John 

 

Still waiting for somebody to produce a 4mm kit for a plywood Mink!

Edited by Dunsignalling
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2 hours ago, bécasse said:

I am not at all sure about the concept that company pooled wagons had to be returned to their home for repairs.

 

For a start, it wouldn't have been possible for wagons that had been red-carded which had to have sufficient repairs on-the-spot to allow them to run at all - and, even after that, it was often only an upgrade to a red/green card which allowed haulage to the nearest wagon repair facility and not beyond.

 

However, one of the apparent great puzzles of Southern Railway wagon stock is that a tiny proportion appeared in traffic painted grey and not the standard brown. Back in the days when there were still workshop men around who had worked on SR wagons, they insisted that the grey paint hadn't been acquired at any SR facility, so the only possible explanation is that these were wagons that had required repair elsewhere, and a sufficient repair to require a repaint at that, and that they had been dealt with somewhere (possibly a main line company works, possibly a wagon repairers) that was unable to replicate the SR brown paint and had used a more common grey instead. If one assumes that pooled wagons eventually got distributed over the whole British network, then SR (and to a lesser extent GWR) wagons were more likely to require repair far from any possible home base.

The Southern did paint some of their departmental stock grey, so I wonder if they used it on a few revenue wagons to avoid delaying their return to traffic while awaiting a delivery of the correct brown pigment. 

 

John

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Date of last overhaul painted on solebar, cross reffed to office records.  The problem then, of course, was locating the wagon and trying to find a return load for it.  Of course, it was sometimes some time after the due date that the wagon actually turned up for it's overhaul...

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25 minutes ago, billbedford said:

 

How did the companies keep track of the wagons in away that they knew when they should be removed from traffic?

 

With difficulty. Midland Record No. 35 reproduces a couple of Great Western Chief Goods Manager's Office circulars from 1917 (shortly after the introduction of pooling):

MIDLAND OPEN GOODS WAGONS

All Midland Open Goods Wagons bearing Nos: 

(100 nos on 24 April 1917, down to 24 nos from the same list on 1 December)

are required for immediate examination at Derby (Midland Railway) and upon receipt of this Circular a careful search of all Depots, Yards and Sidings must be instituted and arrangements made for any wagons that may be found to be labelled and despatched to Derby...

 

Bill, you yourself drew my attention to the NBR's missing wagon angst after the July 1920 wagon census, when 1,480 wagons were undiscovered - 2.5% of stock.

 

 

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1 hour ago, billbedford said:

 

How did the companies keep track of the wagons in away that they knew when they should be removed from traffic?

It would have required clerical records, as this was before computer databases.  Somebody in an office somewhere would need to keep ledgers recording all the wagons they were responsible for, updating the book whenever new wagons were ordered, old ones were scrapped/sold etc, and there was probably one card per wagon on which you wrote one line of details whenever there was a repair etc. 

 

My understanding is that this broadly is how it was done for locos.  I think private owners had to register with the RCH, being sponsored by their local railway company and I would assume that the main line companies would be required to keep track of the data.  Somebody who is into historical research should be able to give definitive answer

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Quite; when things got out of hand there would be a wagon census followed by a wagon search for those missing in action.  Some, of course, were never found, and presumably written off; it was not a perfect system.  An obsolete wagon that was going to cost money and resources to dispose of would probably not be chased up with the same amount of enthusiasm as a relatively new one!

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2 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

Quite; when things got out of hand there would be a wagon census followed by a wagon search for those missing in action.  Some, of course, were never found, and presumably written off; it was not a perfect system.  An obsolete wagon that was going to cost money and resources to dispose of would probably not be chased up with the same amount of enthusiasm as a relatively new one!

I suspect that a few real antiques, long past enduring the rigours of a return to their legitimate owners, and lacking a steel underframe that might give the game away, probably disappeared piecemeal into numerous stoves.

 

John

 

 

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4 hours ago, jwealleans said:

Wasn't that at least part of the driver behind RCH standard components?

And why the Southern barred LBSC wagons, which didn't incorporate RCH parts, off their territory. This was eventually made fool-proof by transferring all remaining ones to the Isle of Wight and the Engineer's Dept.

 

Non-RCH wagons would become a darned nuisance if anything broke far from home, necessitating replacement components being forwarded to wherever they became stuck.

 

John

 

 

 

 

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