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Information needed about these wagons


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I wasn't really sure where to put this. On the one hand, I'm looking for some prototype information, on the other, I'm starting from models and working backward, which didn't really seem to fit with the Prototype Questions forum. I have a collection of wagons, from various sources. Unless otherwise stated, I need the following info:

1) What type of wagon is it (or should it be) a model of? For generic wagons, what wagon does it most closely resemble?

2) When were these wagons introduced, if this was later than the end of steam? I doubt that any of them were, but I have included the question just in case.

3) When were they withdrawn (and, if different, roughly when did the livery depicted become obsolete)?

As there are quite a few, I decided that a video would be easier to post than individual photos, so here they are being hauled by an A4 (this is my best low speed runner, so easiest to film).

The wagons are:

1) Birds eye livery, made in England by G&R Wrenn Ltd.

2) Kellogs livery, made in England, probably by Hornby

3) McVitie's livery, made in England by Hornby

4) Sheaf materials livery, made in China by Hornby

5) Shell livery, made in England by Hornby

6) Laugharne Morgan livery, made in China by Hornby

7) Bolsover livery, made in England by Hornby

8) Minera Lime livery, made in England

9) Great Western liveried Macaw B (Q1) made in Italy by Lima

10) BR grey liveried Bogie Bolster A (Q1) made by Hornby at a top secret location. This seems to be ex-LNER, despite coming in a set with a 0-6-0 PT in GWR livery. Can anybody confirm this?

12) BR bauxite liveried Lowmac (Q1) made in China by Hornby

13) Smith's livery, made in Great Britain by Hornby. This probably had a roof in the past.

14 and 15) BR standard brake vans, I believe (Q1). Black roof made in China, white roof in Great Britain, both by Hornby. What would the difference between the roof colours signify? I assume that these lasted for as long as brake vans were required. (Q3)

 

Thanks in advance for any help you may be able to provide. For some of the wagons (namely the Lowmac and bogie bolsters) I imagine that I would be able to obtain the information required with a little bit of digging, but have included them here in case anybody knows off the top of their head. However, as I don't know what over 50% of the wagons are (and can't find this infromation) I don't even have a starting point for the vans, open wagons, and tanker.

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Sorry you can't find the information because the vast majority are completely fictitious.

 

Only Hornby could tell you why the brake van has a white roof. Paint it lead grey.

 

Lowmac and 2nd Bogie bolster in livery introduced from Nationalisation, used until 1963 but would have seen in a worn condition for years later.

Shell is unlikely to have existed. The yellow was used for lubricating oil on earlier tank wagons by Shell - a rare colour but did exist, But I don't believe it was used on any of these wagons introduced c1964 - this is a very poor representation of the prototype.

 

The Swansea and Bolsover are probably reasonable representations of liveries applied pre war, although they may not have appeared on the wagons they are on - very difficult to see, as is the next one.

 

Paul Bartlett

 

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11 hours ago, hmrspaul said:

Sorry you can't find the information because the vast majority are completely fictitious.

 

Only Hornby could tell you why the brake van has a white roof. Paint it lead grey.

 

Lowmac and 2nd Bogie bolster in livery introduced from Nationalisation, used until 1963 but would have seen in a worn condition for years later.

Shell is unlikely to have existed. The yellow was used for lubricating oil on earlier tank wagons by Shell - a rare colour but did exist, But I don't believe it was used on any of these wagons introduced c1964 - this is a very poor representation of the prototype.

 

The Swansea and Bolsover are probably reasonable representations of liveries applied pre war, although they may not have appeared on the wagons they are on - very difficult to see, as is the next one.

 

Paul Bartlett

 

Thanks for the information about the brake vans.

 

The Minera Lime wagon is a 5 plank wagon of some sort. My understanding is that this would be wrong for a lime wagon, as these had roofs on them (and when searching for 'Minera Lime wagon' this is what most models depict). However, Wikipedia states that:

 

'The quarries had their own steam locomotive and hundred [sic] of open coal wagons and closed lime wagons at its peak. Hornby Railways and Dapol both have model wagons detailing the Minera Lime Co. It also had extensive kilns, still there to this day. The works closed in 1972 and the Wrexham and Minera Branch railway lines were pulled up at around the same time.'

 

Therefore, I am assuming that the model is a coal wagon (most likely a generic model). Therefore, the question is whether 5 plank coal wagons would have remained in use at the limeworks until the very end (whether similar wagons outlasted them in other places), or whether they had been replaced before that point.

 

Swansea is a 7 plank wagon with a door in the centre of each side.

 

Bolsover is a metal wagon with two doors on each side belonging to Thoresby Colliery. This colliery was the last in Nottinghamshire, closing in 2015. It may have been using the railway into the 21st Century. The livery applied appears to have been from the grouping era (L&NE RL presumably being London and North Eastern Railway) but I don't know how long this livery, or wagons similar to the model, may have survived.

 

Regarding the completely fictional wagons, I was expecting there to be a lot of generic wagons, but they must be about the right shape and size that they could if you squint while taking hallucogenic drugs vaguely resemble one particular type of wagon more than another (though not neccesarily in Kellogs livery).

 

 

 

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Lime quarries often had both roofed opens (used for burnt lime) and conventional opens (used for limestone) . At the onset of WW2, the wagons with either fixed roofs or tarpaulin bars were not pooled, whereas the conventional opens were, so could end up a long way from where they originally worked.

Limestone was added to the 'charge' for blast-furnaces for iron-smelting, whilst burnt lime was added to the convertors where the iron was made into steel. 

 

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I'm sorry to disappoint, but most of those are a flight of fancy/of dubious accuracy. The best is the LOWMAC EU (ex-Airfix). The Lima/Hornby bogie bolsters are (I think) the same thing, but I an unsure of their accuracy. The bird's Eye van is an ex GWR MICA B (it should be white). The model has Hornby Dublo origins and, while not bad for the fifties, over length. The 'Smith's' van is a H&BR van (yes it should have a roof). Unfortunately poor research on someone's part gave it raised framing, when the prototype was flush sided. The BR brake vans are too short in the flat sections outside the body. AFAIK the lime wagon left the factory with a peaked roof, but, like the 'Smith's' van, the roof was a push-fit and prone to falling out and getting lost. The Bolsover' wagon is a passable 20T (uprated to 21T in WWII) mineral. The TTA tank wagon is passable, if you don't look too hard (not sure of the livery - see previous post). The rest are junk/toys.

Briefly the P.O. liveries on open wagons lasted until Nationalisation in 1948*, but will have survived some time afterwards until finally repainted in BR grey. BR wagon livery was light grey for unfitted vehicles and bauxite for fitted from 1949 onwards. The P.O van liveries are all fake and The Morgan ' livery may be correct, but the wagon it is applied to is, like the LWB vans, a figment of a fertile imagination.

 

* P.O. coal wagons were taken over by the government in the war and never returned to their owners. Maintenance was kept to a minimum and did not involve repainting.

 

 

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The Lima bogie bolster was a reasonable model of the BR Bolster E (as recently released as a new tooling by Dapol) which were built late 50s/early 60s so the GW livery is fictional. They were fitted so should be in BR bauxite livery.

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The 'Morgan' wagon is an oversized toy originally produced on a brake van underframe for the Hornby Thomas series as a 'Troublesome truck'. It should have a rectangular recess at one end that would hold the face.

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Hi folks,

 

Whereas the factual information given comes from trustworthy sources I don't see any reason why some careful work couldn't make most, or all, of these wagons useful on a model railway.

 

For example, before the introduction of the Bachmann model most of us would have spent time rebuilding the Hornby tanker (the 'Shell' one in the video) to look more like a TTV/TTA in a legitimate livery.

 

As for the ex-H&BR van, if you follow the available drawings you'll end up with framing the same way as Hornby did; if you look at the same published photos that I have access too you'll  see something very different as has already been stated.

 

At the end of the day, their usefulness will depend entirely on what you want to do with your model railway.

 

Regards,

 

Alex.

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On 30/05/2020 at 14:41, Alex TM said:

Hi folks,

 

Whereas the factual information given comes from trustworthy sources I don't see any reason why some careful work couldn't make most, or all, of these wagons useful on a model railway.

 

For example, before the introduction of the Bachmann model most of us would have spent time rebuilding the Hornby tanker (the 'Shell' one in the video) to look more like a TTV/TTA in a legitimate livery.

 

As for the ex-H&BR van, if you follow the available drawings you'll end up with framing the same way as Hornby did; if you look at the same published photos that I have access too you'll  see something very different as has already been stated.

 

At the end of the day, their usefulness will depend entirely on what you want to do with your model railway.

 

Regards,

 

Alex.

 

Having acquired some Hornby TTAs over the years, I will be trying to do something with them (one day).

 

I had just finished a model of the H&BR van when Hornby brought out theirs (conveniently in LNER livery*) and thought I must have misread the Roche drawing I built it from. Subsequent location of a photo proved I hadn't. I intend to try and fit the panels into the recesses of a second van to correct the error (another 'one day' job!)

* Later on they produced another rather nice refrigerator van (NER IIRC), but again messed up by making it too short. (The Hornby underframes are rubbish, but building a replacement isn't too onerous.)

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A genuine Minera Lime Works wagon.

 

1452736358_MineraLime.Wagon.jpg.5f6912633d2a0b3bb9e58f97e64e3d38.jpg

 

The photo dates back to very early 20th century and you can see that these are end door wagons for end tipping but the ones in the background have rounded ends, no end doors and dumb buffers.  The foreground ones appear to be loaded with coal possibly for charging the kilns.  The track they are standing on ran along the top of a kiln which was top loaded.  The lower wagons, looking at the internal colouration, probably used for limestone conveyance.

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