Ilfracombe GWR stock

[PeteN92]

I am building a layout of Ilfracombe and I so far have a lot of southern rolling stock and locos. Until I recently read a copy of the district controllers view I didn't realise how frequent GWR services could be on the line particularly on a summer Saturday. I now need to get myself some GWR stock and I'll most likely wait for the Dapol 43xx to come out then get myself a couple of them for motive power. 

 

I hope if I post some pictures then some of you with knowledge on the GWR will be able to help identify which coaches and may be able to advise me of what I might be able to buy to make some 3-4 coach trains.

 

Thanks 

 

Pete

 

Edited June 2, 2020 by PeteN92
Image

[Harlequin]

Hi Pete, Do your books allow the images to be reproduced?

 

[PeteN92]

14 minutes ago, Harlequin said:

Hi Pete, Do your books allow the images to be reproduced?

 

Hi harlequin, I did check and couldn't find anything saying not to reproduce photos ? 

 

Might there be any other thing I should be looking for ? 

 

I'll remove the images just in case for now and see if anyone is able to help out that I can privately share the pictures with.

 

Pete

Edited June 2, 2020 by PeteN92
Image

[Harlequin]

21 minutes ago, PeteN92 said:

Hi harlequin, I did check and couldn't find anything saying not to reproduce photos ? 

 

Might there be any other thing I should be looking for ? 

 

I'll remove the images just in case for now and see if anyone is able to help out that I can privately share the pictures with.

 

Pete

If there's a copyright claim at all that will almost certainly prevent reproduction in any form. If it's a very modern book you might find some fair usage statement or reference to a public license scheme.

 

Thanks Pete. I know it's a pain but you've done the right thing!

 

I'm sure that people who can answer your questions will have all the same books, and more, so you should still get some great info.

 

[Miss Prism]

http://www.gwr.org.uk/notes/star-on-down-ilfracombe-c1923.jpg

 

[Miss Prism]

https://www.mediastorehouse.com/national-railway-museum/panoramic/locomotive-no-6344-ilfracombe-padding-train-8340593.html

 

[PeteN92]

1 hour ago, Harlequin said:

If there's a copyright claim at all that will almost certainly prevent reproduction in any form. If it's a very modern book you might find some fair usage statement or reference to a public license scheme.

 

Thanks Pete. I know it's a pain but you've done the right thing!

 

I'm sure that people who can answer your questions will have all the same books, and more, so you should still get some great info.

 

 

If I crop the images to just focus in on the coaches would that come under fair use possibly ? 

 

Rather than reproducing the whole of the original images 

 

 

[Harlequin]

1 hour ago, PeteN92 said:

 

If I crop the images to just focus in on the coaches would that come under fair use possibly ? 

 

Rather than reproducing the whole of the original images 

 

 

That's a grey area and I'm not sure what RMWeb's position on that is (although I admit I have done that myself).

 

Give it a go.

 

[PeteN92]

 

 

 

 

[rovex]

well photo 5 looks like

 

1 Hawksworth corridor brake third

2 Hawksworth corridor first

3 Mark 1 corridor third

4 Mark 1 corridpr brake third

 

Photo 2 looks like

 

1 Hawksworth corridpt brake third

2 I think this is a collett corridor third (I think its a 60ft, as opposed to 57ft)

3 This appears to be a corridor composite (looks like a yellow line above half the wondows - but I could be mistaken), and again a collett - but not sure whether 57ft or 60ft.

 

Sorry those are my best guesses

Edited June 2, 2020 by rovex

[PeteN92]

27 minutes ago, rovex said:

well photo 5 looks like

 

1 Hawksworth corridor brake third

2 Hawksworth corridor first

3 Mark 1 corridor third

4 Mark 1 corridpr brake third

 

Photo 2 looks like

 

1 Hawksworth corridpt brake third

2 I think this is a collett corridor third (I think its a 60ft, as opposed to 57ft)

3 This appears to be a corridor composite (looks like a yellow line above half the wondows - but I could be mistaken), and again a collett - but not sure whether 57ft or 60ft.

 

Sorry those are my best guesses

 Cheers rovex that's a big help I guess it's safe to say the GWR had more of a Hodge podge attitude to coach formations compared to the SR and their sets.

 

Pete

[bécasse]

I always assumed that OOC made up the sets for departures from Paddington by rolling dice. Most trains certainly looked as if they had been made up in a random fashion.

[Nearholmer]

Something to watch out carefully for is dates, given that you talk in the first post about GWR and SR, but show photo-extracts from I would guess c1960. Most of the coaches in the pictures weren't built until after WW2.

 

Likewise with locos: I always get confused over this, but have a feeling that Western locos didn't run through to Ilfracombe until after nationalisation. Am I right about this?

Edited June 2, 2020 by Nearholmer

[PeteN92]

I'm modelling through the period of nationalisation so from around 1950 to 65 if that helps zone it in. 

 

I want to have a few different rakes I can swap about and use over the different time periods. 

 

Obviously as time went on more mk1s would have appeared and I'd imagine that because this was in the far west I wondered if it was the same case as the SR where lots of stuff was cascaded older stock on local trains then supplemented by the express stock from London trains. 

 

In regards to locos it was only the GWR moguls with cut back steps that are allowed as well as 45xx and 55xx locos. Alot of time you'd see n class moguls take the trains for the beginning of the journey. 

 

Pete

[Nearholmer]

9 minutes ago, PeteN92 said:

Alot of time you'd see n class moguls take the trains for the beginning of the journey. 

 

You might need to watch dates again. I think that the WR takeover of the route took place in 1963 (please someone correct if I'm wrong) and that the loco workings changed thereafter, eventually degenerating to DMUs and Diesel Hydraulic locos..

[PeteN92]

1 minute ago, Nearholmer said:

 

You might need to watch dates again. I think that the WR takeover of the route took place in 1963 (please someone correct if I'm wrong) and that the loco workings changed thereafter, eventually degenerating to DMUs and Diesel Hydraulic locos..

Your quite right I forgot about the western take over being early 60s. I plan on modelling up to that point as I understand you would have then seen westerns and hymeks ect. On the line. Alot of the goods yard was ripped up in 63 and the carriage sidings taken out afterwards.

 

Pete

[melmoth]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

Likewise with locos: I always get confused over this, but have a feeling that Western locos didn't run through to Ilfracombe until after nationalisation. Am I right about this?

 

W.J Gardner in "From Cleaner to Controller - reminiscences of the GWR at Taunton" described firing a 63xx to Ilfracombe in 1939 - but that was on an excursion with LMS stock. There were certainly GWR through coaches which were handed over at Barnstaple at about the same time.

[Miss Prism]

There's a typical GWR-tradition of a ragbag of coaching styles in most of the pictures, but the rakes do look like brake 3rd x 2, (brake) compo and third, although not necessarily in that order. I'm guessing the period of the pictures is 1960-2 at the back end of the crimson and cream era, hence the early Colletts have mostly disappeared (there is one in pic 3), leaving an interesting collection of late Colletts, Hawksworths and BR Mk1s.
 

Edited June 2, 2020 by Miss Prism

[chrisf]

The first coach in photo 4 is a decommissioned slip coach.

 

Chris

[martinT]

17 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Likewise with locos: I always get confused over this, but have a feeling that Western locos didn't run through to Ilfracombe until after nationalisation. Am I right about this?

 

No! There are photos in the NRM's Halls' collection of GW locos beyond Barnstaple Junc c 1930. Also see Freddie Huxtable's 3 vol magnum opus on the GW's Barnstaple line. I've just picked up vol 3 & right at the beginning found an early 1930s photo (credited to Brian Perkes) of Collet 2268 piloting SR 'N' A826 across Caen Street crossing in Braunton. On the following page is another Perkes' photo, shewing prairie 5535 at the crossing with a down train. Somewhere (can't find them at the moment), there are photos  at Barnstaple Town shewing Mogul & 55xx passing a L&B train - so 1935 latest.

 

What I think can be said is that SR locos didn't work from Barum to Taunton until post-nationalisation.

 

Martin

[Fat Controller]

17 hours ago, PeteN92 said:

Your quite right I forgot about the western take over being early 60s. I plan on modelling up to that point as I understand you would have then seen westerns and hymeks ect. On the line. Alot of the goods yard was ripped up in 63 and the carriage sidings taken out afterwards.

 

Pete

I've never seen photos of either 'Thousands' or 'Meks' on the line, though I have seen ones of the 8xx series Warships and D63xx. I wonder if SR 'Cromptons' ever made it?

 

[PeteN92]

45 minutes ago, Fat Controller said:

I've never seen photos of either 'Thousands' or 'Meks' on the line, though I have seen ones of the 8xx series Warships and D63xx. I wonder if SR 'Cromptons' ever made it?

 

 

There's even a picture of the time that western firebrand went over the line ( even though it wasn't authorised to go over the bridge as it was too heavy), the only photo I've seen of a Crompton on the line was one of the last inspection trains just before ripping the entire line up.

[Nearholmer]

Thanks MartinT, not being a GWR aficionado I don’t have access to those books, so very informative.

 

It now makes me wonder if the use of GWR locos goes back pre-grouping. The 1910 Bradshaw shows what I think are four through services from Paddington, reversing at the GWR station at Barnstaple, although I think the avoiding curve already existed, and five from Waterloo via Exeter, which emphasises the shared interests in the Ilfracombe ‘branch’.

 

Really would make a good 1930s layout!

[martinT]

3 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Thanks MartinT, not being a GWR aficionado I don’t have access to those books, so very informative.

 

It now makes me wonder if the use of GWR locos goes back pre-grouping. The 1910 Bradshaw shows what I think are four through services from Paddington, reversing at the GWR station at Barnstaple, although I think the avoiding curve already existed, and five from Waterloo via Exeter, which emphasises the shared interests in the Ilfracombe ‘branch’.

 

Really would make a good 1930s layout!

 

Well, Huxtable says 'Through GWR workings - as opposed to carriages simply being worked forward by the SR - had begun in 1925, coinciding with the upgrading of the route to main line status & the provision of a larger turntable at Ilfracombe'

 

Yes, you're right about 1930s layout potential, tho' mid-1920s perhaps better - the Halls' photos (c1927) shew an amazing array of GWR stock on their line to Barnstaple. Rakes of 4 wheelers, clerestories, toplights, slip coaches, & many trains had horseboxes.

 

Martin

[Edwardian]

Unfortunately your chosen period is rather too modern for me to offer much help, but you might consider the 2-volume Freddie Huxtable work on the Taunton to Barnstaple line.

 

In my period of interest, the SW worked GW through coaches from Barnstaple to ilfracombe.  You [EDIT: I mean in your period of interest] will likely see both through coaches worked through to Barnstaple attached to an ex-Taunton local services and through trains.  I would expect Ilfracombe coaches to be mainline corridor types.

 

26 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

It now makes me wonder if the use of GWR locos goes back pre-grouping. The 1910 Bradshaw shows what I think are four through services from Paddington, reversing at the GWR station at Barnstaple, although I think the avoiding curve already existed, and five from Waterloo via Exeter, which emphasises the shared interests in the Ilfracombe ‘branch’.

 

 

 

Sadly there were no through train workings pre-Grouping.  The TT at Ilfracombe was quite short, I think it was enlarged twice and re-sited post Great War, so that would discourage through working.  Before the TT was lengthened, the SW couldn't get anything longer than a Jubilee or Steamroller down to Ilfracombe.  No GW engines ran to Ilfracombe; a couple of GW through coaches would probably have been hitched to the SW branch set hauled by a T1, occasionally an O2, and then M7s at the end of the Great War.

 

There was, apparently, sight of a GW 4-4-0 on the Ilfracombe branch during the Great War, but I think that was by way of an exception; through running with GW motive power started in the '20s.  

 

 

 

 

Edited June 3, 2020 by Edwardian
Clarity