Early BR Freight wagons lettering : How long in service?

[Blobrick]

As far as l am aware the early BR wagon numbering and lettering style introduced in 1948, lasted  with little change, up until 1957, when BR introduced the lined box, with lettering and numerals placed inside.

 

I have be trawling through photos of the late 60s early 70s to see how long the original style of lettering survived after 1957. So far, l ve found very few photos, which are detailed enough to ascertain clearly what  the markings being carried were by that time.

I suspect that not many, survived into the 1970s, which would be a shame, as l have a cupboard full of wagons with the earlier style lettering, but  my current layout is set around 1969-70.     

 

I would dearly  like to know what other more knowledgeable RMweb members think of the above?  I am l setting myself up for many a long night renumbering my wagons!!

 

Bob C

[Fat Controller]

The 'boxed' style of lettering was officially launched in 1964, I thought. However, there were wagons still carrying the old style until the end of vacuum-braked services, long after the period you're modelling. When TOPS was introduced, about 1973, some wagons had the code painted on above pre-1964 lettering, with no effort to box the numbers. The various books by the likes of Trevor Mann and David Larkin, along with Paul Barlett's site should give you plenty of inspiration.

[Enterprisingwestern]

 

If you know where to look, (Paul Bartlett/Don Rowland/David Larkin etc), early brandings lasted well into the 70's, maybe later. My period is the same as yours and I run quite an eclectic mix. Bear in mind that only wagons built during the period would have that style, so basically and broadly mineral wagons and early/pre nat vans and opens to BR design. Anything built during the later period would be turned out in the livery applicable at the time. There was no great interest in renumbering wagons for the sake of it, and even patch repairs would still keep their original markings.

 

Mike.

[The Johnster]

Piece of string question, and one I have to consider on my own layout, set in the 1948-58 time frame, with regard to Big 4 and 'transition' liveries.  What you are really asking is how often freight vehicles were repainted after 1957, as they would not get the new 'numbering in panels' system until they were repainted.  This is where the piece of string comes in, as the 1957-70 period saw the biggest drop in freight traffic since railways started out, enabling older wagons and those in poor condition to be taken out of service and sold for scrap.  

 

This meant that vehicles overhauled in '56 or early '57 could well have lasted a very long time in service before their next overhaul, and there were certainly examples in the 70s when I was a freight guard at Canton.  But by that time the great majority, I'd say 90%, had the panels.  As there was a surplus, constantly being enlarged by loss of traffic (Beeching didn't help but he's not completely to blame, things were going that way anyway), there was less need to maintain wagons, and a very low cost limit was put on doing this (50p for brake vans); if a repair would cost more than this, the vehicle was taken out of service.

 

So, the good news is that some of your wagons can be used on your 69-70 layout as they are, but the bad news is that probably only 1 in 10, maybe 15. of them can and the rest need renumbering.  I am not sure what transfers are available for this period, but this would be the way to go rather than attempting to build the numbers and boxes up from HMRS sheets.  

 

The ratio might be more like 1 in 5 for minerals, especially 16tonners.  If you have any wooden 7 plank minerals, these were extinct by 1969 except as internal users at collieries and steelworks.  AFAIK none ever carried the 'box' livery; I agree with Fat that this did not appear until 1964 btw; I have no recollection of it before that and it didn't really make an impact for 2 or 3 years afterwards.  Remember, everything at this time is being skewed by the rate at which wagons were being withdrawn, some only a few years after being built, and some Big 4 designs were still being built in the mid 50s.  I do not know by what rate withdrawals were exceeding new builds or full overhauls that included repaints in the new livery, but it was more than the 2 combined!

 

Another thing you might want to take into consideration is the ratio of opens to vans.  This had been shifting in favour of vans since the turn of the century, and I have adopted a ratio of 50/50 for my period, ball park right for the mid point, 1953 , and by 1960 the ratio was probably more like 30/70 in favour of vans.  By 1969 you could make that 15/85 I reckon.  

 

Basically, you need to retire any wooden minerals and unfitted general merchandise wagons.  Some may be in departmental use, but there were none in revenue service by 1969.  Some of the later vans and opens might be refurbished with vacuum brakes and repainted in bauxite livery; HMRS Paul of this parish is your friend in this matter.  Unfitted wagons survived in the mineral categories, coal, iron ore, limestone, 'specialists' like twin or bogie bolsters, 'plate', pig iron and such; twin bolsters and pig iron were in local circuits and did not get out on to long distance main line work much. 

[BernardTPM]

4 hours ago, Fat Controller said:

The 'boxed' style of lettering was officially launched in 1964, I thought. However, there were wagons still carrying the old style until the end of vacuum-braked services, long after the period you're modelling. When TOPS was introduced, about 1973, some wagons had the code painted on above pre-1964 lettering, with no effort to box the numbers. The various books by the likes of Trevor Mann and David Larkin, along with Paul Barlett's site should give you plenty of inspiration.

Largely correct though the new letter style was shown in the April 1963 issue of Modern Railways, so probably from very early 1963 onwards. This is also the time the collection and delivery fleet started to be painted in yellow rather than red/cream and the short-lived Rail freight arrow/box symbol came out.

I remember seeing wagons being scrapped at Barry in 1978 still having non-boxed markings, though they had TOPS codes painted on.

[hmrspaul]

As suggested this is difficult. I tend to disagree that so much of the fleet would have been rewritten by 1969 - 70. This was the period as mentioned when freight was at a very low ebb and throw away was more common than repair. As Johnster mentioned it wasn't only steam locos and diesel hydraulics that had short lives, so did many quite new wagons if they exceeded low monetary repair limits. This meant that different fleets were treated differently, for example steel carrying wagons were in short supply as there was increased steel being used and more movement between different works. So the pre-nationalisation wagons were tidied up and will have received the 1963 box lettering. On the other hand as mentioned the mineral fleet was being thinned out - not only the wooden minerals have gone so to would most of the early 16t steel minerals - basically those with drop floor doors - which can be identified by having independent brake gear - a double V hanger on each side of the wagon. On the otherhand 2 door pre-nationalisation minerals survived. Only a few minerals and hopper wagons were rebuilt by that time, and they would have been to the new style. 

 

The yellow load markings were being introduced as were the maintenance panels. These would be applied to otherwise unrepainted wagons. In later years as others have mentioned the basic pre-1963 writing survived but it was often partially altered - by metrication of tares and loads, sometimes just some of this being in boxes, as were some of the newer names given to wagons - such as VANFIT, COAL 16 - wagons which used to be so obvious that it wasn't necessary to write on them what they were!

 

Paul

https://paulbartlett.zenfolio.com/

Edited October 3, 2020 by hmrspaul

[Blobrick]

Thank you Gents, especially The Johnster and Paul. for taking the time, and making the effort to reply to my query .

Your information has helped sharpen my understanding of the period in question.

 

 

Many thanks

 

Bob C

 

Edited October 3, 2020 by Blobrick

[Ben Alder]

I thought you might be interested in this lot I took in 1974 at Aberdeen.

 

 

[Kylestrome]

18 hours ago, Blobrick said:

I have be trawling through photos of the late 60s early 70s to see how long the original style of lettering survived after 1957.

 

I can thoroughly recommend the book ‘Working Wagons, Volume 1. 1968 - 1973’ by David Larkin.

 

Most of the photos in it are from 1968 to ‘70, so give a good indication of what was in use in your chosen period.

 

HTH,

David

(not that David! )

[Chris Turnbull]

Here's an interesting article that appeared in the December 1966 Model Railway Constructor that you may find of interest.

 

Lettering the goods fleet Dec 66 MRC.pdf

 

Chris Turnbull

[Blobrick]

Thanks Chris, very kind of you to up load

 

Bob C

[Blobrick]

1 hour ago, Kylestrome said:

Thanks for the recommendation David, seems my book shelf is going to get even longer!

 

Bob C

 

1 hour ago, Kylestrome said:

I can thoroughly recommend the book ‘Working Wagons, Volume 1. 1968 - 1973’ by David Larkin.

 

Most of the photos in it are from 1968 to ‘70, so give a good indication of what was in use in your chosen period.

 

HTH,

David

(not that David! )

 

[hmrspaul]

4 hours ago, Chris Turnbull said:

Here's an interesting article that appeared in the December 1966 Model Railway Constructor that you may find of interest.

 

Lettering the goods fleet Dec 66 MRC.pdf 693.46 kB · 11 downloads

 

Chris Turnbull

Ian was a year or two older than me - perhaps he was 17 or 18 when this was written, and published in the magazine that Chris Leigh was the junior for. All of us were founder members of Staines MRS (now Egham&SMRS). Ian kindly introduced me to the mysteries of the local wagonery such as the running numbers didn't alter but a prefix indicated the previous owner - thus M was for LMS. None of this was easily available knowledge in 1965. An early wagon trip we made was to introduce me to Westbourne Park https://PaulBartlett.zenfolio.com/brconflata/e1f05097e and Watford https://PaulBartlett.zenfolio.com/brslopesidemineral/e388d45f4

Later in the year the two of us formed the SMRS Wagon Study Group and organised for the club to make two visits to the local Marshalling Yard in Feltham. I don't know if the railway ever realised two school kids had made the arrangements!

Good memories of a long lost friend. 

 

Paul

[Chris Turnbull]

2 hours ago, hmrspaul said:

Ian was a year or two older than me - perhaps he was 17 or 18 when this was written, and published in the magazine that Chris Leigh was the junior for. All of us were founder members of Staines MRS (now Egham&SMRS). Ian kindly introduced me to the mysteries of the local wagonery such as the running numbers didn't alter but a prefix indicated the previous owner - thus M was for LMS. None of this was easily available knowledge in 1965. An early wagon trip we made was to introduce me to Westbourne Park https://PaulBartlett.zenfolio.com/brconflata/e1f05097e and Watford https://PaulBartlett.zenfolio.com/brslopesidemineral/e388d45f4

Later in the year the two of us formed the SMRS Wagon Study Group and organised for the club to make two visits to the local Marshalling Yard in Feltham. I don't know if the railway ever realised two school kids had made the arrangements!

Good memories of a long lost friend. 

 

Fascinating!  This just goes to show how even the most knowledgeable of us had to start somewhere.

 

Chris Turnbull 

[Blobrick]

Thanks Gents, all this info is much appreciated

 

Bob C

[Enterprisingwestern]

 

To satisfy my own curiosity I dug out David Larkin's Working Wagons vol 1 1968 - 1973 and interrogated the pictures therein.

118 wagons had unboxed numbers, and 31 had boxed numbers including 4 HAA/VAA type wagons built in the late 60's so therefore guaranteed to be boxed. I didn't count PO wagons, cement, oil etc.

 

Mike.

[Blobrick]

45 minutes ago, Enterprisingwestern said:

 

To satisfy my own curiosity I dug out David Larkin's Working Wagons vol 1 1968 - 1973 and interrogated the pictures therein.

118 wagons had unboxed numbers, and 31 had boxed numbers including 4 HAA/VAA type wagons built in the late 60's so therefore guaranteed to be boxed. I didn't count PO wagons, cement, oil etc.

 

Mike.

 

 

Thanks Mike, that seems to bare out earlier comments about approximate ratios

 

Cheers Bob C