BR Loco coal wagon lettering

[PaulG]

I'm in the process of building a few 4mm Loco Coal wagons for my Colchester layout; bit of a "lockdown " project!

 

In the early BR period the livery should be black with straw lettering, but I can't find any suitable lettering on Fox, Modelmaster or HMRS websites - albeit I may have missed somthing as there are so many sheets. Cambridge Custom website doesn't seam to reference yellow lettering albeit unlike the other websites there are no illustrations. 

 

Fortunately,  David Larkin mentions that some black loco coal wagons had white lettering, which is available. 

 

I have done a search on RMWeb but can't see any reference. But has anyone found suitable yellow lettering?

[Fat Controller]

Cambridge Custom Transfers (https://www.cctrans.org.uk/ ) may have what your looking for.

[Wheatley]

Failing that, go over white lettering with a yellow marker pen which is what we use to do with the old Woodhead transfers. 

[37079]

Paul, I feel your pain! Yellow lettering for pre-nationalisation departmental wagon stock is a big gap in most transfer ranges (numbers are no issue if you are prepared to chop up transfers, but there is a lack of DM, DW, etc prefixes and letters for making up less common type names). If anyone does know of a supply I would be pleased to find out about them.

 

That said, black loco coal wagons generally didn’t have a D prefix and in most pictures the lettering looks white (albeit given the photos are generally black and white it’s impossible to say for certain!)

 

Mike

[jimwal]

Info from David Larkin's books seems to be that BR fairly quickly dropped the scheme of black livery with straw lettering for loco coal wagons. They then become grey with white lettering without a 'D' prefix.

I have seen it mentioned somewhere (possibly David Larkin again) that 21T coal wagons were transferred to power station and industrial workings with the loco coal work being done using the all wood coal and merchandise wagons supplemented by 16T mineral wagons. 

The wooden wagons sometimes marked 'one journey only- loco coal' or similar wording.

[Wheatley]

They certainly seem to be rare in actual loco coal use. As well as wooden 13ton wagons the vac fitted 16ton minerals seem to have been popular in loco coal use, and very unpopular with collieries.

Edited January 18, 2021 by Wheatley

[Fat Controller]

Sometime after 1968, I saw a freshly repainted LNER 21t loco coal wagon (the sort with vertical sides and cupboard doors) in Llanelli goods yard. The notable feature wasn't the fact that it was repainted, but that someone had repainted the black rectangle between the doors, and renewed the 'LOCO COAL ONLY' lettering. Steel-bodied 21t 'Loco Coal' of LMS, LNER and GWR origins were commonplace on workings to Carmarthen Bay power station, as were XPO examples, with various permutations of doors.

[PaulG]

I take Jim's point about wagons used by loco depots and attached a few examples taken at Colchester in the timescale of my interest c1948-1959 (except the nice GER period photo) . These photos have been collected over 50years so not sure on copyright.

Edited January 18, 2021 by PaulG

[PaulG]

Just a quick update to say I contacted John Isherwood at Cambridge Custom Transfers and had a very quick reply, very much on the lines of Jim's comment above  that he doesn't believe or have recollection of the yellow lettering on loco coal wagons.

 

His sheet BL42 does include exLNER loco coal wagons - to diagrams 9, 10, 63, 89, 162 & 192, but white lettering only.