Hornby 'Great Mountain' cupboard door P.O. mineral wagon

[Il Grifone]

Sorting through the stock boxes (as one does in these Covid lockdown times) I came across this forgotten wagon body (its dreadful underframe having long since disappeared into land-fill). Hattons appear to have been able to unload this one:

 

https://www.hattons.co.uk/573701/hornby_r199_po21_end_door_tipping_wagon_great_mountain_collieries__pre_owned_minor_marks_inside/stockdetail.aspx

 

Now can I use this on a new underframe, or should the body follow the original?

The P.O. livery is Welsh which seems unlikely, as the cupboard door is a Scottish speciality. Hence I thought of severe weathering and BR P series patches, but would so ancient a thing have survived  to such a late date? I gather there was a purge of the worst wooden wagons in the early fifties.

 

Thanks in advance for any replies, even of the "Bin it!" category. (This is a tempting solution, but my inner Scrooge takes over....)

Edited January 27, 2021 by Il Grifone
Erroneous title

[watfordtmc]

A cupboard door wagon would be unusual in the Welsh coalfield but not it seems impossible.

 

There is an image in ‘The 4mm Coal Wagon’ (Ref 1) of a wagon descending from the hump of Feltham Marshalling yard.  Although taken at a very oblique angle, this vehicle appears to have cupboard doors as well.

More to the point, the letters ‘G L M’ are painted on the end of the wagon.

 

GLM – Gueret, Llewellyn & Merrett were, I believe, colliery agents rather than colliery proprietors’ in their own right, but seem to have been a significant part of the Welsh coal trade until the 1920’s.

In 1930 they were part of the amalgamation that formed Welsh Associated Collieries (WAC), which in turn was taken over by Powell Duffryn Associated Collieries in 1936 (Ref 2).

 

A Google search turned up an image of a GLM cupboard door wagon on the Gauge 3 Society Forum:  http://g3forum.org.uk/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=1406.0;attach=2216;image

 

So Welsh cupboard door wagons are not unknown, but probably not very common.

 

Great Mountain Colliery Co. Ltd. had become part of United Anthracite Collieries by 1926, and UAC amalgamated with Amalgamated Anthracite Collieries in 1927.  AAC lasted until Nationalisation in 1947 (Ref 3).

 

As well as the grey livery you show, both Hornby and Bachman have issued a Great Mountain wagon in a dark red colour, Hornby as a cupboard door wagon and Bachman as a conventional side (& end) door wagon, so I presume there is an image of a real Great Mountain wagon available, although I would not care to say how close the models are to the real vehicle!

 

My only reservations with your plan to nationalise the model, are that:

a)    the elaborate liveries of the 1880’s and 1890’s had given way to plain black with white lettering almost universally        throughout the Welsh coal trade before the First World War – so a lot of grime would seem to be called for; particularly as Great Mountain had ceased to exist some 20 years earlier, and

b)    the livery suggests a wagon running in the 1890’s at least.  On the convention that wagons had a 40 year life span in revenue service, the vehicle would have been withdrawn before the Second World War.  However, the trade depression of the 1930’s and the needs of WW2 could have kept the vehicle in service into the post-WW2 era.

 

References:

 

1.    The 4mm Coal Wagon, Hayes J, Wild Swan Publications Ltd (Didcot) 1999, pp 97 (image taken in 1950)

2.    https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Gueret,_Llewellyn_and_Merrett

3.    http://www.welshcoalmines.co.uk/Carm/great_mountain_colliery.htm

 

Regards,

TMc

03/02/2021

 

 

[Fat Controller]

If it's of interest, there's photo of a rake of 'Great Mountain'-liveried wagons on P64 of 'The Llanelly and Mynydd Mawr Railway' by Martin Connop Price. The L&MMR was the railway that served Great Mountain colliery, and the photo was taken at Tumble. There are 5, 7 and 8-plank types visible. All carry full livery, and seem to be well turned out. Sadly, I can't distinguish any cupboard doors.

[Il Grifone]

Left over from 1926 does seem rather unlikely. Perhaps I'll heavily weather it and/or add the GLM livery (black IIRC?) on top.

However adding an underframe does make a lot of work. Like many/most R-T-R coal wagons it has a steel underframe - the real thing preferred wood. Does something unusual outweigh this?

Grifone motto "never throw anything away*" does suggest, "YES!  Get on with it!"

 

* The desperation of the distaff side of the family....

[petethemole]

I have refitted two of those (in different liveries) with Cambrian kit wooden underfames. 

[Il Grifone]

Having dug the beastie out, I find it's an 8 plank wagon 16' 6" x 8' 0" with a single through top plank (unusual there were normally three). The dimensions are OK for a wagon to RCH 1923 regulations. Seeing the oroginal livery is unlikely to have survived to the fifties, a repaint is in order. Either something weathered almost to death or BR grey. A large 'GLM' (or WAC - I'd have to make the 'A' clear on this one!) seems fairly easy to do and all/most the smaller lettering can be painted out. At the moment it has an ERG wagon* underframe. This piece of rubbish has to go! Somebody's 9 foot wooden underframe is required. I'll have to see what the junk spares box can provide.

 

*Obviously left over from my collection of these antediluvian objects. Some of them have quite nice wheels, others Bakelite horrors.