Private owner wagons/goods wagons and consists thereof

[D5541]

Morning all

 

Thinking largely along the lines of the various planked coal wagons but..

 

Model wise, there is a vast and colourful array of many private owner wagons, having picked up a few kits recently, I was wondering, if I can word this right...

 

Would you have gotten more than one of the same owner/company wagon in the same mixed consist?

 

I've picked up a couple of slaters kits recently of the Ystradgynlais & yniscedwyn collieries wagons, along with various single po wagons, so, although unweathered n somewhat colourful, would say 2 or 3 of those, and various single/pair's of other wagons be remotely accurate, or would each companies wagons have travelled in trains consisting solely of each companies wagon?

 

If that makes the slightest sense to anyone, any answers would be gratefully welcomed :-)

 

Cheers

 

Dan

[cheesysmith]

The wagons got mixed up depending on destination. That's why the railways build marshalling yards. Very few trains went from colliery to destination as a complete set until the introduction of the HAA/MGR concept. Of course, there were exceptions (thinking of the GWR and the 21tonner from the Wales coalfields to the docks, and the LMS bogied hoppers from the midlands to London), but these were rare. The further you got from the original colliery the more mixed up a train of wagons would be.

[Talltim]

Basically as above. If you are modelling a line near a mine, then you would see block trains. If you a modelling a country station far from the pits you would see individual wagons from whoever the local coal merchants had contracts (pit or large coal merchant, or even their own wagons) with. There are other exceptions to cheesysmith's one, for example a South Wales port would also see block trains of coal for export (I suppose you could count them as being near the pits).

Having said that you might also see individual wagons from other owner/pits near coal producing areas as not all coal is equal and there might be a requirement for a different to type of coal to that which the local pit produced.

[corneliuslundie]

It also depends on the type of coal! The collieries on the west side of the South Wales coalfield mostly produced anthracite, and this went all over the country. The collieries of the Cardiff valleys produced mostly steam coal and a great deal of this this went to the ports for export. Other collieries produced house coal which went all over the country, or gas coal which went to gas works and similar.

 

The above refers to South Wales with which I am most familiar, but the same applies to other parts of the country, though anthractite was less common outside South West Wales.

 

The other issue is date. Some of the PO liveries you can buy as kits or RTR were around before the First World War, others in the 1930s. Not too many collieries lasted throughout, and if they did the livery probably changed.

 

In fact there is a whole subject here for you to read up on. You can start with the 13 volumes by Keith Turton (one more to come), then the four by Bill Hudson, one on Ince Company wagons, one on the wagons of Gloucestershire, one on the wagons of the Forest of Dean, one on the wagons of the Gloucester Wagon Co  etc etc . . .

 

You don't say in which part of the country your layout is set.

 

Jonathan

[richard i]

The simple rule was loaded were sorted so all going to the same place were together no matter which collery they came from, but empties were sorted so all from the same collery were together. At least that is what I have been led to believe.

[The Stationmaster]

The simple rule was loaded were sorted so all going to the same place were together no matter which collery they came from, but empties were sorted so all from the same collery were together. At least that is what I have been led to believe.

But the important bit is where they were sorted.  Thus output from a colliery to a local yard would be all that Colliery's wagons plus any they were loading for factors or local merchants.  they woudl then be shunted according to whatever marshalling was required for the next yard - and so on until destination (n.b. as already explained traffic for shipment was generally different).

 

On the empty working the wagons would not normally be sorted by final colliery destination until they got to the relevant local yard - but those for different areas could well be sorted at yards in the area where the loads had been received depending on where they were heading.  Incidentally GWR Service Timetables back in the  broad gauge era even include long distance trains of coal for, presumably, shipment/shipping use (judging by destination) but usually for factors rather than collieries.

[corneliuslundie]

I didn't mention the fact but there were four main categories of private owner (coal) wagon user:

 

Collieries

Factors

Coal merchants

End users

 

The collieries would have relatively large numbers of wagons but not all would produce enough coal to produce a complete train, so even trains for shipping might be from more than one colliery

 

Factors were effectively industrial scale coal merchants, arranging deals between collieries and end users and using their own wagons, the colliery's wagons or the end user's wagons, depending on the contract (or a mix). In the south of England several railway companies were supplied with loco coal by factors/merchants.

 

Coal merchants were mostly pretty small and might have a few wagons or might have their coal delivered in colliery wagons or those of a factor. Most small coal merchants usually had their coal from only a few collieries and in a specific area (often depending on where there were good rail links). So a coal merchant in Coventry would have sourced his coal from the Coventry coalfield and his wagons wouldn't be seen elsewhere. That said there were a few very large coal merchants such as Charringtons which were also factors.

 

End users were outfits such as gas works, power stations, steel works etc. Some had their own fleets but most used factors to source their coal which might then be delivered in wagons belonging to the colliery, the factor or the end user. They usually had long term contracts with a few collieries so the wagons belonging to the end user might not travel very widely. Don't forget the railways themselves. They used a lot of coal and not just for their locos..

 

The wagons which probably travelled widest were the anthracite colliery wagons. Your Ystradgynlais and Ynyscedwyn wagon is a good example. However, that wagon was built between 1904 and 1911 (depending which number you give it and the exact lettering layout, which I cannot offhand remember) and the company changed identity in 1921 so was probably repainted within a few years. In fact the history of the company is extremely complex (see Turton volume 4 pages 14-21) and this is typical of the anthracite collieries.

 

I don't know about other railways, but until late in the 19th century the Taff Vale Railway used to pick a few wagons up from each of the collieries each train passed, rather than moving bulk loads to the docks. This was highlighted when there was a committee of enquiry into the operation of the company.

 

Finally, although it doesn't affect modellers much, a very large number of wagons were actually owned by the wagon builders and hired or sold on hire purchase over seven years to the actual users. Judging by photographs this may have applied to many of the Y&Y wagons.

 

Jonathan

[wagonman]

This is a vast topic! As Jonathan says above Taff Vale trains picked up wagons from the various collieries they passed on their way to the docks at Cardiff so there would be batches of wagons from each – up to a dozen or more from the larger collieries. This can be seen in the photos of the reception sidings at Roath and elsewhere.

 

Likewise the regular coal trains from South Wales to Salisbury and on to destinations on the LSWR lines would be made up at for example Rogerstone and could well have several wagons from one colliery running together. Anthracite wagons, on the other hand, because they had such a wide range of destinations would soon have been split up into single wagons. Again time period matters as many of the Welsh collieries – especially the anthracite ones – were merged together in the 1930s: the chances of seeing several AAC wagons together must have been good!

 

We could give you better advice if you could tell us where and when your 'layout' is set...

[billbedford]

One thing to remember is that even if you are modelling a pre-nationalisation single colliery line the wagons would have been of mixed ages and therefore of differing heights. This is even more noticeable if you look at photos of long distance coal trains* were the outline is always more crenelated than uniform.

 

*Excepting, of course, the NER area.

[MarcD]

Not quite right. Its a misnomer that the NER didn't have private owner wagons they just weren't registered with the NER. There are no PO wagons on the NER was a myth that has been around for some time. Yes there were less of them because the NER tried to control the mineral traffic but there are still a fair number of them. POWsides do over 15 different sets of transfers for wagons for NER wagons, and we actually produce a kit for a Burnett's 4plk PO wagon which was favoured by a number companies in Northumberland and Co Durham.

 

Marc

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

Search out as many pictures as you can of the traffic in the area where your model is based is my core advice.

 

The question you are asking would be akin to someone in 2100 asking what variety of truck liveries might be seen operating on the UK motorway network in 2015. I expect that the best advice would be 'a huge variety (list), and pretty much only the Stobart trucks clean, unless it's a brand new tractor or trailer just entered service'.

 

Don't be afraid to 'break rules'. While the crenellated effect of different height wagon sides all jumbled together is usual, even in pre-group trains of minerals there are examples of real uniformity recorded photographically.

 

The loads are interesting too. Everything from truly huge lumps of coal, to washed fines that look like a load of coarse gravel. Many grades were produced.