More Pre-Grouping Wagons in 4mm - the D299 appreciation thread.

[WFPettigrew]

33 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

the decline of D299

 

Thank you for sharing this Stephen, for those of us not in the Midland Railway Society.  I find this most reassuring - I had started to get a suspicion from your previous writings about their demise that by my 1913-14 era that they would have been in significant or even terminal decline, but clearly not. 

 

That said I appreciate that the 65-70,000 that were still extant at the start of the Great War were going to be the newer ones, so more likely to have oil axleboxes, and less likely to have those extra washer plates on the end panels?

 

But I can get on and build the several Slaters kits sat in the cupboard with no concerns that they might be too early for me.  Yay!

 

All the best

 

Neil 

[magmouse]

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

the decline of D299

 

In decline, yes, but somehow still capable of inspiring over 300 pages of discussion on an internet forum! That is, to borrow from EB White, "Some Wagon".

 

Nick.

[Schooner]

13 minutes ago, magmouse said:

"Some Wagon"

'D299: Never Knowingly Over-Represented'

[Dave Hunt]

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If you join the Midland Railway Society you will be able to see the full picture.

 

Dave

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, WFPettigrew said:

That said I appreciate that the 65-70,000 that were still extant at the start of the Great War were going to be the newer ones, so more likely to have oil axleboxes, and less likely to have those extra washer plates on the end panels?

 

Only the very last 242 wagons of lot 513 (plus the 10 built in 1906 and 1000 in 1917) were built with oil axleboxes, according to the Midland Railway Study Centre copy of Drg. 550, but there does seem to be some evidence that they were retrofitted to some older wagons. Goods wagons were supposed to be renewed after 21.5 years or so, so if the Great War had not intervened, numbers of D299 and D351 (both encompassed by "8 ton wagons" on the graph) would have declined more rapidly. By 1914, 10A axleboxes would be the norm, but there would still be plenty that had been built with 8A axleboxes.

 

As to the end straps (inside and out), that was standard on D299s built with 8A axleboxes and on lots built after the adoption of 10A axleboxes, also the earlier lots of D351 and the first lot of D343, up to some date no later than 1894. So a good half were built with this feature. However, it's not seen in photos after c. 1910 (or possibly a slightly earlier date). This is not, I think, because wagons built with the end strap had been withdrawn but because after some date, whenever an end plank was replaced, they stopped bothering to drill the extra hole but just left the end straps off, often stopping-up the holes in the other planks.

 

These are questions I intend to go into in a third part of the article:

 

5 minutes ago, Dave Hunt said:

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If you join the Midland Railway Society you will be able to see the full picture.

Edited July 27, 2023 by Compound2632

[kitpw]

1 hour ago, magmouse said:

inspiring over 300 pages of discussion on an internet forum!

...and just to think, 300 pages ago, I'd never even heard of a D299.

 

 

[WFPettigrew]

56 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

By 1914, 10A axleboxes would be the norm, but there would still be plenty that had been built with 8A axleboxes.

Thank you Stephen for this and the comments about the washer plates on the end sheets. 

[billbedford]

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

By 1914, 10A axleboxes would be the norm, but there would still be plenty that had been built with 8A axleboxes.

 

How long were axleboxes expected to last?

[Compound2632]

4 minutes ago, billbedford said:

How long were axleboxes expected to last?

 

Now there's a question. 

 

A few weeks ago Tony @Rail-Online posed a photo:

 

On 10/07/2023 at 09:00, Rail-Online said:

Another D299 in LMS livery in a train at Dumfries in 1927.  It retains early grease axleboxes which must be unusual......

 

which, if those are as they appear to be, 8A axleboxes, shows them in use 38 years after they ceased to be fitted to new construction. 10A axleboxes are seen on late-surviving examples of wagons built with them. So I'm inclined to say, they lasted the lifetime of the wagon unless there was some good reason to replace them. That could include a preference for oil as lubricant, replacing grease - the Great Western certainly had a policy of fitting new oil axleboxes to old wagons, even ones built in the 1870s. 

 

But, on the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised if, when the 10A axleboxes were adopted as the new standard in 1889, the Litchurch Lane works and the numerous outstation repair shops had stocks of 8A axleboxes that they retained for repairs. But were any more cast?  

[Northroader]

Talk to an old C&W examiner in the Cardiff Valleys and they’d tell you the GWR “OK” boxes ran with more water in them than oil, being more open round the back. Grease boxes would have stayed more on privately owned mineral wagons, than “company” wagons.

[Compound2632]

25 minutes ago, Northroader said:

Grease boxes would have stayed more on privately owned mineral wagons, than “company” wagons.

 

I think I would enlarge on that: 

 

Railway companies by and large changed to oil axleboxes around the turn of the century, so by the late 30s, 19th century 7 - 10 ton grease-axleboxed wagons had largely been renewed by 10 or 12 ton oil-axleboxed wagons.

 

Private owner wagons, many of which had been of up to 10 tons capacity from the 1890s, and up to 12 tons from the late Edwardian period, continued mostly to be built with grease axleboxes until the 1923 RCH specification mandated oil axleboxes; owing to the Depression, many of these remained in service for longer, with demand for new wagons slackening off.

 

So it's the average age of the company vs PO fleets, and the difference in dates of transition to oil axleboxes, that underlies your observation.

[Spitfire2865]

As the axlebox itself is not really a "wear" item like brakes, tyres, or bearings, I dont see why it would ever need replacing beyond upgrades or wreck repairs. 

I wouldnt be surprised if the moment they changed to 10A, they scrapped the masters for the 8A.  Tooling takes space to store.  Might as well dedicate it to the upgraded example.

Then slowly use up the existing axleboxes until there were none left in stock.  

 

[billbedford]

1 hour ago, Spitfire2865 said:

As the axlebox itself is not really a "wear" item like brakes, tyres, or bearings, 

 

 

There was a brass bearing in the top half of the box. These could be removed and replaced when worn. A further complication was that these two axleboxes matched different journals, 3 1/2in for the 8A and 3 5/8in for the 10A. So presumably the use of these axleboxes would have depended on the longevity of wheelsets with the required journals. 

[MarcD]

8 hours ago, WFPettigrew said:

 

As a matter of passing interest what happen to the S&DJR 5plank opens that found their way to the midland? As they didn't have the bottom doors and were slightly thinner were they lumped into the D299 pot or treat as a separate diagram?

[Compound2632]

9 minutes ago, MarcD said:

As a matter of passing interest what happen to the S&DJR 5plank opens that found their way to the midland? As they didn't have the bottom doors and were slightly thinner were they lumped into the D299 pot or treat as a separate diagram?

 

As far as I can work out, they weren't given diagrams. They were, however, virtually identical to the wagons of Lot 29 - at least, the earlier ones; I don't know if the later ones had continuous drawgear. (There were at least two batches built by the trade, 30 in 1882/3 and 50 in 1899, the specification accompanying the tender documents for each batch are in the Midland Railway Study Centre collection. The 1882 specification has R.J. Billinton's name on the front page.) It's likely, though, that the Lot 29 wagons had all been broken up by the time the S&DJR stock was divided up in 1914. A few hundred not-quite-standard wagons would be such a drop in the ocean on the Midland that I doubt anybody bothered about them, much.

 

I wonder to what extent they remained on the S&DJR? The Road Vans, since they had specific duties, probably didn't wander? I don't know. 

[MarcD]

Does this include the ones with the raised ends?

 

[Compound2632]

44 minutes ago, MarcD said:

Does this include the ones with the raised ends?

 

 

Presumably. But it seems to be anybody's guess how many of these there actually were.

 

Leafing through Southern Wagons Vol. 1, the drawing Figure 52, p. 89, shows continuous drawgear, per Midland Drg. 550, D299, but with longitudinal tie-rods between the middle bearers that would obstruct bottom doors - Drg. 550 shows none. Apart from that and the wooden door stops, the most obvious feature distinguishing these S&DJR wagons is the 7' 9" headstocks, rather than the standard Midland 7' 6". This 7' 9" dimension is confirmed by the 1882 specification I mentioned but the 1898 specification gives 7' 8"!

 

The 1882 specification also gives the cross-section of the main frame timbers - solebars, headstocks, and middle bearers, as 11" x 5", where Drg. 550 has 11" x 4½" but the latter dimensions are followed in the 1898 specification. The 1898 specification also calls for the solebar to be flitched with a ¼" thick wrought iron plate. So all round these S&DJR wagons were a solider job than their Midland brethren.

 

There real curiosity, though, are those 10-ton wagons, 15' 11" long, built 1907-12, which are almost dead ringers for the dozen Midland D302 wagons of 1901, excepting that they retained the 7' 5" width of D299 where Drg. 1490 for D302 shows 7' 9"; also oil axleboxes and long brake levers; they pre-date the Midland's D663A 5-plank 10-ton wagons, which were a whisker bigger at 16' 0" over headstocks, 7' 10" over side sheeting, and 3' 2" deep, which started being built in the spring of 1913. The table, Southern Wagons p. 86, shows 84 10-ton high sided wagons divided in 1914 and 65 retained as loco coal wagons; these are presumed all to be from the 80 D301-like 6-plank wagons of 1902, which would leave 15 to be divided, implying that the other 69 were of the 15' 11" D302-like design - the sole instance where a S&DJR type was more numerous than the Midland design that inspired it!

Edited July 27, 2023 by Compound2632

[Rail-Online]

Hi Guys,

 

Here is another one for you 'wagon spotters'.  Again at Dumfries in 1927 probably of the same train as previously but on a different day.  Again there are two cattle wagons leading but here one is of GWR origin (was this during the brief time that the GWR allowed their cattle wagons to be pooled before pulling them out?).

 

Cheers Tony

 

[Rail-Online]

duplicate entry

Edited July 31, 2023 by Rail-Online

[Compound2632]

25 minutes ago, Rail-Online said:

Again at Dumfries in 1927 probably of the same train as previously but on a different day.  Again there are two cattle wagons leading but here one is of GWR origin (was this during the brief time that the GWR allowed their cattle wagons to be pooled before pulling them out?).

 

The lists in Atkins et al., GWR Goods Wagons, and Tatlow, LNER Wagons Vol. 4A, both say:

• 11 August 1925, cattle wagons (fitted and unfitted), LMS, LNE, SR, Met
• 31 December 1927, cattle wagons, GWR, withdrawn.

So it's not obvious when GWR cattle wagons went into the pool, but at least they were in the pool at the time of your photo.

[Rowsley17D]

42 minutes ago, Rail-Online said:

Hi Guys,

 

Here is another one for you 'wagon spotters'.  Again at Dumfries in 1927 probably of the same train as previously but on a different day.  Again there are two cattle wagons leading but here one is of GWR origin (was this during the brief time that the GWR allowed their cattle wagons to be pooled before pulling them out?).

 

Cheers Tony

 

 

I wondered what the boxes were at the side of the other track. In the larger image I see they're stacked sleepers with chairs on top. Looks as though the PW guys are going to be busy.

[magmouse]

The GWR cattle wagon is curious - the roof and lettering look very new, yet the grey paint on the end is patchy and looks a bit grubby. Was the white paint done without the rest? Seems unlikely.

 

The SR wagon in 7th place seems to have roughly sawn lengths of wood loaded vertically. They seem too uneven in length for pit props, and pit props usually still have the bark still on. Any thoughts, anyone?

 

Wagons 4, 5 and 6 have some kind of loose load, very light in colour - sand?

 

Nick.

[Compound2632]

10 minutes ago, magmouse said:

The GWR cattle wagon is curious - the roof and lettering look very new, yet the grey paint on the end is patchy and looks a bit grubby. Was the white paint done without the rest? Seems unlikely.

 

Perhaps a leaky roof had been re-canvassed?

 

There is an interesting mix of pre-grouping and grouping period wagons. the third and fourth wagons seem to be typical Scottish end-door wagons, one can just make out that the first of the pair is lettered NB. I'm a bit mystified by the very austere-looking van after the GW iron mink.

 

Is the engine still in G&SW livery? I can't see any sign of a number on the tender-side.

[magmouse]

1 minute ago, Compound2632 said:

Perhaps a leaky roof had been re-canvassed?

 

That would make sense.

 

Nick.

[jwealleans]

Second cattle wagon is GN, I think - very similar to the LNER design but with a one piece flap door.   First in the cut of vans is an ex-NER G2.   I think that's a GE design behind it, as the one Oxford have not long since done.   LNER or NER design behind that, then a pair of LMS, then what might be another LNER design.  Some very bright roofs there, too.

 

I'm not sure what that is behind the Iron Mink either except that the roofline is not dissimilar to the LNER types.   Is there a solebar step?  

Edited July 31, 2023 by jwealleans