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

[Compound2632]

@billbedford, several people I spoke to at ExpoEM were asking after you.

[MikeOxon]

1 hour ago, Mol_PMB said:

I don't know why I'm going down this rabbit-hole because I'm never going to find a photo of an Asterisk wagon when generations of GWR wagon researchers have failed

Great Western Way (1st ed) mentions the story on p.89:

"Another uncorroborated assertion appears in The Great Western Railway Magazine for January 1909 where an old ex-employee stated that for many years the Company's wagons carried a device,"something like an asterisk", on their sides and the inference is that this emblem lasted until near 1880. ... But in all the hundreds of illustrations studied no trace of such a device has been found; on the contrary, in two or three photographs of locomotives taken before 1879 wagons in the background exhibit perfectly plain sides"

 

[Compound2632]

47 minutes ago, MikeOxon said:

an old ex-employee 

 

Is it likely that the Rev E. L Shadwell was an ex-employee? In those days it was, I think, more unusual to take Anglican orders later in life than it is now, though I suppose he could well be a nonconformist minister, in which case he might well have held a weekday job.

[Mikkel]

The article does not inform us of his occupation, but from reading the rest of it I see no indication that he was employed by the GWR. At the beginning of the article he states merely that the Great Western was his "favourite line". The article does however show that he was a good oberver of detail, and had some technical insight.

 

His recollections begin in the June 1909 issue p. 131, direct link here:

 

https://didcotrailwaycentre.cook.websds.net/PDFViewer/web/viewer.html?file=%2fFilename.ashx%3ftableName%3dta_journals%26columnName%3dfilename%26recordId%3d115

 

- and then continue in the September 1909 issue p. 209, where we find the quote in question, direct link here:

 

https://didcotrailwaycentre.cook.websds.net/PDFViewer/web/viewer.html?file=%2fFilename.ashx%3ftableName%3dta_journals%26columnName%3dfilename%26recordId%3d118

 

In the latter, don't miss the first para about red neckties!

 

The main journal landing page is here:

 

https://didcotrailwaycentre.cook.websds.net/authenticated/Browse.aspx?BrowseID=3&tableName=ta_journals

 

 

Edited May 14 by Mikkel

[Compound2632]

Interesting to see that Mr R.H. Lea, newly appointed Canadian agent, received his early training in the Northern Division. Lea is a fairly common surname in the West Midlands but rather rarer elsewhere, even today.

 

Interesting also to note that by 1908, second class had been eliminated in Scotland - I knew the Caledonian abolished it in 1893, as did a number of English companies, but was that part of a general abolition by the Scottish companies?

 

Immediately before Shadwell's comment on changes in wagon colour, he says "One never now sees the "bonnet-ended" wagons which were at one time so plentiful on the G.W." There is one to be seen in the c. 1905 photo of Kings Meadow, Reading, that has been much discussed here, but I suppose by 1909 they might well have all gone, or at least have become so very rare as to escape his notice. One wonders if any ever got the large GW initials?

 

I was glad to see a couple of GW employees doing well at the Earley Horticultural Show; alas no mention of how their SE&C colleagues fared.

 

The report of the chess championship at Paddington exposes a bit of company nepotism - it was won by Mr J. Grierson of the Assistant Goods Manager's office; presumably a descendant or at least relation of James Grierson, General Manager in the 1880s.

 

Good to find that the coordinating activities of the RCH extended to organising inter-company athletics events, such as the 100 yards London Railways Championship.

 

But the item that really caught my eye was the statement in the account of the Chairman's report, that expenditure on wagon hire had been reduced by £6,400 and on the use of other companies' wagons carrying though traffic by £2,000. The actual sums paid out under these headings aren't given, but will be in the accounts. This prompts the thought that an analysis of expenditure on the latter might give one some sort of handle on the extent to which foreign wagons worked through.

Edited May 14 by Compound2632

[Mol_PMB]

The original articles by Shadwell were interesting and perhaps put a bit of context behind his comments. He says that his earliest recollections of the GWR were when he was living in Lancashire and travelling to Hampshire occasionally, and the stations he lists as being most familiar with are broadly on that axis. By the way he refers to events in 1868, 1875 and 1876 my impression is that these occurred later than his childhood visits. In the second article (published 1909) he says 'on looking back for a period of over 50 years' suggesting that his earliest memories would have been in the early 1850s. Does this correlate with his recollections of early signalling, loco names and the rebuilding of stations?

 

He must have been in his 60s at least when he wrote the article, and perhaps with some influence of rose-tinted spectacles.

It might be that the 'asterisk' recollections date back to the 1850s / 1860s period when photos are scarce, or there is a possibility that his memories have become confused over the years.

 

He says 'I left the south in 1905 and have since lived in Yorkshire'. This implies that there was an intervening period when he lived in the south, perhaps in the Basingstoke/Reading area given the comments and his apparent familiarity with the loco crews at Reading and Paddington. But his familiarity with the wider GWR network sounds rather limited - he once travelled to Penzance and to West Wales but only once each.  

Recollections such as 'One never now sees the "bonnet-ended" wagons which were at one time so plentiful on the G.W.' might be influenced by the fact that he's been living in Leeds for the past 4 years and doesn't see so many GWR wagons anyway, so the chances of seeing such an old type are negligible.

 

 

 

[Compound2632]

11 minutes ago, Mol_PMB said:

Does this correlate with his recollections of early signalling, loco names and the rebuilding of stations?

 

Reading retained the layout he describes until rebuilding around 1898-1900; it was largely unchanged from that until the rebuilding earlier this century. Slough I think was rebuilt about the same time or possibly a few years earlier. So that doesn't really help pin him down.

[MikeOxon]

There is a mention of E.L.Shadwell ion the website of St.Matthew's Church, Lightcliffe HX2 8TH:

 

"From the Brighouse News 16th October 1903: The wedding was solemnised early yesterday morning of Mr. Harold Greenwood, ... The ceremony was performed by the Rev. E. L. Shadwell, who was at one time curate at the Parish Church."

 

Perhaps he served as a chaplain to the railway at some time, since he knew the names of many of the enginemen at Paddington?

[Chas Levin]

On 13/05/2024 at 11:40, Compound2632 said:

I've commented recently on shows at which I was unable to buy any wagon kits. ExpoEM at Bracknell this weekend most definitely did not fall into this category...

 

Very sorry to have missed this - we went (for the first time) to the Market Deeping MRC Show at Stamford instead, which was also marvellous, though rather less kit-focussed than Bracknell.

 

I wish show didn't clash so that we have to choose, but I guess there are only so many available dates...

[Siberian Snooper]

On 13/05/2024 at 11:40, Compound2632 said:

I've commented recently on shows at which I was unable to buy any wagon kits. ExpoEM at Bracknell this weekend most definitely did not fall into this category! I have come way with quite a haul, including purchases of new kits from London Road Models and Pre-Grouping Models and samples of the new Meon Valley Models Midland wagons available through Brassmasters. Unfortunately any work on all these will have to wait until I've finished setting the next edition of Modelling the Midland... 

 

I also took delivery of a couple of boxes of second-hand wagons and kits and bits, a private purchase from an estate sale. All sorts of goodies there, including a large number of bits from Ratio LNWR wagons, mostly capable of being sorted out and reunited into complete wagons. As a taster from this treasure trove, a mystery wagon, iron-bodied but apparently timber-underframed:

 

 

There's another of the same, unbuilt, so I know it's from a Woodham Wagon Works whitemetal kit, described as "Robert Heath & Son Iron Open". I bit of Googling reveals that this firm were coal owners and ironmasters in Biddulph and Kidsgrove, fitting with the North Staffs orientation of a lot of the material from this estate sale, and indeed their home-built 0-4-0ST No. 6 is now preserved at Foxfield: https://knottycoachtrust.org.uk/robert-heath-no-6/.

 

There is no entry for this firm in the Lightmoor Index and as far as I can see the kit is not one now with either Roxey or @5&9Models (where's Chris' website gone?). So I wonder if anyone can supply any prototype information - maybe @burgundy himself; it's a bit out-of-area for his Brighton interests. 

 

 

Did you not visit Prickly Pear at EXPOEM? He had some new NBR wagons on sale. 

 

 

[Compound2632]

5 minutes ago, Siberian Snooper said:

Did you not visit Prickly Pear at EXPOEM? He had some new NBR wagons on sale. 

 

Yes, I had a conversation with him, confessing that I haven't yet built the kit I had off him two years ago... 

[burgundy]

36 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Yes, I had a conversation with him, confessing that I haven't yet built the kit I had off him two years ago... 

2 years! That's new. 

The last Woodham Wagon Works kits would have been cast in the mid 1990s and they are still turning up unbuilt!

Best wishes 

Eric 

[billbedford]

16 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

@billbedford, several people I spoke to at ExpoEM were asking after you.

 

Thanks, that's nice to know. 

 

I'm OK, sort of. I had a major, and life changing, operation four weeks ago, and have been told that the recovery is likely to take 3-6 months. 

So I'm sat here contemplating my future and sleeping a lot. In particular I'm trying to decide to keep on making wagons as I have been doing, or change than so that I can produce them in batches, or do something completely different. 

Maybe I'll sleep on it. 

 

[magmouse]

Best wishes for your recovery, Bill.

 

Batch production could be a good way to go. It would focus the minds of customers: “do I want one of these? If so, I need to buy it now.” It brings clarity to what is available, and removes any expectation that you are going to keep an inventory of catalogue items.

 

i know it is the opposite of the “print on demand” model that 3DP encourages, but you would be able to design, test and batch-print a model as a single process. You produce new models at a rate that suits you, within what you can/want to do.

 

Nick.

[Andy Vincent]

7 hours ago, billbedford said:

In particular I'm trying to decide to keep on making wagons as I have been doing, or change than so that I can produce them in batches, or do something completely different.

Bill

 

Firstly, and most importantly, I am glad you are recovering.

 

When I contemplated starting Meon Valley Models and turning an interest into a business, I did look at your business model but decided that the only way it was going to work for me (with full time job and three teenage kids) was batch production. That model has been further refined, as anyone who has bought one of my wagons recently may have noticed, with labels now listing the component parts. This is to ensure that I pick the right parts for each kit as batch production does have a downside in that holding and managing stock becomes much more challenging!

 

In my case, all items are available all the time with a new batch run whenever stocks are getting low. Reading between the lines on the Cambrian Models web site, they seem to take the same approach albeit their stock coverage seems to be lower - I think there have only been two occasions when I haven't had stock on hand.

 

Ultimately, you have to do what what you are going to enjoy most and which gives you the best quality of life (why weren't we taught about that in careers sessions at school?!). Whatever you decide, your contribution to the hobby has been, and continues to be, immense. Long may that continue.

 

Andy

Edited May 14 by Andy Vincent
Added Cambrian observation

[Compound2632]

6 hours ago, Andy Vincent said:

Reading between the lines on the Cambrian Models web site, they seem to take the same approach albeit their stock coverage seems to be lower

 

He does seem to be able to mould on demand - presumably it is not too time-consuming to swap dies in and out of his machine. No idea what quantity he produces per run, though. He didn't have the kit I wanted at ExpoEM but took my order with a "show offer" of free delivery. 

 

Interesting conversation with him about progress with the ex-Coopercraft kits, which sounds very encouraging, but not for me to divulge.

[Compound2632]

Another taster from the hoard - one I've been hankering for ever since I first knew the kit had existed, a Colin Ashby Midland sleeper wagon, diagram D307:

 

 

This kit made use of the Slaters cattle wagon underframe, which, if used 'as is' is unsatisfactory as it has oil axleboxes rather than grease. The previous owner corrected that but glued the fold-up axleguard units directly to a replacement plasticard floor, with the result that they sit too high - i.e. the wagon rides too low. So a bit of careful improvement work needed.

 

 

[Embedded link to catalogue thumbnail of MRSC 64648.]

[Nick Holliday]

On 13/05/2024 at 12:39, Compound2632 said:

 

Thanks, I've now had a look at that. It would be interesting to have confirmation whether or not Heath was building wagons of this type for his own use or only as loco coal wagons for the North Staffs.

There is a lot of information about Robert Heath in a recent Lightmoor Press book, Railways and Industry of the Biddulph Valley, Volume One, by Allan C Baker. Much is scattered throughout the text, and nothing specific about wagons, but, thanks to a legal dispute, there is a long piece about the group’s traffic, which involved prodigious amounts of coal, timber and iron ore. The company seems to have an extensive private railway system connecting its mines and coal mines, and maybe its own wagons didn’t stray too far from home, although their products were sent all over Great Britain.

On 13/05/2024 at 12:39, Compound2632 said:

These are the only Woodham kits in the hoard, or at least that part of it I purchased. The rest is mostly Ratio and Slaters, though there are some interesting others... 

I dare not mention how many WWW kits are in my hoard - no doubt my children will have to find out eventually, unless my wife does first!

[Compound2632]

Distraction:

 

Midland sleeper wagons - numerology and typology.

 

High-sided sleeper wagons were being built in Kirtley's day, with 59 built as renewals between 1867 and 1870. Seventy more were built to a typical Clayton design of the 1880s, with buffing springs back-to-back amidships, bearing on the middle bearers or cross timbers. As usual with this design, there was an additional centre cross timber, to which a bracket was fixed to support the inner end of the brake shaft; this can be clearly seen in the photo of No. 33789 of lot 70, built in 1882:

 

 

[Embedded link to catalogue thumbnail of MRSC 64649.]

 

Lot 70, for 50 wagons, was ordered as an addition to stock. This originated as a request from the Stores Committee to the Carriage & Wagon Committee, which, as usual for capital expenditure, had to be passed on to the General Purposes Committee for approval. The Stores Committee had specified that these wagons were for conveying creosoted sleepers. Would the creosote have contaminated ordinary goods wagons? There was a large amount of additional goods stock ordered in 1881/2, with several types of wagon being built concurrently, so it's unclear whether wagons of each lot occupied a block of numbers or if sequential numbers were given to wagons as they were completed but, if they were numbered in blocks, fiddling around with know numbers, it seems probable that the photograph is of the first of the batch, which took Nos. 33789-33838. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but my little list has no other numbers in that range. 

 

Lot 137 of 1885 was for 20 more of the same, built as renewals.

 

Lot 273 of 1891 was for 175, built to the same drawing, Drg. 535, but with the top half of the sides made to fold down, rather than being fixed, as is evidenced by the photo of No. 4887 of this lot, in my previous post. (It had evidently taken a generation or more of heaving heavy timber out of the bottom of a 3' 4"-deep wagon for someone to think of that. American college students are brighter: allegedly, they'd been playing basketball for only ten years before someone had the idea of cutting a hole in the bottom of the basket.) One hundred of this lot were additions to stock, again at the request of the Stores Committee. They cost £79 each - a standard 8-ton open cost between £60 and £62. The addtions to stock may have been numbered 111638-111737 - an estimate made by a great deal of dead reckoning, though 111691 is the number on a Ken Werrett drawing of this type of sleeper wagon and 111715 was recorded as the number of a wagon carrying sleepers by a number taker at Guiseley in early 1892 [MRSC 88-4.721.4235.01], with no other numbers known in this range. So the photo of No. 4887 shows one of the 75 built as renewals.

 

The Study Centre's copy of Drg. 535 [MRSC 88-D1740] shows no signs of the alterations to the sides for Lot 273 but. looking at the brakegear of No. 4487, one can see that it uses the same old-style underframe. It does, however, have the Ellis 10A axleboxes introduced a couple of years earlier.

 

The return of stock at 31 December 1894 given in the Carriage & Wagon Committee minutes lists 246 8-ton and 20 9-ton sleeper wagons. Assuming all 175 of lot 273 had been built by this date, this would mean that the stock of sleeper wagons in 1880 had been 116, all of Kirtley origin. Of these, 95 had been renewed by wagons of lots 137 and 273, leaving just 21 of the Kirtley type by 1894. The Clayton wagons were all of 8 ton capacity, as far as one can tell, indicating that in Kirtley's day, 9 tons was the usual capacity for sleeper wagons. (Somewhere upthread there's a calculation based on the typical density of Baltic pine, showing that the 452 cu ft capacity of Clayton's wagons was well-matched to 8 tons of sleepers.) 

 

The final sleeper wagons were 50 to lot 495 of 1900, to a new drawing, Drg. 1456 [MRSC 88-D1878], described in the lot list as 'Similar to lot 273 on standard underframe'. The drawing shows continuous drawgear with a central cradle and buffing springs behind the headstocks, as usual by this date. Consequently, there was no central cross timber and the brakeshaft was supported by a pair of vee-hangers, bolted either side of the solebar. This lot were built as renewals. I would question whether the last 20 or so Kirtley wagons, which would have been 30 years old by 1900, had actually survived this long - my guess would be that they had been renewed by wagons of other types in the mid-1890s. It seems more likely to me that these were renewals of lot 70, in which case they would have taken their numbers. A good photograph of an example of this lot would be an interesting find!

 

When the diagram book was compiled, the fixed-side wagons were assigned D306 and the drop-side ones D307 - illustrating that it was the operational functionality not the drawing to which they were built that dictated which diagram a wagon was assigned to.

 

The 1913 Return of Working Stock, the first in which service vehicles were listed separately, records 627 rail and sleeper wagons. By this date, two lots of bogie rail wagons had been built:

 

20 bogie rail wagons, lot 660, D340 (built in renewal of 118 single-bolster timber trucks)

75 bogie rail trucks, lot 485, D330 (built as additions to stock)

 

These all appear on the 1913 list of numbers of special wagons; a bit of arithmetic shows that they were included in the total of 404 Special Wagons in the 1913 Return of Working Stock. Therefore, if one assumes the most recently-built wagons were the ones actually extant, the 627 rail and sleeper wagons will have included:

 

6 short rail wagons, lot 722, D335A

50 sleeper wagons, lot 495, D307

180 long rail wagons, lot 465, D334

50 long rail wagons, lot 377, D334

50 long rail wagons, lot 353, D334

50 long rail wagons, lot 299, D334

175 sleeper wagons, lot 273, D307

65 short rail wagons, lot 238, D335

 

626 total.

 

And below the line:

 

20 sleeper wagons, lot 137, D306

50 sleeper wagons, lot 70, D306

 

70 total.

 

(The LTSR stock, absorbed in 1912, did not include any rail wagons; presumably sets of single-bolster timber wagons were used to carry rails, as was certainly at various times the case on the Midland.)

 

Without wanting to get too bogged down in rail wagons, 200 had been ordered in 1871/2 as additions to stock, with numbers estimated to be in the 193xx and 232xx ranges. These were renewed by 180 long rail wagons of lots 299, 353, 377, and 465 - Midland Wagons plate 160 shows No. 19310 of lot 299 - and 25 of the short rail wagons of lot 238. The other 40 of lot 238 were additions to stock, probably numbered 39476-39515 (39476 and 39497 being known numbers), as were 150 of the long wagons of lot 465, numbered 116949/50, 116955-117102 (though with a bit of doubt at the edges of this range). 

 

The six short rail wagons of lot 772 were built as renewals, probably of six of lot 238, by then 30 years old - Midland Wagons plate 164 shows No. 23214, the second replacement of a wagon of 1872. 

 

So, that would make way for seven fixed-side sleeper wagons to creep 'above the line'; possibly more if other short rail wagons of lot 238 had been withdrawn. 

 

The five extant copies of the wagon diagram book that I have seen, which are all the same edition, dating from c. 1914-15, include diagrams D306 and D335, so examples of both were extant then, but one copy has D335 marked 'all broken up' in ink and another has the same diagram struck out with a pencil line. Of course the dates of these emendations are unknown but they do tend to suggest that examples of D306 outlasted examples of D335!

 

The total of 627 rail and sleeper wagons was unchanged up to the end of 1915; the post-war total was a little less, 624 in 1919 then 614 until the end of 1922. 

[MarcD]

21 hours ago, Siberian Snooper said:

 

 

Did you not visit Prickly Pear at EXPOEM? He had some new NBR wagons on sale. 

 

 

I launched 3 new NBR wagons at ExpoEM. 

New wagons are

NBR 4Plk fixed side 

NBR 4Plk drop side 

NBR 4Plk centre door

 

These go with the NBR 3plks and 1plk that are already in my range.

 

Marc

[Andy Vincent]

3 minutes ago, MarcD said:

I launched 3 new NBR wagons at ExpoEM. 

Just to add to the expoEM launch info for those who didn't get there, I added nine new wagons, with the most interest to this group being MR D299 and D351 in both early (with end strap) and 'mainstream' (no straps) guises. And an apology to those who wanted the 'mainstream' versions - these sold out within 90 minutes of the show opening. Brassmasters and I had a debate about whether the market was saturated with these and so how many might sell. Clearly we got this wrong, perhaps in no small part to this group - so never underestimate a Midland Modeller!

 

The others, incidentally, were RCH 1923  7 (wide top planks) and 8 plank, with and with end doors and all with separated washer plates, plus Chas Roberts 7 planks with end doors. There will be some other new introductions for Scaleforum Crewe next month, most likely taken from a growing backlog of commissions.

 

Also of note was that @queensquare had some built and decorated 2mm examples of the recent MR wagons with him, plus D204 which I have yet to formally add to the 4mm range. These were a product of the work I did to understand how best to produce versions for smaller scales - you cant just scale by 50% quite apart from the different way the 2mm Association underframes work.

[Compound2632]

5 minutes ago, Andy Vincent said:

Just to add to the expoEM launch info for those who didn't get there

 

Well that's tomorrow's teaser post busted!

[Andy Vincent]

5 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

Well that's tomorrow's teaser post busted!

Oops!

 

That aside, you should be safe for a week or two on the MR front, I am back in Gloucester mode working on another variation at the request of a large model railway in Oxfordshire . . . However, some more MR wagons will not be far behind and maybe another axlebox or two.

[queensquare]

4 hours ago, Andy Vincent said:

Just to add to the expoEM launch info for those who didn't get there, I added nine new wagons, with the most interest to this group being MR D299 and D351 in both early (with end strap) and 'mainstream' (no straps) guises. And an apology to those who wanted the 'mainstream' versions - these sold out within 90 minutes of the show opening. Brassmasters and I had a debate about whether the market was saturated with these and so how many might sell. Clearly we got this wrong, perhaps in no small part to this group - so never underestimate a Midland Modeller!

 

The others, incidentally, were RCH 1923  7 (wide top planks) and 8 plank, with and with end doors and all with separated washer plates, plus Chas Roberts 7 planks with end doors. There will be some other new introductions for Scaleforum Crewe next month, most likely taken from a growing backlog of commissions.

 

Also of note was that @queensquare had some built and decorated 2mm examples of the recent MR wagons with him, plus D204 which I have yet to formally add to the 4mm range. These were a product of the work I did to understand how best to produce versions for smaller scales - you cant just scale by 50% quite apart from the different way the 2mm Association underframes work.

I was really impressed with them, some of the best wagon  prints I’ve seen. The size of the 2mm market means Andy won’t be retiring  on the proceeds but I’m hoping g he will do a few more of the MR wagons he has planned in 2mm.

The lettering on the loco coal wagons isn’t quite right, I had to make do with what I had in order to get them finished for the weekend.

 

Jerry

 

 

 

[corneliuslundie]

Please stop producing so many tempting wagons. I have too many already . . .

Some hope

Jonathan