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

[Compound2632]

I’ve not finished with Great Western wagons – I have another Iron Mink on the go as well as thinking about how to deal with my O4s – but I have also made some progress with some private owner wagons. I’d reached a sticking point with the Cadbury wagon: having built up the curb rail with microstrip, I’d obliterated Hornby’s nicely printed tare weight markings. I had been thinking of trying the Humbrol 104 Oxford blue in my Rotring pen. However, working with the BGS GWR rub down transfers gave me an idea: the ease with which I could scrape off wrongly-positioned transfers suggested using them as masks. I painted the patches where the tare weight goes Oxford blue, applied the BGS transfers Tare 6 2 1, then overpainted with yellow. The covering power of the yellow wasn’t very good, so I needed a couple of coats, but once the paint was thoroughly dry I cautiously scraped off the transfers to reveal the blue underneath:

 

 

The result isn’t brilliant but it’s a lot finer than I could do by hand. I also made the Load 10 Tons plate in CorelDraw (as for the solebar plate for the Iron Mink No. 11070) – unfortunately Pantone’s idea of Oxford Blue doesn’t quite agree with Humbrol’s, or, more likely, my HP Deskjet printer isn’t up to it. The Birmingham Carriage & Wagon Co. plate was reduced from an internet photo – a plate dated 1927. The plate on the prototype Cadbury wagon is an altogether more rococo design, which I didn’t think I’d succeed in cutting out! Apart from couplings, also still missing are a couple of end details: the diagonal grab handle and what looks like a round plate between the end pillars – Is this a BC&WCo hire plate, such as is seen on the side of other wagons from this builder?

 

I’ve been thinking a bit more about the colour scheme of this wagon and whether the reported yellow and blue livery ties in with photo, where the “yellow” areas look darker than one might expect. While reading up again on Great Western red vs. grey, I returned to Mike’s Experimental Archaeology blog post, where the development of the spectral response of photographic emulsions was discussed, from the early silver halide emulsion, which was only blue-sensitive (long wavelength cut-off around 500 nm, through orthochromatic emulsions (sensitive to about 600 nm) to panchromatic film that finally approximated to the response of the human eye. The spectral sensitivity graphs Mike reproduced date the introduction of panchromatic film to 1906, only three years before BC&WCo photographed the Cadbury wagon. Did their photographer have access to the latest technology? Yellow is just at the spectral response limit of orthochromatic film,  so it might appear darker than one expects, whereas the emulsion is most sensitive in the blue region, so the dark blue / purple of the Cadbury logo appears quite bright. A photo taken with the silver halide emulsion used before the introduction of orthochromatic film c. 1882, would appear to invert the livery: the blue would look much brighter than the yellow.

 

Here’s a rather quicker conversion of a Hornby 6-plank wagon – completed within 24 hours:

 

 

The Hornby underframe was discarded. The replacement is a mish-mash of parts left over from the Huntley & Palmer builds – the solebars are Slaters, with the earlier-pattern round-bottomed Gloucester C&W Co. axleboxes, while the headstocks are from the Cambrian Gloucester underframe kit, with the ribs pared off the buffer housings to give an “earlier” look – though there are examples of Gloucester wagons from the early 1890s with ribbed buffer housings. The V-hanger and brake lever are Slaters but as I didn’t have their brake-gear to hand, I used the rather cruder Cambrian moulding: the brakesman would have to dig a pit in the ballast to turn the lever far enough to move the blocks into contact with the wheels. The curb- or side-rails have been built up with microstrip – this time the printed writing is high enough up not to be obliterated. Precision P38 LMS Freight Wagon Grey is a good match for Hornby’s grey.

 

The speed with which this was done reflects my lack of access to prototype information… According to the Lightmoor index, there are details of Bessey & Palmer wagons in Bill Hudson, Private Owner Wagons, Vol. 1 and Keith Turton, Private Owner Wagons: a third collection. A bit of googling confirms that the firm was long-established in Great Yarmouth. The number, 743, suggests a large fleet of wagons, probably delivering to stations across Norfolk. Empty to Peterborough is intriguing – did the firm have some arrangement whereby wagons were concentrated there before being consigned to collieries in the Midlands? Presumably the route was via the M&GN, so this company’s wagons could be justified on any model of the Joint or lines in connection… For my part, I’m assuming there is demand for North Warwickshire coal for some Norfolk industry – mustard-making, maybe. In which case, there might also have been deliveries in colliery wagons:

 

 

My most recent POWSides order included a set of Morris & Shaw transfers along with the ex-Slaters Gloucester 5-plank wagon kit, enabling me to give my rake of wagons different numbers at last! No. 24 was built from a pre-printed kit some years ago and appeared early on in this thread; No. 27 was built about the same time but has just had its 4 replaced by a 7; No. 26 was a third pre-printed kit – an ebay purchase earlier this year. No. 25 was built this week; it’s the only one where I’ve painted the body myself with Humbrol 100 Red Brown over an coat of Halfords red primer, giving it a richer colour. Birch Coppice Colliery was on the Midland’s Kingsbury branch – a neighbour of Baddesley Colliery, home of the well-known Garratt William Francis. Between the ages of nought and about 18 months I lived in nearby Wilnecote – it was at a low bridge on the Kingsbury branch that my father had made himself unpopular with the driver of a removal van: having cycled the area, he knew all the back routes but hadn’t given much thought to the question of headroom.

 

 

 

 

 

[wagonman]

 

Here’s a rather quicker conversion of a Hornby 6-plank wagon – completed within 24 hours:

 

Bessey & Palmer No. 743.JPG

 

The Hornby underframe was discarded. The replacement is a mish-mash of parts left over from the Huntley & Palmer builds – the solebars are Slaters, with the earlier-pattern round-bottomed Gloucester C&W Co. axleboxes, while the headstocks are from the Cambrian Gloucester underframe kit, with the ribs pared off the buffer housings to give an “earlier” look – though there are examples of Gloucester wagons from the early 1890s with ribbed buffer housings. The V-hanger and brake lever are Slaters but as I didn’t have their brake-gear to hand, I used the rather cruder Cambrian moulding: the brakesman would have to dig a pit in the ballast to turn the lever far enough to move the blocks into contact with the wheels. The curb- or side-rails have been built up with microstrip – this time the printed writing is high enough up not to be obliterated. Precision P38 LMS Freight Wagon Grey is a good match for Hornby’s grey.

 

The speed with which this was done reflects my lack of access to prototype information… According to the Lightmoor index, there are details of Bessey & Palmer wagons in Bill Hudson, Private Owner Wagons, Vol. 1 and Keith Turton, Private Owner Wagons: a third collection. A bit of googling confirms that the firm was long-established in Great Yarmouth. The number, 743, suggests a large fleet of wagons, probably delivering to stations across Norfolk. Empty to Peterborough is intriguing – did the firm have some arrangement whereby wagons were concentrated there before being consigned to collieries in the Midlands? Presumably the route was via the M&GN, so this company’s wagons could be justified on any model of the Joint or lines in connection… For my part, I’m assuming there is demand for North Warwickshire coal for some Norfolk industry – mustard-making, maybe. In which case, there might also have been deliveries in colliery wagons:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oddly enough, I have both those references... They both have the works photo of no.743 which was originally built by Harrison & Camm in 1892 for a Yorkshire colliery owner and acquired second hand by B&P after being rebuilt by Charles Roberts in 1927. It had been registered by the MS&LR – most B&P wagons were GER registered – and had sides 7 planks high with external diagonals, and an end door. An odd detail was that from the side it appeared not to have an end door as the corner plate was still in place. Hard to describe but a quick hunt for HMRS photo AAR223 should bring enlightenment. 

 

Most B&P wagons were built by the Metropolitan wagon co and Keith Turton has listed all those in the GER Registers, and gives a brief summary of the business and its area of activity – basically NE Norfolk. Hudson gives the length over headstocks as 15ft 6in though he doesn't give his source.

 

 

 

Richard

[billbedford]

Oddly enough, I have both those references... They both have the works photo of no.743 which was originally built by Harrison & Camm in 1892 for a Yorkshire colliery owner and acquired second hand by B&P after being rebuilt by Charles Roberts in 1927. It had been registered by the MS&LR – most B&P wagons were GER registered – and had sides 7 planks high with external diagonals, and an end door. An odd detail was that from the side it appeared not to have an end door as the corner plate was still in place. Hard to describe but a quick hunt for HMRS photo AAR223 should bring enlightenment. 

 

 

 

Some plain wagons were converted to end doors by sawing through the corner plates on the inside of the side sheeting and fitting a door into the gap.

Edited November 10, 2017 by billbedford

[Compound2632]

Oddly enough, I have both those references... They both have the works photo of no.743 which was originally built by Harrison & Camm in 1892 for a Yorkshire colliery owner and acquired second hand by B&P after being rebuilt by Charles Roberts in 1927. It had been registered by the MS&LR – most B&P wagons were GER registered – and had sides 7 planks high with external diagonals, and an end door. An odd detail was that from the side it appeared not to have an end door as the corner plate was still in place. Hard to describe but a quick hunt for HMRS photo AAR223 should bring enlightenment. 

 

Most B&P wagons were built by the Metropolitan wagon co and Keith Turton has listed all those in the GER Registers, and gives a brief summary of the business and its area of activity – basically NE Norfolk. Hudson gives the length over headstocks as 15ft 6in though he doesn't give his source.

 

 

 

Richard

 

Nothing like then, and out of period...

 

Which is a shame as I thought the layout of the lettering had quite a late 19th/early 20th century look.

Edited November 10, 2017 by Compound2632

[wagonman]

Sorry 'bout that!

[Compound2632]

HMRS photo AAR223 should bring enlightenment. 

 

Ah well, at least the round-bottomed grease axleboxes are right!

[Compound2632]

Back in June I made a start on a London Road Models (ex-D & S) kit for a Midland Railway 6-wheeled brake van – D393 as this will be the non-fitted version. I’d done most of the brass-to-brass soldering with my unregulated 25 W iron and 145°C solder so turned my attention to the cast whitemetal verandah end. According to the instructions, there is an etched brass piece for the infill planking below waist level – but nowhere could I see this on the etch. I got in touch with John Redrup at LRM who supplied a suitable piece of etched planking which I cut to size and, after tinning the edges with 145°C solder, soldered in place with the temperature-controlled iron and 100°C solder:

 

 

John expressed surprise that having sold around a hundred of this kit, I was the first to query the lack of this part – so what have the other hundred purchasers done? Or am I the first to actually build the kit?

 

John has asked me to emphasise that a suitable etched part will now be provided in the kit.

 

There’s a rather involved explanation for how this part came to be missing which has to do with the way Danny Pinnock designed his etches to make best use of the space available…

 

I’ve also soldered the cast buffers in place – it seemed easier to do this before attaching the end to the rest of the van, as I could apply the solder and iron from behind. Likewise the lamp irons, which, as suggested in the instructions, are made from scraps of the etched brass sheet – there’s a convenient long straight run of about the right width. Bending these up, cutting to length, and soldering in the right place involved something of a learning curve. Getting the two on the side pillars lined up was ticklish, as I was soldering with the end on edge. The lamp irons on the prototype have a piece sticking out near the bottom – presumably supporting the base of the lamp – as can be seen in this photo of the preserved van in the Matthew Kirtley Museum at the Midland Railway Centre. I’m not sure of my chances of replicating this…

 

 

[Lecorbusier]

Back in June I made a start on a London Road Models (ex-D & S) kit for a Midland Railway 6-wheeled brake van – D393 as this will be the non-fitted version. I’d done most of the brass-to-brass soldering with my unregulated 25 W iron and 145°C solder so turned my attention to the cast whitemetal verandah end. According to the instructions, there is an etched brass piece for the infill planking below waist level – but nowhere could I see this on the etch. I got in touch with John Redrup at LRM who supplied a suitable piece of etched planking which I cut to size and, after tinning the edges with 145°C solder, soldered in place with the temperature-controlled iron and 100°C solder:

 

Midland D393 brake van end with lamp irons.JPG

 

John expressed surprise that having sold around a hundred of this kit, I was the first to query the lack of this part – so what have the other hundred purchasers done? Or am I the first to actually build the kit?

 

John has asked me to emphasise that a suitable etched part will now be provided in the kit.

 

There’s a rather involved explanation for how this part came to be missing which has to do with the way Danny Pinnock designed his etches to make best use of the space available…

 

I’ve also soldered the cast buffers in place – it seemed easier to do this before attaching the end to the rest of the van, as I could apply the solder and iron from behind. Likewise the lamp irons, which, as suggested in the instructions, are made from scraps of the etched brass sheet – there’s a convenient long straight run of about the right width. Bending these up, cutting to length, and soldering in the right place involved something of a learning curve. Getting the two on the side pillars lined up was ticklish, as I was soldering with the end on edge. The lamp irons on the prototype have a piece sticking out near the bottom – presumably supporting the base of the lamp – as can be seen in this photo of the preserved van in the Matthew Kirtley Museum at the Midland Railway Centre. I’m not sure of my chances of replicating this…

 

Thanks for drawing this to our attention Stephen ... I have one of these on the list to do, so will drop John a line.

[Jol Wilkinson]

Tim,

 

when Stephen drew this to John's attention he asked me to design the veranda planked end and add it to the artwork for the new LNWR 3' 1" double veranda inspection saloon. There are a limited number on the tool (but enough to meet current kit sales and leave a few spares). If John runs out you may have to buy an inspection saloon to get the veranda end. 

 

I expect that the original D&S kits all had the veranda end included. Either that or the builders made them up from a bit of plasticard.

 

It has not been unusual for some of the D&S kits that LRM "absorbed" to have a bit missing. I think Danny spread stuff around various tools and this item may have been missing from the main etch but it wasn't documented. The same sort of thing happened with the LNWR 10T brake van, whereby the etched parts were presumably on a tool with other stuff, so Danny would supply the BV bits to John. However, the supply dried up and I was asked to design the underframe that now comes with the kit. I've also had to draw the "dog box" end ventilator panels for the ex D&S early LNWR 26' Luggage van.

 

Jol

[Compound2632]

Tim,

 

when Stephen drew this to John's attention he asked me to design the veranda planked end and add it to the artwork for the new LNWR 3' 1" double veranda inspection saloon. There are a limited number on the tool (but enough to meet current kit sales and leave a few spares). If John runs out you may have to buy an inspection saloon to get the veranda end. 

 

I expect that the original D&S kits all had the veranda end included. Either that or the builders made them up from a bit of plasticard.

 

It has not been unusual for some of the D&S kits that LRM "absorbed" to have a bit missing. I think Danny spread stuff around various tools and this item may have been missing from the main etch but it wasn't documented. The same sort of thing happened with the LNWR 10T brake van, whereby the etched parts were presumably on a tool with other stuff, so Danny would supply the BV bits to John. However, the supply dried up and I was asked to design the underframe that now comes with the kit. I've also had to draw the "dog box" end ventilator panels for the ex D&S early LNWR 26' Luggage van.

 

Jol

 

What John supplied me with was in fact a pair of sides cut from the etch sheet for this Midland brake van, so I think he must in fact have sacrificed a complete etch sheet. That provided more than enough material so let me know... This has the advantage that the planking is of the correct width.  

 

I expect you're right, Jol, that anyone sitting on a kit supplied by D & S will have this part; what you say about how Danny worked agrees with what John said to me at Scaleforum - he was economical with the brass and would squeeze odd bits from one kit that wouldn't fit on the main etch sheet onto a bit of space on a different etch sheet, so this is a pitfall to look out for by anyone taking over part of his range. Somewhere out there is somebody building a GER coach (say) wondering what the odd rectangle of etched planking is for!

 

I think we just have to be glad that these kits are available - dealing with the odd issue like this is part of the fun and I have to say I have found John very helpful on the several occasions I've communicated with him.

 

That LNWR inspection saloon is a delightful-looking vehicle but not one I can currently justify!

[Lecorbusier]

Tim,

 

when Stephen drew this to John's attention he asked me to design the veranda planked end and add it to the artwork for the new LNWR 3' 1" double veranda inspection saloon. There are a limited number on the tool (but enough to meet current kit sales and leave a few spares). If John runs out you may have to buy an inspection saloon to get the veranda end. 

 

I expect that the original D&S kits all had the veranda end included. Either that or the builders made them up from a bit of plasticard.

 

It has not been unusual for some of the D&S kits that LRM "absorbed" to have a bit missing. I think Danny spread stuff around various tools and this item may have been missing from the main etch but it wasn't documented. The same sort of thing happened with the LNWR 10T brake van, whereby the etched parts were presumably on a tool with other stuff, so Danny would supply the BV bits to John. However, the supply dried up and I was asked to design the underframe that now comes with the kit. I've also had to draw the "dog box" end ventilator panels for the ex D&S early LNWR 26' Luggage van.

 

Jol

Thanks for the input Jol,

 

I bought my kit mid November a year ago ... so I assume that the etch will be missing. I will ask Jon the question and see what he comes back with ... if he can help it will be piggy backing another order for a Ballast Brake Van - so there will be at least be a positive connected with the enquiry.

[Jol Wilkinson]

Stephen,

 

the MR Brake Van veranda bits I drew for John were to the dimensions he provided, so hopefully are correct.

 

Regarding the LNWR Inspection Saloon (I wouldn't normally say this) but perhaps you should adopt the RTR collectors mantra "If I like it, I want it, I need it". I've been looking at the list of OO carriages listed a couple of days ago by Tony W on "Wright Writes", trying to work out the diagram numbers to see if I can justify them for London Road which is set in 1907. They probably would stand out from my own stock, but a Lawrence/Goddard model would be nice as a collectors' piece.

 

Jol

[Penlan]

 I've been looking at the list of OO carriages listed a couple of days ago by Tony W on "Wright Writes", 

Argh - Found it Post #20210 on page 809 at http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/64295-wright-writes/page-809

 

Are the LNWR coaches in LMS livery?

Edited November 14, 2017 by Penlan

[Jol Wilkinson]

Argh - Found it Post #20210 on page 809 at http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/64295-wright-writes/page-809

 

Are the LNWR coaches in LMS livery?

Sandy,

 

I think Tony W said later, in answer to the same question, that he believes if the coach is listed as LNWR, then it is in LNWR livery 

 

I've been going through the list armed with with Jenkinson's book, to identify the Diagram numbers, but with little success. Whoever drew up the list possibly had little knowledge of LNWR carriages. Some are described as Ellpitical roof, some as Full Elliptical but there are no mentions of Cove Roof. Coupled with the inconsistency of LNWR numbering it is impossible to work out what Diagram most are. I was interested in a Motor Driver, but have only identified list number 9 as being a M70, just too  late for London Road. 

 

Jol

[Compound2632]

Continuing the private owner wagon theme, a while back on another thread I posted a photo of some wagons I had hand-lettered about a quarter of a century ago:

 

 

These are from Slaters kits for Gloucester wagons and are based on wagons illustrated in Keith Montague, Private Owner Wagons from the Gloucester Railway Carriage and Wagon Company Ltd (OPC, 1981). In what follows I shall simply refer to the plate or page number in this book. I was looking for wagons that would be appropriate to the Midland lines through Birmingham in the first few years of the twentieth century. The first three were all local firms. The Birmingham Co-op wagon (Plate 43) and the Lifford Coal Co wagon (un-numbered plate, p. 8) were both registered with the Midland Railway. Vauxhall Wharf was adjacent to the wagon repair shop at the station now known as Duddeston, on the Grand Junction line, so John Burgum’s wagon was more likely registered with the LNWR – when Plate 75 was taken, the registration plate had yet to be fitted. (In my youth – when the Cross-City Line was a new concept – the station suffered from a split identity: the fluorescent lamps going crossways said “Vauxhall” while the Corporate Image name-boards going lengthways said “Duddeston”.)

 

The Midland had two mineral lines serving the North Warwickshire coalfield – on the western side, the Kingsbury Branch, from Kingsbury Junction on the Birmingham & Derby Junction line, serving Birch Coppice and Baddesley collieries, and on the eastern side, the Stockingford Branch, facing towards Nuneaton on the Whitacre & Nuneaton line and serving Stockingford and Ansley Hall collieries. The Stockingford Colliery wagon (Plate 546) is the only one I’ll be showing that is now available from POWSides. I’ve no idea when POWSides started up; I don’t think I’d come across them at the time I built these wagons (c. 1993-4). I first tried to use them about ten years ago and only recently mastered the technique – gloss varnish being the key, so to speak.

 

Leafing through Montague, I found Plate 617 depicting a wagon for E.T. Ward & Son of Stroud, with the inscription Empty to Stockingford Colliery Nr. Nuneaton – so an ideal pairing. This wagon was registered with the Great Western rather than the Midland. Both companies had stations in Stroud, separated by the Thames & Severn Canal. The Great Western line is of course Brunel’s Cheltenham line of 1845 while the Midland station opened forty years later as the terminus of a branch off the Nailsworth Branch.

 

I was delighted to find very recently on a local history enthusiast’s website transcriptions of the Stroud entries in Kelly’s Directory and similar listings from the 1820s to the 1960s. I’m very grateful for the unknown Marion Hearfield’s work which enables something of the history of the coal business in Stroud to be unpicked. Edgecombe Thomas Ward first appears in 1870 as a coal merchant based at Dudbridge Wharf on the Stroudwater Canal, though by 1894 he is listed as a corn factor and then disappears from view for a few years, resurfacing in Kelly’s for 1906 as E.T. Ward & Son, coal merchants of 22 Gloucester St, Stroud – at least, one assumes it is the same Mr Ward. This ties in neatly with the January 1905 date of his wagon No. 4. (He did not own this wagon – the photo shows the three characteristic Gloucester plates indicating that the firm built, hired out, and maintained it. These plates, along with the registration plate, are not (yet) represented on my model.) By 1914 the firm’s office had moved to the corner of London Rd and Union St, nearer the Great Western station. The firm was still in business in the 1960s.

 

Way back in the twentieth century armchair research wasn’t as easy as it is today so I only had the Montague book to go on as I hunted for more evidence of links between Gloucestershire coal merchants and North Warwickshire collieries. Hunting through my boxes, I unearthed these two unfinished wagons:

 

 

I now find that the Pates & Co. wagon (Plate 453, December 1893) is possibly wide of the mark: Central Wharf was adjacent to the Great Western’s St James Square station, though, on the evidence of Mr Ward’s wagon, registration with the GWR does not preclude being loaded from a colliery on the Midland and of course this is long before the Honeybourne line provided the Great Western with its own direct route from Gloucestershire to the Midlands.  

 

J. Dickenson’s wagon (Plate 166, January 1894) bears the legend Empty to Birch Coppice Colly. Kingsbury Junction Midland Ry., as does Dickenson, Prosser & Cox’s wagon No. 21 (Plate 167, October 1903 – this livery is in the POWSides range). So, even though my first POWSides Birch Coppice wagon was some years off, I knew I was on to a good thing. Quite how good is revealed by Kelly’s Directory. J. Dickenson isn’t listed as a coal merchant in 1894, though someone of that name was in business as a grocer and gin seller (listed more decorously as “agent for W & A Gilbey Ltd., wine & spirit merchants”). By 1897, Mr Dickenson was in partnership with Reginald David Prosser, with premises at 2 Wallbridge – handy for the canal basin. Albert Henry Cox joined the partnership after Kelly’s Directory for 1902 was compiled – evidently very soon after and keen to see his name on the side of a wagon. By 1906 their office was in Russell St, near the Great Western station (the 1894 wagon doesn’t have a registration plate but the 1903 one is registered with the GWR). By 1910, Mr Prosser had dropped out of the partnership but the firm of Dickenson & Cox continued, ultimately to merge with another firm, of which more anon. In the 1919 and 1923 directories, the firm is described as “local agents for Birch Coppice Colliery”, so it looks like the connection had continued over three decades.

 

One further Stroud coal merchant to get his wagons from the Gloucester C & W Co. was Charles Lambert. He is listed in all the directories from 1885 to 1923 with premises on London Rd and the Great Western station yard. Mr Lambert seems to have been something of a prince among Stroud coal merchants: a member of Stroud UDC from 1902 and listed as its vice-chairman in 1906, 1910, 1914 and 1919. By 1907 he was up to wagon No. 10 (Plate 330) – hired from the Gloucester C & W Co. and registered with the GWR. On the evidence of Plate 333, by 1938 he or his successors had amalgamated with Dickenson & Cox, the firm of Lambert & Cox still being listed in the 1963 directory. I have no evidence for the collieries he patronised.

 

I had sides marked up for a couple of his early wagons (Plates 331 and 332, No. 1 of April 1891 and No. 3 of July 1892):

 

 

This photo illustrates the way I made these liveries. In those days I was innocent of primer, simply painting the appropriate parts of the side with Humbrol matt white. Guidelines, and then the individual letters, were sketched in by pencil. For the black wagons, I used a Rotring pen with Rotring black drafting ink – the idea was that drawing the dark surround of the letters would give much sharper corners than I could hope to achieve painting or inking white letters, to say nothing of the problem of poor coverage by white on a dark background. For the grey Stockingford wagon, I used a fine brush and paint in the same way but only tried to be accurate on the left and top of the letters, the black shading to right and bottom being added afterwards with the Rotring pen. The red shading on the Burgum and Ward wagons was also done with the Rotring pen and ink, before the black. The very finest Rotring nib was used for the black line between the white and red. The red-fading-to-pink of the Dickenson and Pates wagons was also Rotring ink – red with some white added – and the solebars painted with Humbrol mixed to match. Did red wagons fade to pink? The recent discussions on Great Western wagon red would suggest this is unlikely on the basis of the chemistry of the paints of the time; I was ignorant of such things a quarter of a century ago!

 

I’m not sure exactly why these models came to a halt when they did. I was living in Paris at the time and got married while I was there – I really can’t remember whether it was marriage or the move back to England a year later that distracted me. The time has come to take them up again…

 

 

 

[Penlan]

Compound2632,  I like those and the very informative information, thank you.

 

I can't recall if I used the Rotring 'White' ink or if it was another make for my PO lettering, I know it came from Switzerland though, then in the late 1970's they were taken over by another firm and the ink changed in it's flow characteristics. I could not get use to it.
I used Rotring, Ruling Pens and Gillot's 303 nibs at the time.
I wrote to the manufacturers about the change, but they assured me there had been no change in the ingrediants.
I asked colleagues in other drawing offices - especially Architectural, where illustrations for clients used white ink - and they too told me they had difficulties with the 'new' recipe.
At that point, and the introduction of decent transfers (Woodhead, etc.,), I gave up hand lettering PO's.

Edited November 20, 2017 by Penlan

[Penlan]

I’m not sure exactly why these models came to a halt when they did. I was living in Paris at the time and got married while I was there – I really can’t remember whether it was marriage or the move back to England a year later that distracted me. 

Tongue in cheek - At the end of a lot of programmes these days there's wording to the effect of 'If you've been affected by any of the issues ..... then Counselling etc., etc., ' 

[wagonman]

Continuing the private owner wagon theme, a while back on another thread I posted a photo of some wagons I had hand-lettered about a quarter of a century ago:

 

Gloucester wagon selection 1.JPG

 

Leafing through Montague, I found Plate 617 depicting a wagon for E.T. Ward & Son of Stroud, with the inscription Empty to Stockingford Colliery Nr. Nuneaton – so an ideal pairing. This wagon was registered with the Great Western rather than the Midland. Both companies had stations in Stroud, separated by the Thames & Severn Canal. The Great Western line is of course Brunel’s Cheltenham line of 1845 while the Midland station opened forty years later as the terminus of a branch off the Nailsworth Branch.

 

I was delighted to find very recently on a local history enthusiast’s website transcriptions of the Stroud entries in Kelly’s Directory and similar listings from the 1820s to the 1960s. I’m very grateful for the unknown Marion Hearfield’s work which enables something of the history of the coal business in Stroud to be unpicked. Edgecombe Thomas Ward first appears in 1870 as a coal merchant based at Dudbridge Wharf on the Stroudwater Canal, though by 1894 he is listed as a corn factor and then disappears from view for a few years, resurfacing in Kelly’s for 1906 as E.T. Ward & Son, coal merchants of 22 Gloucester St, Stroud – at least, one assumes it is the same Mr Ward. This ties in neatly with the January 1905 date of his wagon No. 4. (He did not own this wagon – the photo shows the three characteristic Gloucester plates indicating that the firm built, hired out, and maintained it. These plates, along with the registration plate, are not (yet) represented on my model.) By 1914 the firm’s office had moved to the corner of London Rd and Union St, nearer the Great Western station. The firm was still in business in the 1960s.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ward's wagon no.4 was one of a batch of four (nos.4-7) purchased in January 1905 on 7 years "deferred terms", so hire purchase rather than simple hire. They were registered by the GWR as 67450-3. Presumably the Gloucester owners plates were removed after the last payment – unless the wagons were re-financed (it happened). He bought a few other wagons from Glos subsequently but his earlier wagons, for which he took out repair contracts with Glos, must have been built by another firm. Ian Pope's 'PO Wagons of Gloucestershire' probably has a lot more but I haven't looked! Now I have looked and yes it does have a lot more to say about Ward and half a dozen other Stroud coal merchants. It seems the Ward family also had shares in the Coleford Red Ash colliery in the Forest of Dean.

 

Nice lettering. I used to use gouache and a mapping pen... with mixed results.

 

 

Richard

Edited November 21, 2017 by wagonman

[Compound2632]

Ward's wagon no.4 was one of a batch of four (nos.4-7) purchased in January 1905 on 7 years "deferred terms", so hire purchase rather than simple hire. They were registered by the GWR as 67450-3. Presumably the Gloucester owners plates were removed after the last payment – unless the wagons were re-financed (it happened). He bought a few other wagons from Glos subsequently but his earlier wagons, for which he took out repair contracts with Glos, must have been built by another firm. Ian Pope's 'PO Wagons of Gloucestershire' probably has a lot more but I haven't looked! Now I have looked and yes it does have a lot more to say about Ward and half a dozen other Stroud coal merchants. It seems the Ward family also had shares in the Coleford Red Ash colliery in the Forest of Dean.

 

I don't have enough PO wagon books! I have to weigh up the economics - roughly speaking, one volume costs about the same as three wagons.

 

Looking through the Kelly's Directories, there are at least two other long-standing Stroud coal merchants who presumably had wagons: T. Burt & Sons and Wood & Rowe. It's a major weakness of my wagon collection that, as I only have Keith Montague's Gloucester book and the Slater's kits are for Gloucester wagons, it's heaviliy biased towards that firm's wagons and hence highly unrepresentative.

 

Anyway, on with the modelling... After a bit more rummaging, I found the rest of the parts for the Slater’s Gloucester wagons and assembled the two Charles Lambert wagons:

 

 

The solid moulded brake push-rod safety loops have been cut out and replaced with microstrip, as usual. The brake levers are rather thick (left) so I try to fudge a thinner appearance (right) when seen from the usual viewing angle:

 

 

This has to be done without weakening the already quite fragile moulding. The dodge is to carve and scrape the lever to a triangular cross-section – it is the original thickness on the bottom edge:

 

 

The back of the V-hanger is also thinned down where it overlaps the solebar, so that the ironwork looks a bit closer to scale thickness – not as fine as the other ironwork unfortunately.

 

The lettered sections of the sides were masked using my favourite WH Smith low-tack tape and the wagons given a coat of Halfords grey primer followed by Humbrol 33 matt black, also from a spray can. The tape was anxiously peeled back – fortunately it worked – no paint seepage or lifting of the sprayed paint at the edge of the tape and no lifting of the 23-year-old black ink:

 

 

Humbrol 33 is a very matt black – no shine whatsoever. The Rotring ink finish is quite glossy, but before spraying with matt varnish to unify the finish, a coat of gloss varnish is needed to give a good surface for the finishing touch – something that I didn’t have when I first planned these wagons: POWSides Gloucester symbols. (In an earlier post I mistakenly said that I didn’t think POWSides did these. They do – item ID 0123.) These are the elongated G-shaped symbols. Both wagons have the builders’ plate on the solebar; in the official photos only No. 3 has the “For Repairs Advise” plate, on the body-side, but this is also the one to have its GWR registration plate too – so maybe No. 1 wasn’t fully fitted-out when photographed:

 

 

The two pinky-red wagons just needed brake gear and buffers finishing off and the ironwork below the solebar together with the corner plates painting black. It seems to me that removing the mass of white on the corner plates has helped to reduce the pinkiness but this could just be down to different lighting conditions. The Gloucester symbols were on black rectangular plates; POWSides provide black rectangle transfers for these (not needed on the black wagons). By trial and error I established that it is a good idea to gloss varnish these before adding the white symbol transfers. Then a coat of matt varnish to finish:

 

 

This painting lark is getting so elaborate I’m thinking of taking up carriage building…

 

The Dickenson wagon should have an oval plate at the centre of the solebar – in the photo, thos has a white rim and the word OWNER is legible in the centre – the lettering top and bottom might just say J DICKENSON STROUD – it seems to be rather unusual for a coal merchant to own rather than lease his wagons; certainly the 1903 Dickenson, Prosser & Cox wagon has Gloucester owner’s plates, indicating that it was hired or on hire-purchase, as wagonman describes. The Stockingford wagon (Montague, Plate 546) should have a similar plate reading WILLIAM HILL OWNER BIRMINGHAM. A bit of googling leads me to conclude that William Hill was a co-proprietor of Stockingford Colliery, along with Pooley Hall Colliery, near Polesworth, probably from 1894. Stockingford Colliery closed in 1928, due to geological difficulties – a point to be mentioned if you see one of their wagons running on a layout set in the 1930s…

 

I assume these owner’s plates were cast by the Gloucester Co. There are a handful of other examples in the Montague book.

 

The Slater’s kits are spot on for these four wagons, all built in the early 1890s: round-bottomed Gloucester No. 4 N grease axleboxes and ribbed buffer guides. Later wagons, including the five I completed all those years ago, should have the square-bottomed No. 4 S axleboxes with GLOUCESTER cast diagonally across the front – MJT do a whitemetal casting of these – and unribbed buffer guides became more common, though not universal.

 

It's only taken me 23 or 24 years to complete these wagons! They do still need couplings, weighting and loading.

 

Edited November 21, 2017 by Compound2632

[wagonman]

Yes, both Butt and Wood & Rowe had wagons – and from the Gloucester RC&W Co too – though Butt's seem to date from 1911 onwards. There was also a James Smith who had a large and varied selection of wagons: he was based at Brimscombe but his wagons were lettered for Stroud. There was also, of course, the Stroud Co-op but they used the Midland Railway yard at Wallbridge.

 

Montague's book has a good selection of photos, but the text gives the impression of having been thrown together in a great hurry and without any thought – my copy is heavily annotated!

 

 

Richard

[Rail-Online]

I too thin the brake shafts but I find by far the easiest way is to leave them on the Slaters sprue and thin them before cutting from the sprue, also it helps if the bit of sprue adjacent to the lever is cut away first allowing the file to get at the lever.  This way there is no need to thin it to a triangular shape as the fragile lever being filed is still supported by the sprue and therefore it is much less likely to result in a damaged lever. An Ideal 'away from home' batch job (ie in a hotel away on business).

 

Tony

Edited November 21, 2017 by Rail-Online

[Compound2632]

Yes, both Butt and Wood & Rowe had wagons – and from the Gloucester RC&W Co too – though Butt's seem to date from 1911 onwards. There was also a James Smith who had a large and varied selection of wagons: he was based at Brimscombe but his wagons were lettered for Stroud. There was also, of course, the Stroud Co-op but they used the Midland Railway yard at Wallbridge.

 

Montague's book has a good selection of photos, but the text gives the impression of having been thrown together in a great hurry and without any thought – my copy is heavily annotated!

 

 

Richard

 

According to the Stroud directories, both Butt and Wood & Rowe were in business from at least 1885 until the 1960s. I only found James Smith listed 1889, 1894, and 1919. I'd noted the Stroud Co-op wagon in Montague (Plate 551) but was somewhat deterred by the varnished wood livery! I've since done that for my L&Y wagons, though. That 1891 wagon was registered with the GWR whereas 20 years later their wagon No. 22 was registered with the Midland (Plate 550). There are only a few cases, e.g. Lambert, where it's clear from the directory entries which station they used; I don't think it matters too much from the point of view of which collieries they used - e.g. Dickenson & Cox's long term relationship with Birch Coppice; their wagon No. 21 (Plate 167) was registered with the GWR. Also, I don't think that means they were exclusively tied to a particular colliery - their business will have been to supply a range of types of coal, and as you indicated, the Forest of Dean wasn't so far away - and served by the Midland and GW jointly.

 

I agree with your comment on Montague - most of the captions say no more than can be read off the blackboards in the photos! He was early in the field of PO wagon books - from what I have seen of more recent volumes, including yours, things have moved on since 1981. 

 

I too thin the brake shafts but I find by far the easiest way is to leave them on the Slaters sprue and thin them before cutting from the sprue, also it helps if the bit of sprue adjacent to the lever is cut away first allowing the file to get at the lever.  This way there is no need to thin it to a triangular shape as the fragile lever being filed is still supported by the sprue and therefore it is much less likely to result in a damaged lever. An Ideal 'away from home' batch job (ie in a hotel away on business).

 

Tony

 

 I hadn't thought of working on the levers on the sprue - thanks for the tip! But I don't think I could face doing more than a couple at one sitting.

 

Anyway, more Slater's Gloucester wagons, part 3 - more rambling than modelling, I'm afraid.  The OCEAN wagon for which I had prepared sides should have the 4S axleboxes – one reason for not putting it together yet. Another is that I’m trying to work out which Welsh wagons I can justify. Ocean Colliery in Treharris was connected to the Taff Vale and Rhymney railways, both giving access to Cardiff docks. As a steam coal colliery, its claim to fame was to have provided the fuel for the Cunarders Lusitania and Mauretania on their Blue Riband runs. This tends to suggest the company’s wagons mostly ran between pit and port. However, going north, both the Taff Vale and Rhymney connected with the Brecon & Merthyr and thence the Mid Wales and Hereford, Hay & Brecon – the Midland’s route to South Wales. So although the latter is usually associated with  the Swansea Vale, it seems plausible that there would be coal traffic to the Midlands from the more easterly valleys, if there was demand for the types of coal mined there.

 

There is a rather unusual snippet of evidence for traffic from the South Wales collieries to Birmingham by the Midland route at the beginning of the twentieth century. Around the time he started at King Edward VI School, the young J.R.R. Tolkien lived with his mother and brother at 86 Westfield Road, Kings Heath. His mother valued the views out over the undeveloped countryside towards the Cadbury and Chamberlain mansions but directly at the bottom of the garden was the Midland’s Camp Hill line and, reputedly, Tolkien’s introduction to the Welsh language, which was to be a formative influence on his interest in philology and his creation of his elvish languages. Penrhiwceiber, Senghenydd, Nantyglo were names he recalled given to the railway wagons – not faries – at the bottom of the garden. All these were collieries in the eastern part of the coalfield, producing steam coal rather than anthracite, if my rudimentary grasp of the geology is correct.

 

I had also looked for Worcestershire wagons that I could justify running to the North Warwickshire coalfield. There’s an interesting clutch around Malvern – W. H. Hart (Montague, Plates 265 and 266), Jones & Co. (Plates 315 and 316), and W.A. Thompson (Plate 585). Whereas the Stroud coal merchants seem to have favoured 7-plank, 10 ton wagons, these five are 5-plank, 8 ton wagons. What local conditions dictated these choices? The Hart wagons (built January 1904 and January 1905) are registered with the Midland and based at Malvern Wells station on the MR’s Tewksbury and Malvern branch. Jones’ wagons were registered with the GWR, his address being given on one wagon as “Great Malvern, Malvern Link & Colwall” – all stations on the GWR Worcester-Hereford line, over which the Midland had running powers. However, they bear the inscription Empty to Birch Coppice Colly. Polesworth Nr. Tamworth. While that’s accurate geographically, it’s a little odd in railway terms – it seems to imply a routing via the LNWR Trent Valley line rather than via the Kingsbury branch. Baddesley Colliery, at the end of the Kingsbury branch, had its own railway down to exchange sidings just west of Atherstone and a wharf on the Coventry Canal but although Birch Coppice also had a tramway to the Canal, it didn’t reach the Trent Valley line.

(On the 25” map, the original straight alignment of the tramway from the closed Birch Coppice No. 1 pit can be seen; the active colliery at the start of the 20^th century was Birch Coppice No. 2, with Wood End pit, south of the Kingsbury Branch, opening in 1911.) Thompson’s wagon gives Great Malvern as the address; the registration plate hadn’t been fitted when the official photo was taken but presumably it would also be registered with the GWR. This merchant’s wagons certainly worked north: an identical wagon (possibly No. 7?) was the first vehicle in a train photographed by W.L. Good near Kings Norton on 15 April 1922.

 

I had got as far as sketched out the lettering on sides for these five wagons and started to ink in one of the W.H. Hart pair. The liveries can be seen on Hereford Model Centre limited edition wagons – finding these gave me pause for thought; their Hart and Thompson wagons use the Dapol 5-plank wagon with wooden underframe, which has a passable pre-grouping look. I’ve not examined one of these in the flesh but I gather they are a scale 16’ long, whereas the prototypes and the Slater’s kit are 15’ wagons. (Or 14’11”: the Gloucester photo captions say 14’5” but this is the internal length, add 3” each end for the sheeting.) The representation of the planks is rather crude too. So I should be thinking of trying to find the Rotring pen…

 

Another pair of more-or-less finished sides is for N.A. Walton, of Sutton Coldfield, Four Oaks and Walsall (built March 1903: Montague, Plate 615):

 

 

Here I’d chickened out of attempting the smaller writing: Empty to along with the tare and load. HMRS have a sheet of script-style writing including key words and phrases such as Tare, Load, Empty to but I’m not sure I fancy trying to spell out something like Birch Coppice Colly. Polesworth Nr. Tamworth in individual Pressfix letters 1 mm high! I made a 7 mm scale version of this wagon as a shelf model for my father, whose book on the politics surrounding the building of the LNWR branch to Sutton Coldfield is still available [Roger Lea, Steaming up to Sutton (Sutton Coldfield: Westwood Press, 1984)]. This will be one for my LNWR train. Sutton Coldfield lies between the North Warwickshire and Cannock Chase coalfields; the etymology of “Coldfield” has been disputed, with some suggesting a link to charcoal from the forest that was the origin of Sutton Park. My father’s theory is that “cold” is in the sense of “barren”, quoting Jane Austen’s Sanditon in support: “As for the soil – it is so cold and ungrateful that it can hardly be made to yield a cabbage”.

 

I’ve also got a couple of pairs of sides for Shirebrook Colliery wagons (Montague, Plate 519) but these look rather less successful. I’ll probably get out the Precision Superstrip and re-purpose them. On the one hand, there are POWSides transfers for this wagon; on the other, it’s a longer wagon than the Slater’s kit – 15’ inside. Nevertheless, I’m sure there would have been plenty of coal from the Debryshire/Nottinghamshire coalfield coming into the Birmingham area – where did the best coal for gas making come from?

 

[Penlan]

Mentioning Malvern, my late Father-in-Law can remember 'Primrose' colliery wagons in the yards at Malvern*.
There was also of course the 'Malvern Gas Works' wagons.

 

* Mainly because they were not primrose coloured...

Edited November 22, 2017 by Penlan

[Compound2632]

Mentioning Malvern, my late Father-in-Law can remember 'Primrose' colliery wagons in the yards at Malvern*.

There was also of course the 'Malvern Gas Works' wagons.

 

* Mainly because they were not primrose coloured...

 

Primrose Colliery being at Pontardawe, their wagons would have reached Malvern by the Midland route via Brecon, Hay and Hereford. Too far south for my immediate interests but of course if they got as far as Malvern that's not to say they would not have had customers in the West Midlands. According to POWSides, their wagons were black, white lettering shaded red. Perhaps primrose-tinted spectacles are required!

 

Now which direction did the Malvern Gas Works wagons come from?

[Penlan]

Now which direction did the Malvern Gas Works wagons come from?

I don't know..

I use to live in Malvern and went through the various Archives, both Malvern DC and County Archives, but there where no purchase ledgers available that covered the relevant period.

 

Re. how far did the wagons travel, I'm not sure, but I recall Tudor Watkins mentioning wagons from the Swansea Valley that had contracts for supplying coal to Fishing boats and a 'block' of wagons would be dispatched to various ports 'Up North & East' to meet the boats.

I'm seeing Tudor this weekend (Warley, NEC) so will check it out.

Edited November 22, 2017 by Penlan