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

[Compound2632]

Brilliant, thanks. The photo of No. 4000 is the one that appears in Modelling Railways Illustrated, Vol. 2 No. 11 (July 1995), that I was just now looking for without success. The sprung-buffered wagon in the Huntley & Palmers photo is numbered 2168 so I'm happy to assume it is the same as these two; on the other hand, the dumb-buffered wagon is 1411 or perhaps 1414, so is out-of-sequence if 1006 was supposed to be the pattern for new construction... Also 1035, seen at Wellingborough in 1894 [Midland Wagons Vol. 1 Plate 22], is, like the H&P dumb-buffered examples, without external diagonal ironwork - but we don't know if it has dumb or sprung buffers.

 

I'm noting also the detail differences in the ironwork on the sides at the end door between these two and 1173, also the angled washer plate on the solebar of the latter. Der liebe Gott steckt im detail, to quote Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe (that's for Lecorbusier if he's passing by).

 

On the colour of the ironwork, there seems to be evidence in both photos for the corner plates being a different colour to the rest of the ironwork, i.e. red. 

Edited February 25, 2019 by Compound2632

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, billbedford said:

 

This seems to have been a common practice for private wagon builders. I believe it allowed them to batch produce basic ironwork, paint the parts black and keep them in stock until needed. It may also mean that the wooden components were painted before assembly.

 

No wooden components here:

 

 

Despite what it says on the boxes, these will be Cheshire Lines wagons - CLC Diagrams 10 and 2, respectively. MS&LR designs, but one-third owned by the Midland. Rather less off-piste than the Brighton cattle wagon, as a couple of CLC wagons on their way back from Birmingham Central Goods Station via Ancoats were destroyed in an accident at Whitacre on 18 August 1903. To quote the newspaper headline, "Roadkill shows otters are flourishing in Gloucestershire". 

 

I had been a bit doubtful about etched brass, an intrinsically thin material, being used for the 2.5" - 3" thick timber sides of an open wagon but have been encouraged by Mark Forrest's description of his build of Bill's kit for the Midland D818 3-plank wagon. I'm a great believer that one can try anything once; trying it twice gives one an even greater chance of success. My parents had a cat that, one sunny day, went hurtling up the stairs, into the bathroom, and out the window. He landed on all four paws of course but looked slightly stunned; nevertheless he immediately repeated the action but never did it again.

[wagonman]

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

Brilliant, thanks. The photo of No. 4000 is the one that appears in Modelling Railways Illustrated, Vol. 2 No. 11 (July 1995), that I was just now looking for without success. The sprung-buffered wagon in the Huntley & Palmers photo is numbered 2168 so I'm happy to assume it is the same as these two; on the other hand, the dumb-buffered wagon is 1411 or perhaps 1414, so is out-of-sequence if 1006 was supposed to be the pattern for new construction... Also 1035, seen at Wellingborough in 1894 [Midland Wagons Vol. 1 Plate 22], is, like the H&P dumb-buffered examples, without external diagonal ironwork - but we don't know if it has dumb or sprung buffers.

 

 

1411 (GWR reg D6541) and 1414 (GWR reg D6549) were registered in April 1888 as part of a batch of 600 built by Harrison & Camm and probably among the last old specification wagons supplied. The numbers allocated were all over the place ranging between 208 and 2500 so may well have been partly replacements of even older wagons as well as additions to capital stock. I haven't managed to find 1035...

 

PS: 3501-3528 were registered by the GWR in Dec 1899, they just got separated in the register!

[Compound2632]

Having looked again at the sides of the Roxey kit, modification to a sprung-buffered wagon of the Harrison & Camm / Gloucester pattern isn't so straightforward. Not only would I have to add the diagonal ironwork, the bottom of the vertical piece is curved round to meet it, whereas on the dumb-buffered wagon it's straight.

 

One feature of the castings I'm a bit suspicious of is the Gloucester-style V-hanger. I don't have any of the LB&SCR references mentioned in the instructions, so don't have a good photo of the V-hanger of a dumb-buffered wagon. (I note that the Gloucester-built wagons as exemplified by 4000 have a "conventional" V-hanger rather than the Gloucester type, following the Harrison & Camm "type" wagon rather than standard Gloucester practice, also Ellis-type axleboxes rather than the Gloucester 4S type; only the brake blocks proclaim their in-house origin.

 

While we're about it, here's an end-on view of 3034, another in the same style but at a later date - said to be 1922: 

 

 

(Some distortion due to being at the edge of the plate.) Along-side it in the photo from the Huntley & Palmer collection is at least one steel-framed Huntley & Palmers 6-plank wagon - a type I've not yet modelled:

 

 

 I suspect this of being one of the ten 10-ton wagons Nos. 11 - 20 supplied by the Birmingham RC&W Co. in 1903 (note the oval plate on the second plank up above the word READING), although Richard says this batch were the same as the five iron-framed 4-plank 10 ton wagons Nos. 6 - 10 supplied by Birmingham in 1889, three of which are seen here:

 

Edited February 25, 2019 by Compound2632

[Miss Prism]

Nice SC pics. Very noticeable how close the sides are to the solebar outer face. I presume the 7' dimension is internal and that the bodies were external 7'5" or 7'6" wide?

 

Edited February 26, 2019 by Miss Prism

[Compound2632]

Internal width 7'0" with 3" sheeting gives 7'6" over sheeting. 6'1" between inner faces of solebars with 4.5" thick solebars gives 6'10" over outside face of solebars. Therefore overhang of side rail 4" - all quite typical dimensions.

[Miss Prism]

Thanks. It's been a while since I've thought about PO wagon widths. They are a bit like Pannier widths - more variation than one initially expects.

 

 

[Mikkel]

14 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

Rather less off-piste than the Brighton cattle wagon, as a couple of CLC wagons on their way back from Birmingham Central Goods Station via Ancoats were destroyed in an accident at Whitacre on 18 August 1903. To quote the newspaper headline, "Roadkill shows otters are flourishing in Gloucestershire". 

 

This requires elaboration! You mean to say there was a railway accident involving otters? 

[Poggy1165]

You might be advised to check photos of CLC versions of these as the CL quite often used slightly different brake arrangements to the GC. It's a bit of a flipping minefield. OTOH you might well find they were exactly alike.  The GC diag 8 itself had a variety of brake arrangements, including single lever on one side only, double lever at one end and what might be called "normal". As for GC 3 planks, ye gods, the variety is infinite, including some where the V hangers were not in the middle of the solebar.

[Western Star]

4 hours ago, Mikkel said:

 

This requires elaboration! You mean to say there was a railway accident involving otters? 

I agree!

 

I have just read the accident report for the collision, here, and I did not see any mention of small and furries.

 

Worth reading the report for the details of wagons which were damaged, might any of them be D.299?

 

regards, Graham

[Simond]

apropos an earlier discussion about the inappropriate use of the local stray dogs as fuel for locos, it is widely held that amphibious carnivores burn a little 'otter...

[Compound2632]

10 hours ago, Poggy1165 said:

You might be advised to check photos of CLC versions of these as the CL quite often used slightly different brake arrangements to the GC. It's a bit of a flipping minefield. OTOH you might well find they were exactly alike.  The GC diag 8 itself had a variety of brake arrangements, including single lever on one side only, double lever at one end and what might be called "normal". As for GC 3 planks, ye gods, the variety is infinite, including some where the V hangers were not in the middle of the solebar.

 

Indeed, which is why I invested in the relevant volume of Tatlow. It was a simplification to say the 3-plank was CLC D2, as D2 through to D5 covered subtle variants, as you indicate.

 

6 hours ago, Western Star said:

Worth reading the report for the details of wagons which were damaged, might any of them be D.299?

 

I am working my way through accident reports involving Midland goods trains, building up a database of types and numbers - more of this anon. In this particular case, if one assumes the order in which they are listed is the order in which they were marshalled, the first 14 wagons of this 23 wagon train were:

 

L&Y open wagon No. 23587 (I've yet to look through Coates' volumes to see if any light can be shed on this)

CLC open wagons Nos. 2037 and 1647 (these numbers are below the known numbers listed by Tatlow, so my wagons will be representative only)

MR high side Nos. 20628 and 70981 (to a certainty, D299)

MR low side No. 31606 (D305, most likely of the 1880s type to Drg. 213)

MR covered goods Nos. 8393 and 14577 (could be from any of a number of diagrams)

MR stores wagon No. 2322 (could be a D334 or D355 rail wagon as these had STORES written on the side)

MR low side No. 32820 (D305 as above)

MR refrigerator vans Nos. 116359, 4412, 5746, and 114148 (114128 is a known number for a D370 van of Lot 305 (Sept 1892); thirty were built to this lot so it's a good bet 114148 was one of them; it's then a reasonable guess that 116359 is from the next lot, Lot 333 (Feb 1894); the other two took old numbers so could date from 1879 or 1896-1900).

 

The first eight wagons are described as "broken up" - i.e. roadkill.

 

This was a long-distance goods train; I think it's reasonable to assume that all these wagons were working through from one major goods station to another (Birmingham Central - Manchester Ancoats) and that the "foreign" wagons were being returned empty (with their sheets neatly folded inside) having been consigned loaded from Lancashire stations.

 

10 hours ago, Mikkel said:

 

This requires elaboration! You mean to say there was a railway accident involving otters? 

 

6 hours ago, Western Star said:

I have just read the accident report for the collision, here, and I did not see any mention of small and furries.

 

4 hours ago, Simond said:

apropos an earlier discussion about the inappropriate use of the local stray dogs as fuel for locos, it is widely held that amphibious carnivores burn a little 'otter...

 

Dear me, you're all being provokingly literal-minded. It's an analogy! There was many years ago such a newspaper headline read out on one of those Radio 4 shows - News Quiz? The discovery of roadkill otters in Gloucestershire was being advanced as evidence that there was once again a flourishing otter population, after several otterless decades. Likewise, the presence of particular wagon types in a train involved in an accident is evidence for the presence of such wagons in such trains at that date. The Whitacre accident is at the end of my c. 1902-3 date range; the drawback with data from earlier accident reports is that I can't very well use the number of a wagon broken up in an accident in 1898 for a model supposedly representing a wagon running in 1902! 

Edited February 26, 2019 by Compound2632

[Mikkel]

Thanks Stephen, I get it now.

[Northroader]

It’s like when they release beavers in the Forest of Dean after a 400 year absence, so these wagons are turning up after being hunted to extinction by the Gloucester Wagon co. and it’s upset the natural habitat for wild boar catching Stephenson Clarke fever. Railways and natural history intertwine by Dimbleby McDimblebyface.

 

[Compound2632]

I'm teaching "Disruption to food chains and webs" to year 8 tomorrow, so please stop trying to confuse me.

[Spitfire2865]

21 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

the drawback with data from earlier accident reports is that I can't very well use the number of a wagon broken up in an accident in 1898 for a model supposedly representing a wagon running in 1902! 

If anyone calls you out on it, tell them you model a parallel universe where that accident not happening was the only difference!

[Compound2632]

5 hours ago, Spitfire2865 said:

If anyone calls you out on it, tell them you model a parallel universe where that accident not happening was the only difference!

 

I've been teaching "Disruption to food chains and webs" - keyword: interdependence. If the Armagh accident of 1889 had not occurred, the railways of Britain c. 1902 would have been somewhat different.

[Northroader]

One of the wagons you’ve been talking about has turned up in Days Siding, funnily enough, and it very like the picture in Tatlow. You’re right about the brakes, this one has blocks on both wheels on one side only, then levers on both sides, but pointing to the same end.

[Compound2632]

2 hours ago, Northroader said:

You’re right about the brakes, this one has blocks on both wheels on one side only, then levers on both sides, but pointing to the same end.

 

 

The most economical way of providing a brake that could be applied from either side (and hence favoured by the Lancashire & Yorkshire) but it fell foul of a BoT requirement that the brake must be applied from the right-hand end of the wagon. The Great Western's Dean-Churchward* system hit the same snag. The levers on each side drive cams on the cross-shaft, so only the lever on one side is dropped and the brake has to be released from the same side - as I understand it, that was a BoT requirement.

 

*Is the name of its true designer known? One of the C&W Dept's DO team, such as Mr Wright or Mr Marillier?

Edited February 28, 2019 by Compound2632

[Northroader]

I have seen a Mr Thomas referred to in this connection.

[Compound2632]

This south-of-the-river stuff is getting a bit out-of-hand:

 

[BlueLightning]

14 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

This south-of-the-river stuff is getting a bit out-of-hand

 

The dark side welcomes you!! We have smaller engines that your Midland ones, and some funny ideas as to what constitutes green!!

[Compound2632]

17 minutes ago, BlueLightning said:

 

The dark side 

 

Delusions of grandeur, I'm afraid, Gary. This ...

 

 

... is the portal to the realms of darkness, over which is inscribed in letters several feet high a single word which, in the dark tongue spoken by the denizens of the blasted furnaces of Crewe, is roughly equivalent to the Italian Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate. I really must get round to sending off my application form...

Edited February 28, 2019 by Compound2632

[Mikkel]

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

 

The most economical way of providing a brake that could be applied from either side (and hence favoured by the Lancashire & Yorkshire) but it fell foul of a BoT requirement that the brake must be applied from the right-hand end of the wagon. The Great Western's Dean-Churchward* system hit the same snag. The levers on each side drive cams on the cross-shaft, so only the lever on one side is dropped and the brake has to be released from the same side - as I understand it, that was a BoT requirement.

 

*Is the name of its true designer known? One of the C&W Dept's DO team, such as Mr Wright or Mr Marillier?

 

1 hour ago, Northroader said:

I have seen a Mr Thomas referred to in this connection.

 

Yes, it was L.R. Thomas, Carriage & Works Manager at Swindon (of whom little seems to have been documented, although I know someone who is looking into that).  PS: The brake was named after him, i.e. the Thomas brake.

Edited February 28, 2019 by Mikkel

[BlueLightning]

19 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

Delusions of grandeur, I'm afraid, Gary. This is the portal to the realms of darkness

 

Well I guess I had best find someone to welcome me then!! Not that I would admit to owning anything from Crewe!! Wolverton on the other hand............