"Foreign" wagons - How many would you see?

[Compound2632]

8 minutes ago, Andy Hayter said:

With that knowledge we can adjust our rakes and perhaps refrain from future purchases.  

 

Correction:

 

With that knowledge we can adjust our rakes and make additional purchases of wagons of our home company.

[kevinlms]

1 hour ago, Andy Hayter said:

 

 

Because I suspect many of us will find we have far too many foreign wagons.  I know I do.  

 

With that knowledge we can adjust our rakes and perhaps refrain from future purchases.  

Depends on what type of 'foreign wagons'? If it's hearse wagons, a rake of banana vans or special high capacity wagons, used for transporting heavy chunks of steel plate, on a light branch, then you do in fact have 'far too many foreign wagons'. But if standard single plank, low sided or 5 planked wagons, with a modest range of foreign owners, then you probably don't have a problem at all.

[Compound2632]

1 minute ago, kevinlms said:

Depends on what type of 'foreign wagons'? If it's hearse wagons, a rake of banana vans or special high capacity wagons, used for transporting heavy chunks of steel plate, on a light branch, then you do in fact have 'far too many foreign wagons'. But if standard single plank, low sided or 5 planked wagons, with a modest range of foreign owners, then you probably don't have a problem at all.

 

I'm not so sure. One can justify the occasional special wagon delivering some unusual load - perhaps not steel plate or bananas in bulk but maybe plate glass for that new-fangled department store in town or perhaps a steel girders for the local board's road improvement works, but the special wagon is most likely from a company serving the industrial area where the items are made rather than from the home company.

 

It's the ordinary opens from 'foreign' lines that are harder to justify pre-Great War, at least for a rural branch.

 

(All the hearse or corpse vans I'm aware of were passenger-rated vehicles; such traffic was also conveyed in passenger guards vans.)

[Mikkel]

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Correction:

 

With that knowledge we can adjust our rakes and make additional purchases of wagons of our home company.

 

Which raises the question: Do we need to adjust the principle that a D299 is mandatory in any post-pooling yard? 🙂

 

[Compound2632]

16 minutes ago, Mikkel said:

Which raises the question: Do we need to adjust the principle that a D299 is mandatory in any post-pooling yard? 🙂

 

A D299 remains mandatory pre-pooling, i.e. pre-Great War, justified by:

1. coal and the Midland's policy with respect to private owner wagons, which resulted in a higher proportion of coal traffic originating on its system being conveyed in its own wagons than for any other company apart from the North Eastern; though in the 15 years before the Great War the PO wagon was making a vigorous come-back on the Midland, fuelled by the continued increase in coal traffic;
2. beer, though in eastern England Burton beer traffic was just as likely to be conveyed in Great Northern wagons.

A D299 remains mandatory post-pooling, i.e. post-Great War, on the basis of sheer numbers, though these numbers were in steady decline - being steadily replaced in merchandise traffic by Midland D663A and LMS D1666/D1667 wagons, and in mineral traffic by Midland D607/D673 and LMS D1671 wagons, all of higher capacity.

[kevinlms]

17 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

I'm not so sure. One can justify the occasional special wagon delivering some unusual load - perhaps not steel plate or bananas in bulk but maybe plate glass for that new-fangled department store in town or perhaps a steel girders for the local board's road improvement works, but the special wagon is most likely from a company serving the industrial area where the items are made rather than from the home company.

 

It's the ordinary opens from 'foreign' lines that are harder to justify pre-Great War, at least for a rural branch.

 

(All the hearse or corpse vans I'm aware of were passenger-rated vehicles; such traffic was also conveyed in passenger guards vans.)

OK, I concede the hearse van is correctly passenger rated, sorry for that!

 

However, in Bob Essery's book 'Freight Train Operation for the Railway Modeller', it doesn't seem to agree with your comments, although admittedly most of the photos are of trains on the mainline - even though they are stopping trains and many in the 1950s.

 

There is a chapter on various types of load and where they might go. I won't quote chunks, but say Tube wagons (not a common sight), might go to a small town that was installing/renewing water, gas or even sewage mains and these would perhaps require a wagon load each week or two, which would as you suggest, be a wagon from the manufacturing area, but a steady supply would be seen for perhaps months.

 

I guess it comes down to YOU might choose to have nearly all home wagons, I wouldn't, I would prefer to have maybe 45% home and the other 55% of other railway owned vehicles, be a selection.

I believe in the principle of wagon pooling and return of foreign wagons loaded, if at all possible. Something that occurred to an increasing degree, from the early 20th Century onwards.  Sending empty wagons around the country, was rightly seen as wasted money and railway companies tried hard to avoid it if possible.

[Compound2632]

13 minutes ago, kevinlms said:

I guess it comes down to YOU might choose to have nearly all home wagons, I wouldn't, I would prefer to have maybe 45% home and the other 55% of other railway owned vehicles, be a selection.

 

It comes down to you choosing the period and location of your model and working out what would be realistic for that period and location, if you care about your model railway being a realistic representation of the real railway of that time and place. Of course it is that that is a matter of preference.

 

16 minutes ago, kevinlms said:

I believe in the principle of wagon pooling and return of foreign wagons loaded, if at all possible. Something that occurred to an increasing degree, from the early 20th Century onwards.  Sending empty wagons around the country, was rightly seen as wasted money and railway companies tried hard to avoid it if possible.

 

It's not a question of belief but of understanding historical fact.

[kevinlms]

4 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

It's not a question of belief but of understanding historical fact.

What's not true about wagon pooling and returning foreign wagons loaded if possible?

 

I'm not suggesting it always happened but as time went on, it was realised that what happened in the 1850s, didn't make sense by Edwardian days.

It saved the railways money, by not having as many empty wagons running around (at least their own - not much that could be done about PO ones at this stage). That also meant that there was less need to build more wagons and tracks to store them on - a common problem in the late 19th Century.

[Compound2632]

2 hours ago, kevinlms said:

What's not true about wagon pooling and returning foreign wagons loaded if possible?

 

What I'm banging on at is, however logical it appears to us, wagon pooling was an innovation of the Great War and consequently, there is a very significant difference between the goods stock one would expect to see on a layout set before the Great War, compared to one set after. Equally, returning foreign wagons loaded, whilst repeatedly encouraged in Goods Managers' and Superintendent of the Line's Circulars (on the Midland) was constrained by the availability of suitable traffic and the RCH rules, so outside of major cities was unlikely to be possible.

 

As an aside, the rules on returning 'foreign' wagons promptly and by the exact same route they'd come by also applied to PO wagons, even if the entire journey was on one company's system, if the return journey was to qualify for free haulage under the RCH rules. This was fine for colliery-owned wagons, which the colliery naturally wanted back promptly, and for local merchant's wagons, where the merchant had a contract with a particular colliery, but was a pain in the b- for the large coal factors, who would have wanted flexibility in which colliery to next send their empty wagons to. (In Turton's books, one comes across local merchants with maybe ten or a dozen wagons, some labelled 'empty to' one colliery and some to another.) This situation was eased in the grouping period with the introduction of the commuted charge scheme and of course disappeared altogether with the wartime requisition of PO wagons.

Edited January 10 by Compound2632
grammar tidy

[Dungrange]

8 hours ago, burgundy said:

From our modern perspective, it is difficult to imagine the transition from the largely self contained rural community of the pre-railway age to our own highly interdependent supply chains.

 

Indeed, as someone who has grown up in an age where rail is really only competitive for regular high volume longer distance traffic, it seems strange to imagine rail doing the job that would now be in the hands of 'white van' man.  Perhaps the increase in road competition post-WW1 for shorter distance trips with the resultant loss in some of the shortest distance traffic was the start of the railway companies looking for longer distance traffic.

 

8 hours ago, burgundy said:

As well as just relying on statistical probability, it might be worth doing some analysis of what businesses around Upwell might have required occasional imports. Glass for the glasshouses? Building materials? Agricultural machinery? 

 

I agree that's something I need to look at to get a better breakdown of different types of wagons.  Where such products are sourced from would appear to generally be quite local, so that's the reason for starting with a breakdown of foreign company wagons.

 

7 hours ago, Mikkel said:

* Share of total stock. You have 50 wagons, and 3% should be foreign, so you need 1½ foreign wagon. Well that would look odd. A principle of rounding up could be applied, but that means the percentages start shifting, so why do the careful analysis in the first place.

 

It's easy - just double the amount of stock that you own and you don't need to worry about 1/2 wagons!! 🤣

 

Seriously, given the uncertainties that result from making lots of assumptions (some of which may be more accurate than others), I think it's important not to get too hung up on apparent precision.  If I was to purchase 50 (non-coal) wagons for a representation of a GWR line in Dorset in 1908, then I'd probably be looking at buying something like 36 GWR wagons, 12 LSWR wagons, and one wagon from each of the MR and the S&DJR.  Perhaps add in a LNWR wagon for a bit of variety if desired.  However, it seems fairly obvious that two companies would have dominated a Dorset branch line prior to the Great War.

 

In my case, I think I probably want about 40% of my stock to be foreign.  Perhaps about 25% if I was modelling pre-Great War (because there were five railway companies operating in the 'local' area) and because post-pooling, the proportion of foreign wagons would have increased (but to what extent I'm still not certain).  So therefore, if I want a pool of 50 wagons (which is probably what I should aim for), then I probably need about 30 GER wagons and 20 foreign wagons (plus some PO wagons).  The question is then what foreign wagons?  Obviously the closest companies, but how far can I realistically expect something to have been common?  Post pooling, there also becomes a need for foreign wagons from the largest companies as well.  

 

My current thoughts are that pre-Great War, in addition to the GER, wagons from the GNR, LNWR and MR would have appeared virtually every day.  A M&GNJR wagon may have turned up most weeks and a wagon from the NER, GCR, GWR and L&YR may have turned up most months.  Wagons from any of the other companies would have been few and far between (and I can probably ignore them, or pick just one company to represent 'the rest of Great Britain').

 

However, after the Great War, I suspect that I'd still just see GER, GNR, LNWR and MR wagons on a daily basis, but that wagons from the NER, GCR, GWR and L&YR would all have been seen every week rather than just monthly and a typical month could probably have thrown up examples from the SECR, NSR, LSWR, H&BR, NBR, CR and the CLC.  They're not really frequent enough visitors to say I need to buy a wagon from each company, but I should probably have a representative wagon from at least one of these companies.  I'd say that realistically, if I'm looking for 50 wagons, then I probably want 30 GER wagons, 8 GNR wagons, 4 MR wagons, 3 LNWR wagons, 1 GWR wagon, 1 GCR wagon, 1 NER wagon, 1 L&YR wagon and 2 other foreign wagons to represent the rest of the pre-grouping companies.   On that basis, I know I've already bought one too  many GWR wagons and I'm already maxed out on wagons from south of the Thames.

 

8 hours ago, Mikkel said:

* An operation-based approach. I assume this is what Nick refers to above when he says: 

 

On 09/01/2024 at 13:32, magmouse said:

there will be more than 3% other companies, on the basis that I don't run all the non-GWR stock at once. Rather, the GWR stock represents the majority, 'every day' traffic, with the occasional 'foreigner' appearing to illustrate different types of more distant traffic. So the stock won't follow a 3% rule, but the operation will (or at least a percentage justified by the back-story).

 

That would also be my approach, but one could argue that it is at odds with the careful and complex statistical approach being discussed here, and its attention to multiple factors that may shift the percentage a little one way or the other. For should we not then also consider (i) the time of year, (ii) the day of the week, (iii) the time of day, (iv) the length of the operating/viewing session, etc.

 

I think that's what we all do.  Most of us own more stock than we really need.  Some of the more common wagons will make more than one trip into the scenic area (appearance on stage) during an operating session and the more obscure wagons will make less frequent appearances.  I'd like to consider time of year and day of the week, but it's hard enough finding annual data, so further disaggregation becomes even more difficult.

 

8 hours ago, kevinlms said:

One of the key functions of the RCH, was to ensure that receipts for goods and passengers carried, was distributed in a fair manner, based on proportioning out, using the distance covered by parts of the journey, to determine payments. Only a little of this would occur, if 'most' general traffic stayed on it's home ground.

 

I don't think that most traffic stayed on it's home ground - but it would appear that most general merchandise was moved over relatively short distances in the pre-grouping period.  Coal was a different matter, as it appears that could have been moved from one end of the country to the other.

 

7 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

But the major doublings and relief lines that I can think of - the Midland main line, the GN&GE Joint (a relief line for the GN main line), etc., were driven by the continuous growth in coal traffic, which was the largest source of revenue for most railway companies; certainly those serving coalfields.

 

The GN&GE joint was certainly desired by the GER because it provided access to coalfields and coal seems to have been one of the the most lucrative commodities due to the tens of millions of tons moved each year.

 

6 hours ago, burgundy said:

As a completely random test, I looked up Huntley and Palmer's biscuits and Kieller's marmalade. Both were founded before the railway age, but seem to have enjoyed significant growth in the Victorian period, not least by benefitting from sales to the Empire. It would be interesting to understand how, and over what period, processed foods of this kind became commonplace in different parts of the UK market.

 

I guess the first stage of any expansion would have been the ability to transport regional produce to London.  Presumably it was some time later before inter-regional traffic became commonplace and a national distribution capability became common.

 

 

 

[MR Chuffer]

With all this bandying around of statistics, I was reminded of this piece on The LMS Society website Goods Vehicles and Freight Marshalling (a .PDF link). Some of the statistical modelling seems a bit simplistic to me compared to previous workings upthread.

Edited January 10 by MR Chuffer

[Compound2632]

19 minutes ago, Dungrange said:

I guess the first stage of any expansion would have been the ability to transport regional produce to London.  Presumably it was some time later before inter-regional traffic became commonplace and a national distribution capability became common.

 

One of my favourite Huntley & Palmers photos - the Lower Loading Shed, c. 1899:

Open wagons from the GWR, MR, and LSWR can be identified. The GWR and LSWR were both 'home' lines in Reading (the latter by running powers over the SER.) But the MR wagon? My theory is that what we see here is regional distribution. Wagonload traffic to some transhipment goods station, then onwards by road van / station truck to the final destinations. The Midland wagon, I hypothesise, is a regular 'diagram', probably via west London, to somewhere such as Derby.  

[Compound2632]

5 minutes ago, MR Chuffer said:

With all this bandying around of statistics, I was reminded of this piece on The LMS Society website Goods Vehicles and Freight Marshalling (a .PDF link). Some of the statistical modelling seems a bit simplistic to me compared to previous workings upthread.

 

Summary Point 11 is the key one, I think.

[41516]

21 minutes ago, MR Chuffer said:

statistical modelling seems a bit simplistic

 

But I like point 11 of the summary.

 

 

Edit - SNAP

Edited January 10 by 41516

[MR Chuffer]

7 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

Summary Point 11

I'm at peak wagon, I've run out of siding space, both on the layout and in the fiddle yard.

 

160+ wagons, incl 10 brakes, 57 MR, 34 PO coal, 23 L&Y and 33 odds and sods (LNWR, FR, G&SWR, NB, CLC, GN, NE, GW etc.).

 

I'm broke but happy, just need some Genesis carriages and we're done.... (perhaps?)

[Mikkel]

8 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

A D299 remains mandatory pre-pooling, i.e. pre-Great War, justified by:

1. coal and the Midland's policy with respect to private owner wagons, which resulted in a higher proportion of coal traffic originating on its system being conveyed in its own wagons than for any other company apart from the North Eastern; though in the 15 years before the Great War the PO wagon was making a vigorous come-back on the Midland, fuelled by the continued increase in coal traffic;
2. beer, though in eastern England Burton beer traffic was just as likely to be conveyed in Great Northern wagons.

A D299 remains mandatory post-pooling, i.e. post-Great War, on the basis of sheer numbers, though these numbers were in steady decline - being steadily replaced in merchandise traffic by Midland D663A and LMS D1666/D1667 wagons, and in mineral traffic by Midland D607/D673 and LMS D1671 wagons, all of higher capacity.

 

All right, thank you, I'll add one or two of Bill's kits.

 

Unless it's all a fiendish scheme and he is you, or you are him! 

 

 

[Compound2632]

18 minutes ago, Mikkel said:

Unless it's all a fiendish scheme and he is you, or you are him! 

 

I can assure you we are quite different people. I've met him several times and he's definitely not me.

 

In the interest of impartiality, i would remind you of the Slaters kit - which as I recall you have done.

[magmouse]

19 minutes ago, Mikkel said:

Unless it's all a fiendish scheme and he is you, or you are him! 

 

Nah, Stephen is only the pusher. D299s are just the gateway drug - before you know it, you'll move on to MR 3-plankers, a van or two, then an agricultural implement truck, and after that...

 

Nick.

[magmouse]

5 hours ago, Dungrange said:

If I was to purchase 50 (non-coal) wagons for a representation of a GWR line in Dorset in 1908, then I'd probably be looking at buying something like 36 GWR wagons, 12 LSWR wagons, and one wagon from each of the MR and the S&DJR.  Perhaps add in a LNWR wagon for a bit of variety if desired.  However, it seems fairly obvious that two companies would have dominated a Dorset branch line prior to the Great War.

 

Well, the current plan involves:

• 24 GWR general merchandise wagons - 2 vans, 10 4-plank opens and a sprinkling of 1, 2, 3, 5 and 7-plank opens. This is broadly representative of the GWR fleet in my period. 5 with unidentified sheeted loads, others carrying casks, timber, straw, hay.
• 7 GWR non-revenue wagons - 5 loco coal (too many, but there are 5 types I want to model, and I need both full and empty), a Cordon gas tank and a ballast wagon to bring sand and remove ash.
• 4 LSWR wagons - one van, 2 opens and a double bolster. This is a bit random based on available kits and RTR models, and your comments make me think I need to review this.
• 2 MR D299s - one bringing coal, one beer in casks from Burton.
• 1 S&DJR open - agricultural produce
• 1 SER van, bringing bottled beer from Kent
• 1 Cambrian 2-plank bring roofing slates from north Wales
• various wagons bringing things related to the engineering works - not yet full planned, but so far I'm thinking of a pair of GWR single bolsters with steel plate and/or rolled sections, a GWR or possibly MR or LNWR open bringing pig iron for the foundry, an LNWR sheeted open bring miscellaneous components from the Midlands/north.
• As noted above, I am still working out the situation with coal, but it will be a mix of MR (D299 as noted above), local merchant, colliery and (possibly) coal factors' wagons.

So the main thing this discussion has made me want to rethink is the LSWR representation - thanks for the prompt to do that. I might need to do some scratch-building. I also think I might do a blog post to unpack all this in more detail.

 

Nick.

 

 

[Compound2632]

2 minutes ago, magmouse said:

• 1 S&DJR open - agricultural produce

 

Or Forest or South Walian coal... Anthracite for the brewery?

 

3 minutes ago, magmouse said:

• 1 Cambrian 2-plank bring roofing slates from north Wales

 

A commodity just as likely to come round by sea?

 

4 minutes ago, magmouse said:

• As noted above, I am still working out the situation with coal, but it will be a mix of MR (D299 as noted above), local merchant, colliery and (possibly) coal factors' wagons.

 

Don't overlook the Great Northern here. Plenty of coal travelled south of the Thames in their wagons as well as those of collieries on their system.

[magmouse]

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

Or Forest or South Walian coal... Anthracite for the brewery?

 

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

A commodity just as likely to come round by sea?

Good points, both, but remember this plan is a mix of “how can I accurately represent the mix of wagons there would have been?” and “ooh! I fancy one of those,  how can I justify it?” So the S&DJR wagon will be the type similar to a D299, but with round ends and a wooden sheet supporter - I think I can use the Slaters kit as a basis. As to the Cambrian 2-plank, who can resist a wagon with feathers painted on the side?

 

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

Don't overlook the Great Northern here. Plenty of coal travelled south of the Thames in their wagons as well as those of collieries on their system

That’s a thought - I’ll consider that for the coal wagon mix. Always nice to have an excuse for another livery.

 

Nick.

 

 

[kevinlms]

9 hours ago, MR Chuffer said:

With all this bandying around of statistics, I was reminded of this piece on The LMS Society website Goods Vehicles and Freight Marshalling (a .PDF link). Some of the statistical modelling seems a bit simplistic to me compared to previous workings upthread.

An excellent post. I have seen that information presented in a different way, by those same authors.

It confirms my view about proportions of wagons belonging to different railway companies.

 

As to the idea mentioned above, about having too many wagons, for your layout! LOL, you need lots of standard wagons and fewer specialist ones, unless there is a specific project on at or near your modelled branch or location, that needs them.

[DenysW]

On 10/01/2024 at 08:32, Compound2632 said:

were driven by the continuous growth in coal traffic, which was the largest source of revenue for most railway companies; certainly those serving coalfields.

I'm not so sure. The data below is still incomplete due to my laziness, but shows that minerals, general merchandise, and passenger (which includes mails, parcels, horses, dogs, & carriages) were all comparable*. Where there's data for individual companies (mostly pre-1868 - when the contents of the accounts became more standardised) the 'average' passenger & goods journey is quite short.  "Overall" is BoT data for England and Wales.** The MS&L have the most useful accounts for challenging preconceptions, so I attach a fragment.

 

* Except in the earliest days before about 1855 when passenger seems to dominate.

** They also give Scottish, Irish and UK, but there appear to be significant differences between the other nations and England/Wales including the amount of single-track, and the proportion of mixed passenger/goods trains (negligible in England & Wales).

 

 

[kevinlms]

What were the rates per ton (ton/mile), or whatever the measure was? I would have expected coal and it's derivatives to be a much lower rate, than say a load of say manufactured goods in a 5 plank wagon.

Coal just needs to be put in a wagon and removed at the other end of the journey. Other goods might need handling on the way, i.e. livestock.

[Compound2632]

12 minutes ago, kevinlms said:

What were the rates per ton (ton/mile), or whatever the measure was? I would have expected coal and it's derivatives to be a much lower rate, than say a load of say manufactured goods in a 5 plank wagon.

Coal just needs to be put in a wagon and removed at the other end of the journey. Other goods might need handling on the way, i.e. livestock.

 

That's a very complicated question. Rates were discussed and I think in many cases agreed at the RCH General Managers' and Goods Managers' Committees, the minute books of which are at TNA. There were all sorts of special cases. I think each company must have issued all its stations with rate books but I've not come across a copy.