Clay or Coal

[rab]

20 hours ago, Wickham Green too said:

Presumably these : - https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/194790507669?chn=ps&_trkparms=ispr%3D1&amdata=enc%3A12fSPsq-pR8mmzTtG9hGZYg82&norover=1&mkevt=1&mkrid=710-134428-41853-0&mkcid=2&itemid=194790507669&targetid=1596500855469&device=c&mktype=&googleloc=9044978&poi=&campaignid=15278604175&mkgroupid=135429446288&rlsatarget=pla-1596500855469&abcId=9300698&merchantid=426112486&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI97SvsYeA9gIV8mDmCh0PWwQwEAQYASABEgI5j_D_BwE ....................... unfortunately they bear very little resemblance to any thing that ever existed in larger than 00 scale ! 

These actually, but I guess they are the N gauge equivalent of the one you found:

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/N-Gauge-Wagon-Works-7-Plank-Coal-Wagon-Special-Edition-/125148743784?

[Wickham Green too]

No - those actually look quite plausible vehicles ......... apart from that hook thing sticking out of each end. !

As discussed, above, they would be coal wagons - though it remains doubtful whether E.C.C. had any like that.

 

[The Johnster]

3 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Full disclosure: I was born in the year of Mk 2. I think that makes me thoroughly modern-image!

 

Mk2s put you, just, in the steam/diesel transition era, as the very first of them were in service before the general introduction of blue/grey livery, which I consider to be the end of transition and the start of death steam.

 

5 hours ago, Michael Hodgson said:

   Funny old thing, the English langauge.

 

The Squeeze is Polish, and living with her has made me more aware of the vaguaries of the English language.  Words that mean more than one thing, different spellings of the same sounding words, reliance on context for meaning; it is a 'mare to learn!  Polish is difficult in an different way, similar to Welsh with mutations and pronounciation problems with dipthongs for those unfamiliar, but the words by and large mean one thing and that's it.  The reasons for the multiple definitions of English words are plain enough; it is a mongrel language influenced by Latin and it's derivates, Brythonic languages (themselves influenced by Latin), Gaelic, Scots, Anglo-Saxon, Norse, Norman French (itself influenced by Norse and medieval French), and words collected from the Empire, especially India, and more recently American English, itself about as mongrel as you can get, but with its roots in the High English of the early 17th century, the fine language of Shakespeare and the King James Bible.

 

I was aware of all this even prior to the lovely Polish invasion, albeit at a much lower level, but having to explain and clarify things to her has cured me of all that!  I am not good at languages, having on no less than four occasions tried to formally learn my own language, Welsh, and failed; apparently I don't have linguistic bones.  How much of this is nature and how much nurture is debateable, but my feeling is that it is a skill I do not naturally posess.  I can pronounce Welsh words correctly, even strange ones, from reading them, because English as spoken in South Wales is in many ways perfectly grammatically correct Welsh using English words and I was surrounded as a child by people who could say Machynlleth properly without thinking about it, and I can follow a pub conversation in Welsh but not join it.  So near and yet so far!  But Polish defeats me if any of those accented vowels or dipthongs are invovled, and poor Kasia has to endure my hideous mangling of her language, that I can only manage a few phrases of, mostly obscenities...  her English is pretty good, though not perfect; we can manage conversations about fairly deep and complex concepts and contentious subjects in it.

[Compound2632]

I like the French loan words in Polish - they work so well because the two languages have vowels sounds in common, e.g. bagaż. On the other hand, in Czech they have a breakfast dish called hemenex, which makes sense if you pronounce it as if you were a 19th century English aristocrat.

[rab]

Thanks for the replies to my query from which I have concluded

that these wagons never actually existed in real life.

 

I think I'll have to run them under Rule 1.

 

[wagonman]

20 hours ago, Wickham Green too said:

No - those actually look quite plausible vehicles ......... apart from that hook thing sticking out of each end. !

As discussed, above, they would be coal wagons - though it remains doubtful whether E.C.C. had any like that.

 

 

Au contraire. ECC bought over 150 RCH standard wagons, most if not all 7 plank coal wagons, in the 1920s including a batch nos.675-699 from Gloucester. From 1931 they would have re-liveried as ECLP following the merger of that year. As surmised, they was needed to fire the clay dries. They must have calculated it was more economical to bring the coal by rail than by sea.

 

The photo is of four of them at Bodmin GW in 1925 – the wagons would have been quite new when photographed.

[Fat Controller]

The 'New Rock' Colliery one is from Chilcompton, in the Mendips. 

[rab]

4 hours ago, wagonman said:

 

Au contraire. ECC bought over 150 RCH standard wagons, most if not all 7 plank coal wagons, in the 1920s including a batch nos.675-699 from Gloucester. From 1931 they would have re-liveried as ECLP following the merger of that year. As surmised, they was needed to fire the clay dries. They must have calculated it was more economical to bring the coal by rail than by sea.

 

The photo is of four of them at Bodmin GW in 1925 – the wagons would have been quite new when photographed.

Thanks, so they did exist, just 40 yrs before the era I'm modelling.

Back to rule 1 then

[Aire Head]

1 hour ago, rab said:

Thanks, so they did exist, just 40 yrs before the era I'm modelling.

Back to rule 1 then

 

If your modelling the 1960s if I read your post correctly rather than private owners coal would be delivered in BR owned mineral wagons such as the humble 16 tonner.

 

You may have some exPO wagons still in the remains of their liveries which would be getting increasingly decrepit as time went by. These exPO wagons could be from across the country as PO wagons were pooled during the second world war and then finally bought by BR outright in 1948 and were soon scattered across the country far from their original homes.

 

[Artless Bodger]

On 15/02/2022 at 15:38, Nearholmer said:

I used to see them in Kent, going to/from paper mills, and while some were flat-sheeted, I’m sure some had sheet rails. Or maybe hoods - they were tall and pointy anyway! Is that what you meant?

We used to have the odd 1 or 2 delivered (about fortnightly iirc) to APM East Mill in the late '70s, as far as I could see just normal highfits (always dirty bauxite colour), they were always flat sheeted though some had sheet support bars but not used. The wagons were unloaded by a Stothert and Pitt dockside crane with a grab into our clay bunkers. The sheets were folded up and laid in the empty wagons after the Utility Gang had swept and shovelled the final bits into the grab. From memory the sheets were laid out on the wharf for folding / rolling and no particular method employed - a bit like lorry sheets probably. Sheets were a dark grey liberally dusted with clay, I dont recall any blue ones. The traffic stopped around 1980 because the machines (nos 10, 11, 12 - MGs) making the grades that used it were closed.

[brianusa]

Lovely picture of Bodmin, rom a modelling point of view although probably not with the gentry living above the station.  Convenient for catching the train to London for the directors meetings though!

      Brian

[Wickham Green too]

Probably ordinary shareholders in those houses - the Directors would have had something more palatial and in their own grounds out of town .......... and certainly NOT semi-detached !