GWR Iron Mink

[Dunsignalling]

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Yes, I've been looking at the Midland Railway Carriage & Wagon Committee minutes for the period. It's evident that there was a backlog of repairs, which was making it difficult to get back up to the pre-war target of renewing (i.e. building new wagons to replace withdrawals) at the rate of 5,000 per year (about 4% of the company's wagon fleet).

The MR's 4% replacement target is interesting, as, I'd think what was good for the Midland, in this case, was probably general practice. 

 

Other than for specialised wagons which could be expected to see relatively little use, it implies a budgeted service life of c25 years per wagon.

 

Plentiful photographic evidence indicates that vans commonly exceeded that by a substantial margin (size probably prompting replacement more often than condition), that will have been balanced by far more numerous mineral wagons, few of which (though exceptions can always be found) are likely to have remained serviceable for more than 20 years.

 

John

Edited October 19, 2022 by Dunsignalling

[Craigw]

21 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

I think that 1924 is a typo for 1904 there. Fleet expansion, yes, but that doesn't directly bear on the livery condition of wagons built before the 1904 livery change - in the early 1920s there were many thousands of 4-plank wagons in traffic, many of which were brought up to "modern" standards as diagram O21, to say nothing of iron minks and earlier wood minks. I'm inclined to agree that the pre-1904 livery was extinct by your 1920s modelling period, though the interesting question remains how rapidly it disappeared in the decade before the Great War.

 

The 1924 certainly was a typo and I shall correct it. O21 sequentially dates from about 1927 and I suspect that it was only the mid 1920s that they started fitting the additional brake on the 4 plank wagons. I have seen photos into the 1930s of 4 plankers still only having single side brakes. As an aside, at one time someone (somewhere) posted a copy a a census of wagons and vans at all Bristol depots and sidings on Sunday July 4th 1920. Very interesting reading if you can find it.

 

Craig W

[Compound2632]

11 minutes ago, Dunsignalling said:

The MR's 4% replacement target is interesting, as, I'd think what was good for the Midland, in this case, was probably general practice. 

 

Other than for specialised wagons which could be expected to see relatively little use, it implies a budgeted service life of c25 years per wagon.

 

Plentiful photographic evidence indicates that vans commonly exceeded that by a substantial margin (size probably prompting replacement more often than condition), that will have been balanced by far more numerous mineral wagons, few of which (though exceptions can always be found) are likely to have remained serviceable for more than 20 years.

 

I'm reluctant to comment further yet - I have extensive data but am currently crunching the numbers and am not yet sure of my conclusions, though I would say that 25 years is not far off the mark. It is of course a book-keeping figure, used to work out the rate at which repairs should be expected to be charged to revenue. Wagons renewed were not necessarily immediately broken up but passed into the duplicate stock - a grey area. At the end of 1905, duplicate wagon stock accounted for 8% of the total.

 

It seems that cattle wagons had a shorter "book" life, being renewed after no more than 20 years - but they accounted for only around 1.3% of the Midland's wagon fleet in the 20th century.

[Compound2632]

6 minutes ago, Craigw said:

As an aside, at one time someone (somewhere) posted a copy a a census of wagons and vans at all Bristol depots and sidings on Sunday July 4th 1920. Very interesting reading if you can find it.

 

It was in this thread:

Perhaps @Nick Holliday could be persuaded to re-upload his images to that topic? (I should do the same myself.) The key points were that it was in the pooling era, but the wagon population was nevertheless dominated by the local companies - GW, LNW, and Midland. 

 

[The Stationmaster]

The illustrations, on various open wagins, in the GWR September 1920 General Appendix include just about every permutation you care to name - including large lettering with a cast number plate; cast number plate and cast GWR plate; the widely spaced G. W. R. on the right and number on the left, or the opposite way round,;two different ways of showing the Tare weight (with or without the word 'Tare', load weight in. two different places and so on.

Edited October 19, 2022 by The Stationmaster

[Compound2632]

4 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

the widely spaced G. W. R. on the right and number on the left, or the opposite way round,

 

G . W . R at the LH end went out in 1893!

http://www.gwr.org.uk/liverieswagonred.html

Edited October 19, 2022 by Compound2632

[Nick Holliday]

In response to @Compound2632's request, this is the initial post, from the Brighton Circle, compiled by Jonathan Abson

abson sheffield park.pdf

although Stephen provided a full commentary on it at 

 

The LNWR information from Talbot is below:

Hope that helps

 

[Mikkel]

On 19/10/2022 at 09:55, Compound2632 said:

@Mikkel did a survey of early 20th-century descriptions of GW wagon livery from magazines etc., there was one that was relatively late on, as I recall, that said "grey, some red" or something like that - perhaps he can be induced to give chapter and verse?

 

 

Apparently Ernest Carter's "Britains Railway Liveries" has a statement about wagons being "dark red and grey" in 1914. I don't have the book, but it is not a contemporary observation as I understand it, and I don't think it should be taken as an indication that there were many red wagons at that time.

 

The latest photo evidence I have so far seen of a wagon that *may* be in GWR red is a photo of an Open with cast number plates, taken outside the new South Lambeth Goods shed which was finished in 1913. But cast plates and especially the small painted GWR are very rare in photos after 1910.

 

So personally I wouldn't expect a red GWR wagon in traffic on a WW1 layout, although I suppose it wouldn't be outrageous to include one worn example if there is a special affinity for them.

 

Magazines at the time rarely discussed wagons in depth, and especially not their liveries - so with the exception of a few overview articles about railway liveries they don't offer much info on that.

 

Edited October 21, 2022 by Mikkel
To clarify

[The Stationmaster]

On 19/10/2022 at 16:52, Compound2632 said:

 

G . W . R at the LH end went out in 1893!

http://www.gwr.org.uk/liverieswagonred.html

Maybe the GWR's photographer was an expert at very high quality photos and the company were happy to re-use them😇  The wagon has brakes on one side only and grease axleboxes and as it relates to loading timber it could well be an old photo re-used..

[Compound2632]

2 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

Maybe the GWR's photographer was an expert at very high quality photos and the company were happy to re-use them😇  The wagon has brakes on one side only and grease axleboxes and as it relates to loading timber it could well be an old photo re-used..

 Yes indeed; I presume these photos were re-used from earlier editions of the General Appendix. Was it an annual publication?

[The Stationmaster]

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

 Yes indeed; I presume these photos were re-used from earlier editions of the General Appendix. Was it an annual publication?

Nowhere near annual. I think the previous one (which alas I haven't got) was published about 1910/11.  The next GWR one after 1920 was published in 1936 and it remained in everyday use until it was succeeded by the first BR (officially RCH) General Appendix in 1960 and a WR Regional Appendix which showed al, the WR relevant stuff from the 1936 Appendix (updated of course).  The next BR General Appendix appeared in 1972.

 

These intervals of publication - and a similar interval applied to Sectional Appendixes and the Signalling Regulations - seem to have been fairly similar across all companies, certainly so after the Grouping.    But in between the publication of new versions amendments, later grouped into printed supplements appeared as needed.   So, for example from the information I do have, the GWR General P Appendix was republished in September 1920, supplements appeared in December that year, May 1921,  January 1922, February 1922, July 1922, January 1923 and then January 1924 (from which which point I have no further supplements for it).  The speed at which those supplements appeared seems unusual and was almost certainly down to the Grouping.  There was a similar flurry of amendments and supplements to the 1936 Appendix in 1949/50.

 

In sharp contrast there were only 5 supplements in total to the 1960 General Appendix and two of them actually appeared in March and May respectively in 1972 - to be followed by the new publication in October that year.

 

There were some good administrative reasons for issuing supplements instead of a new publication because of cost and the approval process although that was less onerous than the approval process for the Rule Book.   Hence the 1950 Rule Book was 'approved by the Railway Executive' but such approval wasn't necessary in 1960 when it was 'reprinted with amendments' (as opposed to being a new publication) but when the new Rule Book was published in 1972 it had been duly and formally approved at a meeting of the British Railways Board (whereas the new 1972 General Appendix was 'By order of The Chief Executive')

 

All one of those fascinating little asides in the wider realms of railway history and one which is no doubt little thought about let alone fully understood.  But there is one important point for those interested in the operation of the railway and things connected with it.  The original published document is only as good (hopefully) as the date shown on the cover; in order to remain valid you need a fully updated copy with all amendments and supplements.

 

Sorry to go OT

 

Edited October 21, 2022 by The Stationmaster

[Compound2632]

13 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

Nowhere near annual. I think the previous one (which alas I haven't got) was published about 1910/11.

 

If one assumes that the photos in the 1920 edition are largely re-used, one has to conclude that they were taken no later than c. 1910/11, or only six years after the adoption of 25" G W initials - and 17 years after LH G . W . R was discontinued.

[The Stationmaster]

5 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

If one assumes that the photos in the 1920 edition are largely re-used, one has to conclude that they were taken no later than c. 1910/11, or only six years after the adoption of 25" G W initials - and 17 years after LH G . W . R was discontinued.

BTW the left hand G.W.R, wagon photo also appears in the 1936 General Appendix 😮

[hmrspaul]

I cannot find my 1936 edition, but from the description of the photos they remained the same. Photo printing was expensive and they will have done the job so why not keep using them. 

 

A lot of the questions being asked are answered in 

Lewis, J.H., Lloyd, M.E.M., Metcalf, R.C. & Miller, N.R. (1980) All about GWR Iron Minks. Publ Historical Model Railway Society, 56 pages

 

It includes a comprehensive listing of wagons that were re-used by various departments (service and internal user). There are selected histories for various wagons of the various different types lumped in as Iron Minks - for the various Welsh valley railways, Spillers etc as well as for the GW. These include when extra brakes were fitted and condemnation dates. There are some persisting into the early even mid 1950s. 

 

Paul

[Compound2632]

3 hours ago, hmrspaul said:

Lewis, J.H., Lloyd, M.E.M., Metcalf, R.C. & Miller, N.R. (1980) All about GWR Iron Minks. Publ Historical Model Railway Society

 

Essential reading. Out of print with HMRS but readily available second hand for under £20 from the usual on-line agents.

 

3 hours ago, hmrspaul said:

There are some persisting into the early even mid 1950s. 

 

But mostly the Welsh ones, which were built later - early 20th century - than the genuine Great Western article, and tended to be longer.

[tomparryharry]

Iron minks went everywhere where flour was required.  As we know 'common carriers' were just that; common carriers.  Cambrian Wagon (Cardiff) made quite a lot, as a lot of traffic originated  for/from Barry (Barry Railway) and Cardiff (Taff Vale & Rhymney Rlys).

 

What isn't realised is that flour traffic had a very quick turnaround at destination. Bread & day goods only lasted a few days at best, so the throughput was prodigious. Bulk powder tanks didn't arrive until, when? The late 40's, perhaps? Every town had a bakery; bread was ( & still is ) a staple  foodstuff.

 

Off for some toast and a cuppa.....

[rapidoandy]

We have received some production samples of our forthcoming models and to say we are pleased is an understatement! These are just about ready to leave the factory and will arrive early next year.

 

Some have nearly sold out so get your orders in quick.

 

 

 

[Schooner]

24 minutes ago, rapidoandy said:

to say we are pleased is an understatement!

Bodes very well indeed!

 

...but what happened to 11152 in pre-1904 livery? Still available to order from retailers, but not shown above nor now on the website. Any clarification would be appreciated :)

[rapidoandy]

Well, the good news (for us) is it's sold out - at least on our website. When a product is no longer available to order it disappears. Retailers who still have an allocation are advertising it so get in quick with them if you have not already.

 

Andy

[Schooner]

The best possible answer - congrats and go go pre-Groupers! I'm all good, got in early with my order, just checking :)

[Dungrange]

What period does the Improvised Gunpowder Van represent?  Is it WW I or WW II?

[Harlequin]

I think I pre-ordered some Minks but I can't see any way to check on the Rapido site. There's no "my account" login, like I'd expect to find.

 

So I'm completely in the dark about the Minks, the Titfield set, and indeed about my returned Dynamometer car for that matter...

 

It would be nice to be able to check online somewhere.

 

😞

 

[Compound2632]

16 minutes ago, Dungrange said:

What period does the Improvised Gunpowder Van represent?  Is it WW I or WW II?

 

The small company initials (SR), capacity marking, and number all bottom left are the style adopted by all four companies in 1936, so WWII seems a good bet? 

 

All About... has a photo, p. 45, of No. 11346, which, the caption states, was a GPV from Sept 1914 to June 1919 and again from Oct 1937 to an unknown date, possibly until condemned in 1957. The photo shows the livery used by Rapido, with the additional off-side brake fitted to this vehicle in May 1932.

 

The authors further note that some of these conversions, made from 1937 onwards, were loaned to the Southern, and refer to an official photo of 59061, which was presumably Rapido's reference. The photo of 11346 does not show the GPV lettering on the end; presumably 59061 had this.

 

A key feature of the GPV conversions was the removal of the ventilator hoods and plating over of the ventilators, which were perforated metal sheets.

Edited November 18, 2022 by Compound2632

[rapidoandy]

It did indeed have GPV on the end - not all did but this example was based on a photo:

 

[rapidoandy]

28 minutes ago, Harlequin said:

I think I pre-ordered some Minks but I can't see any way to check on the Rapido site. There's no "my account" login, like I'd expect to find.

 

So I'm completely in the dark about the Minks, the Titfield set, and indeed about my returned Dynamometer car for that matter...

 

It would be nice to be able to check online somewhere.

 

😞

 

 

We are working on this - but sadly its not an easy thing to sort especially as we need to ensure security etc. If you have any queries please drop us an email to customerservice@rapidotrains.co.uk

 

Andy