GWR O11/15 Opens and V14/16 Vans - order book now open!

[Dungrange]

My assumption is that the impact of the common user arrangement on a rural branch line would lag, possibly by a couple of years, what was observed in the principal yards around the larger towns and cities: that is there would be a higher proportion of local company wagons for a longer period of time.  Also, at least initially, I'd expect proximity of operations to be a more significant factor than company size.  For example, I'd assume that it would have taken much longer for North British Railway wagons to become common in East Anglia than wagons from say the Great Northern (even allowing for the GE/GC/GN pooling towards the end of 1915).

 

Of course what we do know is that to build an accurate Great Western Railway layout, modellers need more than just Great Western wagons. 😀

[Compound2632]

45 minutes ago, Dungrange said:

Of course what we do know is that to build an accurate Great Western Railway layout, modellers need more than just Great Western wagons. 😀

 

If I had but world enough and time, I'd build a bucolic 1930s GWR BLT with no GWR wagons apart from a goods brake and a road van. 

[The Stationmaster]

On 18/03/2023 at 06:32, rapidoandy said:

I’d say there has never been a better time to be a railway modeller generally.😀

 

Andy

Very thoughtful comment and probably much truth in it.  Firstly I think it is far more than a simple truism that model railway spend by many in the hobby increases during times of economic strain.  It's cheaper to get some retail or kit building satisfaction that to have a family meal out or that second holiday/weekend away that you have been thinking about.   And some folk will always need cheering up so what better than a spot of wagon buying - not too expensive in the wider scheme of things - and still have something to show for it after you have spent the money.

 

Of course it does rely on having the money to spend in the first place but judging by what I saw and heard at All Pally yesterday, and going back to KX on the train,  maybe that truism still works?  Some folk really do appear to have the necessary in their bank accounts or plastic debt folder.

 

Add in the sheer range of what is currently available/coming up over the neat horizon and if you're into -=t-r, let alone such areas as  the changes brought by - for example - 3-D printing,  then the comment is absolutely spot on.  I have been in this hobby in one way or another for far longer than I really ought to remember over a period when disposable incomes have rocketed for many people and what is now available to those of us in the hobby massively outshines what we once had at our disposal.  Who else remembers Polyfilla and dyed sawdust as two of our principal scenic materials?

[The Stationmaster]

17 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

If I had but world enough and time, I'd build a bucolic 1930s GWR BLT with no GWR wagons apart from a goods brake and a road van. 

The extent to which wagons 'got around' is an interesting subject but basically once they moved out of home territory they could begin a life of finishing up anywhere their loadability was able to take them.  The real driver would have been traffic patterns especially things like seasonal peak demands which would become more easily met once there was larger pool of wagons to call on.

 

Technically common user wagon quantities were balanced daily and I presume that with common user the inter-company payments of surplus wagons wiould be based very much on shifting the easiest part of your surplus towards the company in deficit.  Once that process started the original ownership of a pooled wagon in many respects became immaterial - so again once 'over the border' it could finish up anywhere.  Add in seasonal demands and things began to move around more quickly.

[Compound2632]

The aspect of the common user arrangements I haven't quite got my head round is repairs. I know from my study of the MR minute books that from the year dot the company was repairing in its own workshops not only its own wagons but those of private traders and foreign companies that had become cripples while on MR territory; there was an established system of charging for this that I presume continued in common user times. But at some point a wagon must have returned to its home company for major overhaul and how that was organised is a mystery to me.

[Wickham Green too]

7 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

... at some point a wagon must have returned to its home company for major overhaul ...

If it did - and I'm not convinced - it was probably on the basis of checking the 'lifted' date now an' then and if it was XYZ months ago a something-coloured card was attached for return to home territory ( empty or loaded ).

[Compound2632]

7 minutes ago, Wickham Green too said:

If it did - and I'm not convinced

 

Well, yes, the alternative is to suppose that only those wagons that happened to be passing their home works got pulled in for overhaul. But the railway companies kept very complete records - very little of which survives. In the late 19th century, on the Midland, Clayton, the Carriage & Wagon Superintendent, was able to report to the directors how many, and which, wagons hadn't been seen in any of the company's workshops. One cycle of this started in November 1881, when Clayton reported that of the stock of 32,327 wagons, 311 had not been seen since the end of April 1880; three weeks later, 301 of these had been traced. By early January that was down to five. Three years later that number was down to one, the discovery of which Clayton was able to report with evident glee: it had been in use trundling between the Stores depart vaults and the Locomotive Works for the previous five years.

 

In December 1895, by which time the wagon stock numbered over 114,000, just six wagons had not been seen over the previous twelve months, Nos. 967, 8275, 9989, 26352, 28988 and 34321. Three of these had been found by the following July.

 

So it was certainly not a case of releasing wagons to traffic and losing all trace of them. There was an army of number-takers and clerks tracking their every move.

[Wickham Green too]

.... but none of that says that every wagon needed to be returned to its home company for major overhaul ....... if it wasn't broken, perhaps they didn't mend it ??!?

[Compound2632]

44 minutes ago, Wickham Green too said:

.... but none of that says that every wagon needed to be returned to its home company for major overhaul ....... if it wasn't broken, perhaps they didn't mend it ??!?

 

What is clear is that at that period, wagons were visiting the works* on average about every nine months, for some sort of repair, however minor. (This comes from comparing annual totals for wagons repaired with the total stock.)

 

*Not by any means necessarily Derby; the Midland had wagon repair outstations dotted around its system.

 

It may well be that by the 1920s, the frequency of repair was lower. 

 

Clearly minor repairs were being undertaken at other companies' shops, just as the Midland was repairing the wagons of other companies in its shops. Undoubtedly this happened on a much larger scale once the common user system was established.

 

But it seems unlikely that this system applied to major overhauls that included repaints. It's how that was organised that eludes me.

[Sitham Yard]

49 minutes ago, Wickham Green too said:

.... but none of that says that every wagon needed to be returned to its home company for major overhaul ....... if it wasn't broken, perhaps they didn't mend it ??!?

My understanding is that aim of the introduction of the RCH 1923 standards and their use by the then big four railway companies was that any wagon could be repaired anywhere in the country without having to obtain spare parts from the builders. This was to alleviate the then current problems of waiting for parts. Most wagons were relatively simple in construction.

Whether that aim was ever achieved is another question. 

Andrew

 

[Compound2632]

1 minute ago, Sitham Yard said:

My understanding is that aim of the introduction of the RCH 1923 standards and their use by the then big four railway companies was that any wagon could be repaired anywhere in the country without having to obtain spare parts from the builders. This was to alleviate the then current problems of waiting for parts. 

 

This made easier the execution of a system of mutual repair that had existed for over half a century. Likewise the formation of Wagon Repairs Ltd. from the repair operations of the big private builders made the maintenance of PO wagons more efficient. 

 

And of course repairs were only simplified on that proportion of the wagon fleet that was built using RCH 1923 specification parts, which initially was 0%, of course, and by 1939 probably scarcely 50%.

[VIA185]

19 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

Very thoughtful comment and probably much truth in it.  Firstly I think it is far more than a simple truism that model railway spend by many in the hobby increases during times of economic strain.  It's cheaper to get some retail or kit building satisfaction that to have a family meal out or that second holiday/weekend away that you have been thinking about.   And some folk will always need cheering up so what better than a spot of wagon buying - not too expensive in the wider scheme of things - and still have something to show for it after you have spent the money.

 

Of course it does rely on having the money to spend in the first place but judging by what I saw and heard at All Pally yesterday, and going back to KX on the train,  maybe that truism still works?  Some folk really do appear to have the necessary in their bank accounts or plastic debt folder.

 

Add in the sheer range of what is currently available/coming up over the neat horizon and if you're into -=t-r, let alone such areas as  the changes brought by - for example - 3-D printing,  then the comment is absolutely spot on.  I have been in this hobby in one way or another for far longer than I really ought to remember over a period when disposable incomes have rocketed for many people and what is now available to those of us in the hobby massively outshines what we once had at our disposal.  Who else remembers Polyfilla and dyed sawdust as two of our principal scenic materials?

Remember Polyfilla? I still use it! True, I have other scenic materials from a certain US manufacturer but if I run out - and its a small job -  it's easier to pop into town and buy a packet of Polyfilla than to go into the city for the 'proper stuff'. I never liked dyed sawdust, though. I discovered flock powder very early on. (CJL)

[Wickham Green too]

12 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

... it seems unlikely that this system applied to major overhauls that included repaints. It's how that was organised that eludes me.

Judging by the number of pre-grouping liveries to be seen well into the thirties and 'pre-1936' liveries post war I'd guess that there wasn't a formal system of calling in wagons for a periodic repaint ( and/or major overhaul ? ).

[Compound2632]

3 minutes ago, Wickham Green too said:

Judging by the number of pre-grouping liveries to be seen well into the thirties and 'pre-1936' liveries post war I'd guess that there wasn't a formal system of calling in wagons for a periodic repaint ( and/or major overhaul ? ).

 

I think the case for long-term survival of pre-grouping liveries can be over-stated. One has to consider data bias. Would it not be the case that a photographer was more likely to record a pre-grouping survival, as being a curiosity, than a wagon in the ordinary standard livery of the day? 

 

The best evidence for the proportion of wagons in pre-grouping livery in the grouping era is to be had by studying the backgrounds of dated photos taken with something else as the subject; that's a project for someone to undertake systematically...

[The Stationmaster]

12 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

What is clear is that at that period, wagons were visiting the works* on average about every nine months, for some sort of repair, however minor. (This comes from comparing annual totals for wagons repaired with the total stock.)

 

*Not by any means necessarily Derby; the Midland had wagon repair outstations dotted around its system.

 

It may well be that by the 1920s, the frequency of repair was lower. 

 

Clearly minor repairs were being undertaken at other companies' shops, just as the Midland was repairing the wagons of other companies in its shops. Undoubtedly this happened on a much larger scale once the common user system was established.

 

But it seems unlikely that this system applied to major overhauls that included repaints. It's how that was organised that eludes me.

First define 'works'.  The vast majority of wagon repairs didn;t require a visit to a main works - damaged plamnks could be replaced in any C&W sidings, wheelsets could be replaced in most bigger C&W sidings and even stuff like 'W'' irons were a relatively straightforward job for any C&W siding which could somehow lift one end of the wagon (I have seen a 'W' iron replaced on a derailed wagon in a train on a running line).   The only jobs which really required works attention were really heavy work on the frames, rebuilds,  and major repaints.  Replacing drawbars on older wagins was also quite a common local repair from what I have been told by those who were involved in freight working in the early 1950s by which time broken drawbars on old ex PO wagons were a not unusual event

 

And these small C&W sidings were all over place - often found at major traffic centres and yards  - the British equivalent of what is called 'a RIP track' in the USA.  All it needed was a siding with a good firm base in which to place jacks, a bit of room to work, somewhere to keep necessary stores, and ideally some sort of staff accommodation.  The only photos I can immediately find online are of US RIP tracks but basically they don't look much different from UK C&W sidings and are doing similar sort of jobs

Edited March 20, 2023 by The Stationmaster

[Compound2632]

1 minute ago, The Stationmaster said:

First define 'works'.  

 

I went some way towards doing that with my footnote on the Midland's network of wagon outstations. These establishments were equipped to do heavy repairs, including repaints, though only Bromsgrove built new wagons. 

 

There is a well-known photo of Wigston, c. 1905, with the wagon outstation in the centre background. In front of it there is a row of wagon repair establishments belonging to various of the major private firms - a row of huts:

 

 

[Embedded link to catalogue image of Midland Railway Society item 88-2018-0061, DY2810.]

 

As you say, repairs were carried out elsewhere as required; Rowsley had no wagon repair outstation:

 

 

[Embedded link to catalogue image of Midland Railway Study Centre item 23367-01.]

 

Were C&W staff retained at the various marshalling yards, or were they sent down from the nearest outstation?

[Wickham Green too]

15 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

I think the case for long-term survival of pre-grouping liveries can be over-stated. One has to consider data bias. Would it not be the case that a photographer was more likely to record a pre-grouping survival, as being a curiosity, than a wagon in the ordinary standard livery of the day? ...

I know of very, very few dated photographs of wagons ...................... photographs of wagons, yes, a few .... dated photographs of locomotives with wagons in the background, yes, plenty.

[Compound2632]

Just now, Wickham Green too said:

dated photographs of locomotives with wagons in the background, yes, plenty.

 

Yes, indeed. So the question is, what proportion of the wagons in such photos are still in pre-grouping livery?

[Wickham Green too]

Not many - but enough to question whether there was a concerted effort to get wagons 'home' for repainting with any urgency.

[Compound2632]

6 minutes ago, Wickham Green too said:

Not many - but enough to question whether there was a concerted effort to get wagons 'home' for repainting with any urgency.

 

Not for repainting per se. Repainting is merely a proxy for heavy overhaul.

[Dunsignalling]

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Not for repainting per se. Repainting is merely a proxy for heavy overhaul.

Agreed. 

 

Most smaller "owners" actually leased vehicles and at least some of the larger operators will have maintained their own workshop facilities.

 

In either scenario, the Railway Clearing House mechanism that efficiently kept track of wagon movements for accountancy purposes, would have been equally capable of arranging the "recovery" of wagons for overhaul in a matter of days. 

 

John

Edited March 20, 2023 by Dunsignalling

[The Stationmaster]

3 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

I went some way towards doing that with my footnote on the Midland's network of wagon outstations. These establishments were equipped to do heavy repairs, including repaints, though only Bromsgrove built new wagons. 

 

There is a well-known photo of Wigston, c. 1905, with the wagon outstation in the centre background. In front of it there is a row of wagon repair establishments belonging to various of the major private firms - a row of huts:

 

 

[Embedded link to catalogue image of Midland Railway Society item 88-2018-0061, DY2810.]

 

As you say, repairs were carried out elsewhere as required; Rowsley had no wagon repair outstation:

 

 

[Embedded link to catalogue image of Midland Railway Study Centre item 23367-01.]

 

Were C&W staff retained at the various marshalling yards, or were they sent down from the nearest outstation?

C&W Examiners were based all over the place - stations, yards, busy freight terminals, and so.  Wagon Repairers were a separate grade, or rather probably grades, and were officially Workshop staff rather than conciliation staff (although that distinction probably dates from the early 1920s).   Examiners could do minor jobs on vehicles in traffic but that was all, Repapers did the other work even out in sif dings set aside for repaits 

[Wickham Green too]

 

 

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

Not for repainting per se. Repainting is merely a proxy for heavy overhaul.

But - as you said earlier -  there doesn't seem to be any evidence of a need for regular heavy overhaul as all wagons would have been within reach of maintenance facilities whenever required.

[Compound2632]

12 minutes ago, Dunsignalling said:

In either scenario, the Railway Clearing House mechanism that efficiently kept track of wagon movements for accountancy purposes, would have been equally capable of arranging the "recovery" of wagons for overhaul in a matter of days. 

 

Yes; the assumption then has to be that major overhauls were on a defined interval schedule, rather than "as required". But this evidently didn't always work out. There was reproduced in Midland Record No. 35 a circular issued by the GW requesting staff to look out for certain Midland wagons (100 numbers listed) which if found, were to be worked to the nearest exchange point pronto. Date was early 20s, i.e. in the common user period. (Must be a MRSC item but I've not tracked it down.) Were these wagons that were due for heavy overhaul, or perhaps withdrawal? Or just plain missing? (Mike mentioned reconciliations.)

 

This discussion just goes to emphasise how little we know about these matters.

Edited March 20, 2023 by Compound2632

[The Stationmaster]

20 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Yes; the assumption then has to be that major overhauls were on a defined interval schedule, rather than "as required". But this evidently didn't always work out. There was reproduced in Midland Record No. 35 a circular issued by the GW requesting staff to look out for certain Midland wagons (100 numbers listed) which if found, were to be worked to the nearest exchange point pronto. Date was early 20s, i.e. in the common user period. (Must be a MRSC item but I've not tracked it down.) Were these wagons that were due for heavy overhaul, or perhaps withdrawal? Or just plain missing? (Mike mentioned reconciliations.)

 

This discussion just goes to emphasise how little we know about these matters.

Although there were numbertakers all over the place , particularly Pre-Group and oPe-Nationalkisation things gradually changed in the realms of what was recorded.  Wagon invoicing for everything was well on the way out by the 1920s so that was one source lost.  By then too I would think thnat the extent of number taking was already being cutback because of the Grouping as the number of inter-company boundaries were reduced, and numbertakers were human so the occasional error was probably unavoidable.

 

And wagons quite simply got lost and that would be more likely with Common User wagons with no urgent need to send them home.  In fact lost wagons remained a problem until TOPS came along but even that was not 100% infallible.