LMS single plank wagon loads

[MattR]

Some days you think you have this railway thing figured out, and others you realize you know nothing.

 

I have two Bachmann LMS single plank wagons (one in LMS bauxite, one in PO livery). I'd like to give them some sort of load, but I don't know what they'd haul. I assume large containers, but there must be something else. Even searching Google, 99% of photos of single-plank wagons show them empty. There were thousands of these things built -- surely they were hauling more than just containers. My layout is a preserved railway, but I'd like for the loads to be somewhat pre-grouping/grouping era. Any ideas?

[Sabato]

Without referring to my library, I recall pictures of:

Military vehicles such as "jeeps", small vans, radio vehicles , ambulances. RAF bomb dollies, oxygen tank trailers.

Farm equipment such as ploughs, disc harrows, rakes, muck spreaders.

More generally, road drill compressor trailers, cement mixers, invalid cars. 

Plenty of choice there.

 

[Buhar]

The PO livery is rather spurious.  I've never seen a photo of such a thing.  There were some low-sided wagon for stone traffic in the peak district but they were three planks (or possibly two) IIRC.  Yours could be used as runners under an overhanging load, for containers as you said, or for large crates.  Whatever you fit is going to have be secured with ropes or chains.

 

Alan 

[Wickham Green too]

3 hours ago, Sabato said:

... Military vehicles such as "jeeps", small vans, radio vehicles , ambulances. RAF bomb dollies, oxygen tank trailers.

Farm equipment such as ploughs, disc harrows, rakes, muck spreaders. ... road drill compressor trailers, cement mixers, invalid cars.  ...

... most of which would have been more easily loaded on something with drop ends and/or sides !

 

Dippoldiswalde ; 17/9/90

[The Johnster]

BR 1-plankers were branded 'Not To Be Used To Convey Containers' because there was no means of securing them and the sides were not big enough to stop them overrriding if they moved about.  The sides and ends dropped, making the wagons useful for loads with wheels; at Cardiff Newtown Goods they were loaded from an end dock with 'Invacars', electric or petrol 3-wheelers for disabled people, made of bright blue fibreglass.  You see a lot of them on show layouts loaded with tractors, a perfectly legitimate load for them.

[Wheatley]

6 hours ago, The Johnster said:

BR 1-plankers were branded 'Not To Be Used To Convey Containers' because there was no means of securing them and the sides were not big enough to stop them overrriding if they moved about.  

Eventually yes, but as built (from memory) they were intended to supplement the ramshackle collection of pre-grouping one plankers which the LMS was happily roping containers to. Apart from the skeletal ones for FM/BM containers and a few oddities for beer/glue/Loch Katrine Water, the LMS seems to have regarded proper Conflats with shackles as something for soft Southerners/Westerners. 

 

11 hours ago, Wickham Green too said:

... most of which would have been more easily loaded on something with drop ends and/or sides !

Unless you have a crane, which many goods yards had. Maybe not cars and tractors etc but most agricultural implements and similarly awkward loads were well within the capacity of a goods yard crane or Scotch derrick, and roping and slinging would have been within the competence of the goods yard staff. 

Edited November 1, 2023 by Wheatley
To disentangle the quotes.

[57xx]

10 hours ago, Wheatley said:

the LMS seems to have regarded proper Conflats with shackles as something for soft Southerners/Westerners/North Easterners. 

FTFY

[Compound2632]

Any amorphous shape, sheeted over.

[The Johnster]

You've met the ex-wife, then...

[kevinlms]

20 hours ago, Wheatley said:

Eventually yes, but as built (from memory) they were intended to supplement the ramshackle collection of pre-grouping one plankers which the LMS was happily roping containers to. Apart from the skeletal ones for FM/BM containers and a few oddities for beer/glue/Loch Katrine Water, the LMS seems to have regarded proper Conflats with shackles as something for soft Southerners/Westerners. 

 

Unless you have a crane, which many goods yards had. Maybe not cars and tractors etc but most agricultural implements and similarly awkward loads were well within the capacity of a goods yard crane or Scotch derrick, and roping and slinging would have been within the competence of the goods yard staff. 

But the LMS had lots of not very old single plank wagons, so why not use them?

[Aire Head]

On 31/10/2023 at 19:46, Buhar said:

The PO livery is rather spurious

 

So is the LMS livery in this case too. The model itself is of a LNER type.

 

22 hours ago, Wheatley said:

Apart from the skeletal ones for FM/BM containers and a few oddities for beer/glue/Loch Katrine Water, the LMS seems to have regarded proper Conflats with shackles as something for soft Southerners/Westerners. 

 

Just stick it in a Medium or High Goods. Stuff can't get pinched from it then and no shackles are required 😉

 

Although a significant numbers of exLNWR D103 1 planks were modified for container use which included adding loops for shackles to the sides of the body.

[Wheatley]

On 31/10/2023 at 18:04, Sabato said:

RAF bomb dollies, oxygen tank trailers.

Farm equipment such as ploughs, disc harrows, rakes, muck spreaders.

More generally, road drill compressor trailers, cement mixers,

 

Selectively quoting Sabato there but this supports my "maybe they were craned on/off" theory. 

 

If you have something on wheels which is self propelled then absolutely an end/side loading dock and a wagon with drop sides/ends makes perfect sense. But anything arriving on the back of a lorry or on a trailer/cart is either going to be craned off or is going to have to be double handled. By far the easiest way to do that is to crane it off the lorry/trailer/cart directly onto the wagon, in which case the fixed sides/ends are not an issue. It's unlikely that you would crane it off and then push it round to the loading dock, and most railway loading docks would not be able to offload things from a road vehicle unless you drive it onto the track.  

 

Same applies at the other end getting it off. The Handbook of Stations listed the goods handling facilities in detail, it would be the work of seconds for the goods clerk/agent to check that the receiving station could get whatever it was off again. 

 

This "How exactly did they ... ?" type of question is the sort of thing which relies on first hand testimony, often not recorded because it was blindingly obvious at the time how it was done and no-one thought to record for posterity how to do something as dull (sic) as loading or unloading a disc harrow. It can sometimes be deduced from carefully staged official photos but more often than not it survives almost as background clutter in records of something else. The G&SWR Association magazine had a a series of articles some years ago written by a member who spent summer holidays with a relative at Sorbie station when he was a child. It includes possibly the only recorded account of timber handling operations at that station during the war, in particular how to tell that you've overloaded a Scotch derrick (the back leg starts to lift its massive granite block anchor out of the ground !)

 

Edited November 2, 2023 by Wheatley

[Steamport Southport]

On 31/10/2023 at 19:46, Buhar said:

The PO livery is rather spurious.  I've never seen a photo of such a thing.  There were some low-sided wagon for stone traffic in the peak district but they were three planks (or possibly two) IIRC.  Yours could be used as runners under an overhanging load, for containers as you said, or for large crates.  Whatever you fit is going to have be secured with ropes or chains.

 

Alan 

 

The livery was correct though, just not the correct type of 1 plank wagon. Saw a picture of it somewhere.

 

One of the Bill Hudson books I think and ISTR the same photo was used in the articles on PO wagons in the Bachmann magazine.

 

 

 

Jason

[kevinlms]

3 hours ago, Wheatley said:

Selectively quoting Sabato there but this supports my "maybe they were craned on/off" theory. 

 

If you have something on wheels which is self propelled then absolutely an end/side loading dock and a wagon with drop sides/ends makes perfect sense. But anything arriving on the back of a lorry or on a trailer/cart is either going to be craned off or is going to have to be double handled. By far the easiest way to do that is to crane it off the lorry/trailer/cart directly onto the wagon, in which case the fixed sides/ends are not an issue. It's unlikely that you would crane it off and then push it round to the loading dock, and most railway loading docks would not be able to offload things from a road vehicle unless you drive it onto the track.  

 

 

 

But anything that needed to be craned on off, was DEFINITELY an issue if the wagon had fixed sides/ends. Often the small goods yard crane only had a small lifting capacity, as in height. There is a photo in one of Essery's books, showing a crane that could NOT lift a container out of high sided wagon. The wagon was going to have to be sent to another yard, with a bigger crane and transshipped to a wagon with low sides (AKA single plank) and then brought back.

That was the whole point of the rules and dedicated wagons. This one is only 2 planks, but the crane is useless!

 

https://www.newrailwaymodellers.co.uk/Forums/viewtopic.php?t=40103

[MattR]

Thanks for all your suggestions! I think for the LMS one I'm going to have a tractor, as The Johnster suggested. Scale3D make a nice resin-printed Fordson Model F.

 

As for the PO one (H. Lees and Sons), they were an iron and steel manufacturer and one advertisement I found online has them hawking cotton mill rollers. I have a photo in Wells "Railways In and Around Bury" showing a train of sheeted over one- or two-plank wagons (hard to tell with the sheet) that are hauling rollers for paper mills, so it seems like sheeted over rollers are my best bet, as Compound2632 says.

 

As for the spurious livery, my layout is a fictitious preserved one, so I'm sure I can make up some backstory for it ...

[Wickham Green too]

6 minutes ago, MattR said:

... As for the spurious livery, my layout is a fictitious preserved one, so I'm sure I can make up some backstory for it ...

There are plenty of spurious liveries on "preserved" railways ............... maybe the liveries are "preserved" & maybe the wagons are "preserved"  -  the vast majority of visitors wouldn't know ( or care ) that they don't belong together !

[Hal Nail]

On 02/11/2023 at 00:51, The Johnster said:

You've met the ex-wife, then...

Over the years I must have read 1000s of lines from you, and that's just in one or two typical posts!

But this one is by far your best yet :)

[The Johnster]

I try my best, Hal...