RCH Wagons

[johnofwessex]

How exactly did this work?

 

Was there a standard design used by private builders and mainline companies or was it just a set of standards

[Wickham Green too]

YES ! ..... started in 1887 as a set of minimum standards for wheels, buffers, couplings etc. but became more dimensionally definitive in 1907 & 1923. Bill Hudson's books are probably best to detail this.

[hmrspaul]

This book has a lot of the RCH drawings as well as explaining how such wagons were developed. And it is available! https://hmrs.org.uk/private-owner-wagons-ince-waggon-co-book.html

 

Paul

[Buhar]

Even as the standards became more prescriptive there was latitude for differences between builders like the shape of washer plates (strapping), buffer housings, axleboxes and position of plates.

Alan 

[Miss Prism]

https://www.cs.rhul.ac.uk/~adrian/steam/RCHWagons/index.html

 

[MarcD]

The RCH was a committee set up by a number of influential railway companies with the remit of coordinating standards across the railway industry. RCH wagon **** just means it was built to standards published in ****. Companies didn't have follow the standards and PO wagon builders did have to use them. However most did but as they were guidelines designs could and did differ. 

So what does this mean for the modeller just because a company states it is a RCH wagon it might not be the one that is correct for the prototype being portrayed. A 1907 RCH wagon from Roberts will be completely different to one from Hurst Nielson but both are RCH 1907 wagons.

Marc

[Buhar]

To add:- in Scotland and, to a lesser degree,Cumbria wagons fitted with cupboard doors were built. I'm not sure but I don't think that difference continued after the 1923 specification.

Alan 

[Cwmtwrch]

5 hours ago, MarcD said:

So what does this mean for the modeller just because a company states it is a RCH wagon it might not be the one that is correct for the prototype being portrayed. A 1907 RCH wagon from Roberts will be completely different to one from Hurst Nielson but both are RCH 1907 wagons.

The RCH Specifications were basically just a formalisation of current best practice. Materials and techniques changed between 1907 and 1923, as did the size of wagons most customers wanted, so a wagon maufacturer could approach the RCH to request a variation to the specification [many of which would have been about materials to be used rather than design], which would be considered, agreed if acceptable, and a notice issued to confirm the changes. Unless some aspect was specifically withdrawn in favour of a variation, the existing specification could also continue to be used unchanged. The result was that over time some new wagons could include variations to the original specification, or anticipate the later specification, while an older wagon might get repairs to a later variation.

5 hours ago, MarcD said:

PO wagon builders did have to use them. However most did but as they were guidelines designs could and did differ. 

Should there be a "not" in the first sentence? RCH specifications were not guidelines; they were minimum requirements. If they were not met no railway company would register the resulting wagon, so no company would permit it on their system. Differences, particularly in body design, between manufacturers certainly occurred, but were either to aspects not part of the specification, or were the subject of agreed variations as indicated above.

[hmrspaul]

7 hours ago, Buhar said:

Even as the standards became more prescriptive there was latitude for differences between builders like the shape of washer plates (strapping), buffer housings, axleboxes and position of plates.

Alan 

Not simply latitude but pages and pages of different acceptable designs of fixtures and fixings as well as the bodies, frame manufacture etc. There aren't many easily accessible places to see the variety but Essery's Midland Railway wagon book shows the variety of axleboxes that this  one company used. 

https://paulbartlett.zenfolio.com/wagondetailspoetc

https://paulbartlett.zenfolio.com/axleboxes

https://paulbartlett.zenfolio.com/brakerigging

https://paulbartlett.zenfolio.com/buffers

 

 

Paul

[Compound2632]

The RCH wagon specifications were just one part of a three-pronged approach the railway companies took to better regulate private owner wagons. This was that new private owner wagons should be built to meet an agreed specification and, before they could run, had to pass inspection by an official of one of the railway companies, with which the wagon would then be registered. This might be the company upon whose lines the wagon was chiefly to run, or the company whose lines the wagon builder's works was adjacent to. But unlike pre-1887 registration schemes run by several companies, including the GWR, LNWR, LYR, and TVR, a wagon registered with one company was deemed fit to run on all companies' lines without further inspection. It was each railway company that issued the standard specification to the builder who was intending to register wagons with that company, not the RCH itself.

 

The spur to better regulation was an accident at Penistone on 1 January 1885, caused by the breaking of the axle of a private owner coal wagon. Major Marindin, the inspecting officer, in his report recommended a common specification for private owner's wagons, together with a system of regulation and inspection. In response to this, Henry Calcraft, Permanent Secretary to the Board of Trade, wrote to the Chairman of the RCH General Managers' Committee, basically saying 'do something about this'.

 

The General Managers' Committee (which I think met quarterly) appointed a Sub-Committee to address the question. This met on 23 June 1885 at the RCH premises in Seymour Street, adjacent to Euston Station, with Grierson of the GWR in the chair. Also present were the General Managers (or their representatives) of the Caledonian, GER, GNR, L&YR, LNWR, LSWR, LCDR, MSLR, Midland, NBR, NER, NSR, and SER.

 

This meeting agreed to adopt Major Marindin's suggestion and delegated the drawing up of the specification and regulations for inspection to the RCH Locomotive and Carriage and Wagon Engineers' Committee. That Committee met at the RCH on 10 September 1885, with Thomas Clayton, MR Carriage & Wagon Superintendent in the chair. (The Midland had perhaps the greatest interest in the question since it had the largest coal traffic and had previously, despite several attempts, failed to establish its own system of regulation.) This meeting appointed a Sub-Committee to deal with the detail of the specification.

 

This Sub-Committee met at Derby on 8 October 1885, again with Clayton in the chair. Its members included some very eminent names: Dugald Drummond, William Dean, and Charles Sacre - Locomotive, Carriage & Wagon Superintendents of their respective companies; Attock, Carriage & Wagon Superintendent of the L&YR, and Emmett, Wagon Superintendent of the LNWR - that company being the only one to have separate departments (and works) for carriages and wagons. 

 

This meeting agreed the specification and delegated to Clayton the task of preparing the drawings, apart from those for iron-framed wagons, which Dean undertook (the GWR being into iron-framed wagons). In practice, this means the drawings were prepared by the draughtsmen in their respective drawing offices. It is therefore no surprise to find that the drawings (as reproduced in A.J. Watts' Ince book) have many features in common with Midland practice of the time.

 

This work was all approved by a second meeting of the Committee of Locomotive and Carriage and Wagon Engineers at the RCH on 23 December 1885, They passed the specification back to the General Managers' Sub-Committee, which met at the RCH on 9 March 1886 with Findlay of the LNWR in the chair, which resolved to recommend the specification and proposed system of inspection and registration. 

 

There then followed a period of niggling about details of the specification. Emmett was unhappy with details of the specification that differed from that previously used by the LNWR - in particular tyre profile and wheel back-to-back. Patrick Stirling objected to the idea that the re-use of old wheel centres not meeting the specification would be prohibited. Eventually, at the 10 February 1887 meeting of the General Managers' Committee, with Findlay in the chair, a letter from Clayton was read reporting resolution of these niggles, and john Noble, General Manager of the Midland, was assigned the job of drafting a circular letter to private wagon owners and builders. This was approved at the General Managers' meeting on 4 August 1887.

 

All the above is based on the volume 'RCH Carriage & Wagon Superintendents Meetings Vol. 1', National Archives RAIL 1080/386.

 

I'm afraid I haven't got further with this to fully understand how subsequent revisions of the specification were prepared. But this volume does also include a printed transcript of the case Gloucester Wagon Co. vs. Great Western Railway, brought before the Railway & Canal Commissioners as a test case of the RCH system. The builders and owners complained that the railway companies were requiring them to supply wagons that were made to a higher specification than the wagons they themselves were supplying for the same traffic. (Which was, in many cases, true.) The Gloucester Co. submitted for registration by the GWR a wagon that did not meet the specification (it had dumb, rather than sprung buffers, amongst other non-compliant features). The GWR refused registration and the Gloucester Co. went to the Commissioners. The case was settled out of court, the outcome being a system of registration for old dumb-buffer wagons that were reconstructed so as to conform more-or-less to the new specification, e.g. with sprung buffers.  

Edited March 9 by Compound2632
sp.