Wagon maintenance in the early British Railways period 1948 - 1960

[Mrhoppity]

Can anyone tell me how often a wagon would be overhauled/repainted in the period 1948 - 1960? For example, if an LMS wagon had been overhauled/repainted in 1947, how long would it be before it was repainted in British Railways livery?

[hmrspaul]

First we need to know what type of wagon, and then when as you are giving a long time period when instructions varied year on year. 

 

Paul

[Cwmtwrch]

Peter Fidczuk in his article in Modellers' BackTrack Vol, 1 Nos. 3-5 mentions an experimental aluminium 21T mineral wagon built in the 1940s reaching its seven year general repair in 1952. He also refers to a policy in force by 1954 of descaling and repainting mineral wagons at five year intervals, which lasted until 1962 when the period was extended to seven years.

 

The implication would seem to be that seven years was 'normal', but that, because steel mineral wagons deteriorated faster, they had to be dealt with more often, which would have been fairy obvious by 1954. I am speculating here, and even if it is correct it is possible that rarely used wagons would be overhauled less frequently, or not repainted at overhaul, whilst intensively used vehicles might be overhauled and repainted more often. To add to the issues affecting the answer, wagons sometimes got 'lost' and overran the scheduled overhaul date, whilst accident or other repairs, or modifications to the wagon, might lead to a premature repaint.

 

The shortage of suitable paints immediately after the war, and BR policy decisions, meant that some wooden bodied wagons only had the steelwork repainted at the first BR overhaul, the wood not being repainted, and some weren't overhauled and repainted at all, being withdrawn instead, or left in use until they were 'stopped' for repair. Also the war itself had left a large backlog of maintenance which affected wagon stocks in particular, and took some time to clear.

 

Early 1950s photos suggest that wagons in pre-BR liveries were becoming a minority by then.

[Sitham Yard]

47 minutes ago, Cwmtwrch said:

Peter Fidczuk in his article in Modellers' BackTrack Vol, 1 Nos. 3-5 mentions an experimental aluminium 21T mineral wagon built in the 1940s reaching its seven year general repair in 1952. He also refers to a policy in force by 1954 of descaling and repainting mineral wagons at five year intervals, which lasted until 1962 when the period was extended to seven years.

 

The implication would seem to be that seven years was 'normal', but that, because steel mineral wagons deteriorated faster, they had to be dealt with more often, which would have been fairy obvious by 1954. I am speculating here, and even if it is correct it is possible that rarely used wagons would be overhauled less frequently, or not repainted at overhaul, whilst intensively used vehicles might be overhauled and repainted more often. To add to the issues affecting the answer, wagons sometimes got 'lost' and overran the scheduled overhaul date, whilst accident or other repairs, or modifications to the wagon, might lead to a premature repaint.

 

The shortage of suitable paints immediately after the war, and BR policy decisions, meant that some wooden bodied wagons only had the steelwork repainted at the first BR overhaul, the wood not being repainted, and some weren't overhauled and repainted at all, being withdrawn instead, or left in use until they were 'stopped' for repair. Also the war itself had left a large backlog of maintenance which affected wagon stocks in particular, and took some time to clear.

 

Early 1950s photos suggest that wagons in pre-BR liveries were becoming a minority by then.

Also worth noting that there are photos of repairs left in unpainted wood. These could be just individual planks or a whole end or more. Steel wagons certainly seem to have better maintained paintwork than wooden wagons. Also wagons with wooden underframes were not normally repainted until about 1958 when there was a short period of painting or patch repainting. The best way is to look at photographs, ideally dated. Probably need books for these such as those by David Larkin. Also John Turner 53A Models on Flickr.

Andrew   

[The Johnster]

9 hours ago, Cwmtwrch said:

The implication would seem to be that seven years was 'normal', but that, because steel mineral wagons deteriorated faster, they had to be dealt with more often

This would be because coal is usually loaded wet at the collieries and, being somewhat sulphurous in composition, drips mild sulphuric acid over the wagon interior, especially in the corners which are important structurally.  Protective paint finishes did not last long when heavy, sharp-cornered, lumps of geology were being dropped from about a dozen feet above on to the wagon floor…

[Wickham Green too]

... as any account of the - ongoing - restoration of the 'Windcutter' wagons on the GCR will testify. ( Though they've carried sharp-cornered lumps of processed geology too.)

[fezza]

I've always assumed BR repainted private owner wagons very quickly as few photographs post 1948 seem to show large numbers in private owner liveries.  Were some repainted plain grey when they were pooled and repaired during the war? There seems to be little data/photographs of wagons during the war - but that's not surprising I suppose!

[Cwmtwrch]

25 minutes ago, fezza said:

I've always assumed BR repainted private owner wagons very quickly as few photographs post 1948 seem to show large numbers in private owner liveries.  Were some repainted plain grey when they were pooled and repaired during the war?

The only PO wagons that were pooled were petrol tanks, which reverted to their owners after the war, and most coal wagons [there were a few exceptions which remained with their owners]. Pooled wooden coal wagons were not repainted during the war; if the livery and ownership details became illegible then they had those details shown in small print on the bottom of the side in one corner, in white. Neither the Railway Executive after WW2 nor BR officially painted them either. There may have been a relatively brief period in the 1950s when the rules might have changed temporarily, I'm not sure, and wagon repairers (who did most of what maintenance there was, even under BR) may not have always followed the rules.  After a minimum of eight and a half years, many had little of the pre-war livery left by nationalisation.

[The Johnster]

PO coal wagons were pooled in 1938 (IIRC), and very few of the wooden ones were ever repainted after that.  They were left in their PO livery, which by the time the railway was nationalised in 1948 was becoming illegible; some had had the information painted in white stencil bottom left corner as Cwmtwrch points out.  The overwheming majority were simply left in their increasingly filthy condition and then had BR PO numbers in the P series applied.   After the first six months of 1948 the black panels upon which numbers and other information were painted appeared, painted on directly over the filth.  Damaged planks were replaced by unpainted new wood or planks salvaged from other wagons, sometimes turned upside down and/or inside out, top rake and central planks being susceptible to loading damage and bottom planks to rot. 

 

BR's June 1948 painting instructions were that wooden bodied unfitted wagons were not to be painted, and new ones still being built to fulfil big four orders were delivered with the wood unpainted but the metal strapping in freight grey.  Coal wagons built at this time were all all-steel and delivered in freight grey.  The LMS and the wartime Ministry of Supply had been building all-steel minerals since 1936, and these along with the new BR standard versions were beginning to make an impact on the scene by nationalistation.  The newly-formed BR inherited 'about' half a million 9' wheelbase wooden-bodied XPO minerals in various stages of decompostion, and one of the tasks of the newly set up 'Ideal Wagons Committee' was to cull the worst of these for replacement with new all-steel 16tonners, and patch up the rest to keep them in service until the replacement program was completed, sensible given the economic restraints of this post-war austerity period. 

 

The process was aided by rationalisation in the coal industry and the resulting pit closures, and the now steadily falling demand for household coal (new housing stock to replace bomb damage was mostly gas or oil fired centrally heated) and export coal (again, due to the development of oil-based economies world wide after WW2), but even so it took until around 1962/3 before 7-plank XPOs vanished from the main line scene, though examples survived for many more years as colliery and steelworks internal users.  Looking at RTR provision for this period one might think that there was a prevalence of grey-painted wooden XPOs, and these certainly existed, appearing in the later 50s, but there seems to be a deal of confusion over exact dates and even whether there was an actual instruction to do this.  The typical appearance of a wooden XPO mineral even in the early 60s was the remnants of the PO livery, with a BR P-series number (K suffix if it was a 20 tonner or hopper), and various interpretations of replacement plank provision, all encased in a thick layer of coal dust and slurry.  Bachmann have produced some XPO wagons in heavily weathered PO livery and P numbers, but the trade had never provided a really representative number of representations of this Period 4 timeframe.  There would be little that anyone could point out error in if you painted 7-plankers matt black all over and weathered them as much as possible, but attempts were made to clean the wagon numbers and the tare weight for the purpose of colliery weighing and invoicing.  Freshly grey painted 7-plankers were not as common as steel-bodies wagons at any time, and nowhere near as common as their neglected brethren.

 

You could usually make out where planks had been replaced, but not much else. 

[johnofwessex]

Whay was the 1938 pooling of PO wagons?

 

I thought that the entire point of PO wagons was that the owners controlled them.

[Cwmtwrch]

2 hours ago, The Johnster said:

PO coal wagons were pooled in 1938 (IIRC)

I don't know when the legislation was passed, but pooling came into effect immediately war was declared on 1/9/1939.

2 hours ago, The Johnster said:

The LMS and the wartime Ministry of Supply had been building all-steel minerals since 1936,

The LMS did, as did some trade builders, but the MoS didn't come into existence until 1/8/1939 and wartime orders were actually placed by the Ministry of War Transport, who didn't start doing so until 1942. There were various PO minerals, inccluding some steel ones, on order at the start of the war, which were delivered to the MoWT.

2 hours ago, The Johnster said:

Looking at RTR provision for this period one might think that there was a prevalence of grey-painted wooden XPOs, and these certainly existed, appearing in the later 50s, but there seems to be a deal of confusion over exact dates and even whether there was an actual instruction to do this.

The December 1958 BR painting instructions for wooden wagons were still body unpainted, steelwork grey; wood underframe unpainted, steel work black, steel underframe grey with black running gear. Despite this there is photographic evidence of both 13T minerals and BR traffic opens being painted grey with black underframes, hence the uncertainty on the subject. The joker in the pack from the modelling point of view is that wartime timber for railway wagons was usually hardwood rather than softwood, which weathered quite differently.

 

BR's first priority was to eliminate grease axlebox wagons and wagons of less than 13T capacity, which were usuallyolder as well.

[Cwmtwrch]

26 minutes ago, johnofwessex said:

I thought that the entire point of PO wagons was that the owners controlled them.

Parliament legislated for them to be pooled when war started, as traffic flows changed greatly as a consequence, and using coastal shipping to move coal around Britain became much more problematic, while coal for civilian use was rationed. The MoWT, or the Petroleum Board in the case of petrol tanks, was required to make the most efficient use of such wagons in view of the changed requirements of heavy industry and the demand for fuel for the RAF.

Edited April 7 by Cwmtwrch

[Sitham Yard]

28 minutes ago, johnofwessex said:

Whay was the 1938 pooling of PO wagons?

 

I thought that the entire point of PO wagons was that the owners controlled them.

The reason for pooling was to make more efficient use of the wagons. For example, if a wagon was owned by a colliery, then it had to be returned empty to that colliery which might involve remarshalling a number of times. An empty pooled wagon could be sent to wherever it was needed which could nowhere near its previous loading point.

Andrew   

Edited April 7 by Sitham Yard
missing word

[fezza]

11 minutes ago, Sitham Yard said:

The reason for pooling was to make more efficient use of the wagons. For example, if a wagon was owned by a colliery, then it had to be returned empty to that colliery which might involve remarshalling a number of times. An empty pooled wagon could be sent to wherever it was needed which could nowhere near its previous loading point.

Andrew   

 

I've read a bit about pooling but am not 100  per cent clear about the implications. Was this an entirely national process so a coal private owner wagon from Somerset could end up in Norfolk? Or would wagons still broadly stay in the same geographical region? For example, should a model of a  Norfolk branch line mainly have former Eastern coal private owners or were they completely mixed up by 1950? I'm struggling to find detailed reference photos of rakes where the original PO identity can be discerned.

[Sitham Yard]

4 minutes ago, fezza said:

 

I've read a bit about pooling but am not 100  per cent clear about the implications. Was this an entirely national process so a coal private owner wagon from Somerset could end up in Norfolk? Or would wagons still broadly stay in the same geographical region? For example, should a model of a  Norfolk branch line mainly have former Eastern coal private owners or were they completely mixed up by 1950? I'm struggling to find detailed reference photos of rakes where the original PO identity can be discerned.

I think the answer is yes. If a full wagon was sent from a somerset colliery to say Wiltshire for unloading, when empty it would finish up in a marshalling yard say Salisbury along with other empty wagons that might have been loaded in the Midlands or further north. If Salisbury is told to send say 20 empties to Bristol (for Somerset), 40 empties to Oxford (for sending to the Midlands) they are not going to worry which wagons are sent where.  That original wagon could be sent to the Midlands for loading and then to Norfolk.  

Andrew

[bécasse]

The "fleet" of pooled open wagons gradually got totally mixed up although choke points on the national network (between England and Scotland for example) slowed and localised the process to some extent.

 

By the early 1950s when a goodly proportion of ex-PO wagons was still in use and their fading liveries were still partially discernible, a train delivering household coal to south London would include wagons that had originally come from all over the place but ex-Scottish wagons were rare.

[Cwmtwrch]

1 hour ago, bécasse said:

but ex-Scottish wagons were rare.

Possibly partly because Scottish coal wagons often had cupboard doors rather than the drop type, which apparently weren't particularly popular south of the border, whereas Scottish customers were used to them.

 

With them all now belonging to BR, the distinction between 'ordinary' coal wagons [i.e. ex-PO] and 'Loco Coal' wagons [owned by the railways] also largely disappeared after nationalisation.

[bécasse]

I really think that it was more to do with the fact that relatively few open wagons moved between the two countries at any period. There were some very weird "pooled" open wagons circulating in England including some without any doors - they had always been emptied on a tippler by their previous owner.

[The Johnster]

There were also the Ministry of Supply all-steel 16ton cupboard door 'SNCF' wagons sent to France in the post-war period to replace war losses and returned to the UK to be given to BR when the French had no further use for them, early 50s; cupboard doors on coal wagons were the norm in France.  They entered the general pool, where they proved highly unpopular with merchants who were not conditioned to doors that opened like that and preferred the more usual drop-flap type, which they could illegally prop up with any old bit of timber and use as an unloading platform...  Parkside do a kit for these wagons, of which there were several thousand and which were dispersed widely, so a usefull addition to any period 4 layout.  Nobody liked them, but they enabled a speedier withdrawal of the older 7-plankers.  I can't remember any in the 70s, so would be fairly confident in saying they were extinct by then.