S&DJR Loco Coal Wagons

[buffalo]

In 1902, the MR built eighty D301 10T six-plank opens to D301 for the S&DJR, see Essery, An Illustrated History of Midland Wagons, vol 1, p85 and Bixley, et al., An Illustrated History of Southern Wagons, vol 1, p90. Of these, 65 were used as loco coal wagons, one of which, no 1179, is illustrated in both volumes. The photo shows a horizontal bar below the central part of the solebar below the side door. This bar appears to be suspended from the back of the solebar by three short links. Does anyone have any idea what it is, or any pointers to other photos showing this bar in more detail?

 

My first thought was that it was something to do with the bottom doors fitted to D301, but I've no idea about the mechanism used to operate these and the caption in the Southern Wagons volume suggests that those built for the S&D were not fitted with bottom doors.

 

As a couple of supplementary questions, does anyone know which pits the S&D obtained its loco coal from (I'm sure I've read something about this somewhere, but don't recall where), and were loco coal wagons sent to the pit(s) to collect coal, or just used for storage at the sheds?

 

Nick

[Dazzler Fan]

Nick:

 

Very interesting.

 

Got it! - thank you for pointing it out in Southern Wagons.

 

Noel

[buffalo]

In case anyone was wondering about the motivation for the rather obscure questions, I've just been puttting together a Bill Bedford D301 kit and am intending finishing it as one of the S&DJR batch. If there were no bottom doors, I could just put some coal in it to hide those etched in the floor, but that bar got me thinking...

 

Nick

[Dazzler Fan]

Re. source of steam coal:-

The best Steam Coal was Welsh. SDJR had coal arriving from South Wales at Highbridge Wharves.

Do you think any of it was destined for SDJR itself?

 

But then - "Slow & Dirty" may have been the softer Mendip coals!