Wright writes.....

[Tony Wright]

Carrying the same Class F code as seen in one of the B1 pictures........................

 

 

One of my DJH Austerities heads northwards at Little Bytham in 1958. I based this shot (which appeared in the Railway Modeller) on a picture in Gavin Morrison's The Power of the Austerities, which was taken in 1958. I matched the wagons as well as I could.

 

Oddly, it's on the Down fast.

 

This picture was taken some time ago, with just the beginnings of the point rodding evident.

 

More on vans................

 

 

With the general discussions on vans, anyone like to comment on the pair to the right? My model vans don't have enough stickers or chalk marks. 

 

I took this picture on an October Saturday in 1965 at Retford. D9011 is on a Sunderland-Kings Cross express. 

 

 

[LNER4479]

54 minutes ago, FarrMan said:

Very many thanks for the very informative contributions re wagons. One query though. Can someone tell me the difference between an general merchandise open wagon and a mineral wagon, and is a coal wagon the same as a mineral wagon?

 

Thanks in anticipation.

 

Lloyd

It's a fair question Lloyd ... and has a long answer!

 

At the risk of stating the obvious, a coal wagon is specifically designed to carry coal(!) Coal is quite a dense cargo and the limiting factor in wagon design is axle load. So the overal size and shape of a coal wagon takes this into account. Another significant factor is how it is loaded and emptied. The quicker these activities are undertaken, the more efficient the wagon becomes. In particular, for emptying, many of the wagons had end doors. I've seen a startling picture somewhere of one being emptied at a power station. They're all uncoupled individually, the catches on the end door released then each wagon was raised with a hydraulic ram under the axle at the other end until it was at a crazy angle (about 70degrees) thus allowing the coal to slide out into the pit below the rails. Once you've invested in such equipment at a power station site then you need to keep building wagons that are compatible! It all changed as part of the MGR revolution, which did away with the individual uncoupling of wagons and the wagons were then designed as hoppers, with the load released with side catches as the train slowly passes through the discharge shed without even stopping. Whole vehicle tippling is the other dramatic, efficient way of emptying a coal wagon, as used on mechacnial coaling plants.

The NER - where coal was king(!) - was keen on bottom discharge so their wagons had doors at the bottom and a slightly raked body shape, leading to the classic wagon staithes discharge arrangement into bunkers below the tracks.

 

A general merchandise wagon COULD be used for coal - I posted a picture earlier of just this happening at Rugby in 1937. I think it would be more unlikely for a coal wagon to be used for general merchandise. But in a nutshell I think the answer is 'it's all based around the load that is to be carried'.

 

A coal wagon is a type of mineral wagon; other classic 'minerals' include iron ore and limestone, each of which have design styles all of their own. Iron ore is denser still than coal so the classic wagons of this generic type were smaller still in size as a consequence, almost invariable of a steep sided hopper design.

 

As Andrew (Headstock) and others repeatedly - and correctly - point out, RTR wagon manufacturers are notorious for taking a basic moulding and milking it for all it's worth, leading to many abberations of general merchandise wagons painted up in PO coal wagon liveries. I'll happily confess to 'falling for it' in my younger modelling years and I still have quite a few such 'nonsense' wagons in quiet corners of the layout, waiting their turn to be expunged.

Edited December 29, 2021 by LNER4479
Apologies to Andrew who had already posted as I was typing. Hopefully our answers complement each other?

[Tony Wright]

24 minutes ago, LNER4479 said:

Yes, I understand that 1958 is your target year, ie just before Little Bytham station closed. In which case my view would be that you're just about OK to have multiple w/b wagons in such a train ... but they would be disappearing fast. BR had just built 253,000(!) steel 16T coal wagons to replace them - it wouldn't have invested that money to stand by and watch older, less efficient / reliable vehicles carry on trundling by!

 

I would also take issue slightly (because I know much you like a good argument!) with your use of the word 'typical' - given that you hyphenated it, I wonder if you were inviting an argument?(!). That might be a 'fluke' picture and therefore be 'atypical'!? The photographer might have seen it coming (slowly!), clocked those w/b wagons, thought to himself 'blimey, you don't see many of those around any more', raised his camera and 'click' (having let the preceeding nine goods trains go by with scarcely a bat of the eyelid). 60 years on and you've been fooled! For me, if I see the same thing in four separate photos, then I might start to conclude that it was 'typical'. But, the english language being the mistress she is, we might simply be using the word differently...

 

I did consider commenting over what route the train would be taking at Werrington (but perhaps the post was long enough as it was). This is something I've looked into in terms of the coal trains we run on Grantham. We chose only to depict trains which have come off the Nottingham route ... HOWEVER, we might even be wrong there as, although it seems surprising, I've read somewhere that even some of the coal trains from Nottingham carried on heading east, underneath the ECML at Barkston, to join the joint line at Sleaford and thence to New England. This would be in the interests of keeping the ECML clear for the faster traffic. This was with specific reference to the 1930s; I'm not sure whether that still applied in the 1950s.

 

Thanks again Graham,

 

Regarding coal trains (empty and full), there are enough Colin Walker pictures (in BR days) showing them coming on/off the Nottingham road at Grantham for me to run them through Little Bytham. 

 

And (you're right!), given that I like a good argument, I didn't 'hyphenate' 'typical', I enclosed it in inverted commas. Had I hyphenated it, could it have been ty-pical? 

 

Anyway, enough pedantry.

 

Could this be the equivalent of a 'barn find'?

 

 

Discovered at the bottom of a rotting cardboard box, as part of a collection, here we have a Jamieson Jubilee and a scratch-built Jinty - builder(s) unknown, and, no doubt, long since deceased.  The Jub has no motor and, though the Jinty has one it doesn't work.

 

They're yours if you'd like them, FOC (though a modest donation to a charity of your choice would be nice). If Donny Show goes ahead (Covid and all that, but it's still on), I'll hand them over to you then (along with that LNWR brake). Unless you'd like to pop down beforehand and sort my freights out (one of the signals has gone 'sticky' again).

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

 

 

[Headstock]

12 minutes ago, Tony Wright said:

Carrying the same Class F code as seen in one of the B1 pictures........................

 

 

One of my DJH Austerities heads northwards at Little Bytham in 1958. I based this shot (which appeared in the Railway Modeller) on a picture in Gavin Morrison's The Power of the Austerities, which was taken in 1958. I matched the wagons as well as I could.

 

Oddly, it's on the Down fast.

 

This picture was taken some time ago, with just the beginnings of the point rodding evident.

 

More on vans................

 

 

With the general discussions on vans, anyone like to comment on the pair to the right? My model vans don't have enough stickers or chalk marks. 

 

I took this picture on an October Saturday in 1965 at Retford. D9011 is on a Sunderland-Kings Cross express. 

 

 

 

Good morning Tony,

 

day seven of isolation and still no PCR test results, I must be going wagon crazy. Your van spotting reveals an LMS and a BR vanfit. The really interesting thing is that the LMS van has the RCH vac brake, while the BR van has eight shoe clasp brakes. You would on some occasions perhaps expect the reverse to be true.

[jwealleans]

1 hour ago, FarrMan said:

Can someone tell me the difference between an general merchandise open wagon and a mineral wagon, and is a coal wagon the same as a mineral wagon?

 

As a rule of thumb (there are always exceptions) mineral wagons have one or two full planks at the top of each side for strength, then an opening flap door below.   Opens have a full height door so that goods can be carried/barrowed in and out more easily.

 

There was some crossover  - you can pick out the odd goods wagon loaded with coal in photographs - I think there was one not too far back on this thread - and during the second war a number of surplus minerals were altered either by having the top plank(s) cut through and put into use as general goods carriers, or by having the end doors removed, being coupled in pairs with the open ends facing each other and having bolsters fitted, making a twin wagon.   If you're modelling the period just after the war they make quite distinctive vehicles.  

 

 

 

One other feature to mention - the 'London plank'.   There was some sort of agreement in force in the London area that coal shovellers were only expected to shovel up to a certain height and anything higher attracted a bonus payment.   London merchants often had the top plank of a 7 plank wagon lowered above the door so as to avoid having to make this payment.   That was the reason for the top flap on many (by no means all) 16T mineral diagrams.

 

 

The middle one of the three Rickett wagons has a London plank (part of the reason I chose them as a trader to model).   There are also two 5 plank goods wagons in front of the S C minerals so you can (if you look hard) see the difference in the doors.   Picture by OliverBytham at Leeds Show this year.

 

If you insist on Tony having fewer timber minerals and more steel, there's still an enormous variety available - I'm light years from being an expert, but there are the LMS and LNER diagrams, the MOT wartime ones (slope and vertical sided), the ones we built for the French which they rather ungraciously sent back, before you even start on the BR diagrams.   It's another of those areas where the more you find out the less you realise you know.

 

Edit - I see Andrew and Graham have posted on the same theme.   I hope we're all on the same hymn sheet.

 

 

 

 

Edited December 29, 2021 by jwealleans

[LNER4479]

12 minutes ago, Tony Wright said:

With the general discussions on vans, anyone like to comment on the pair to the right? My model vans don't have enough stickers or chalk marks. 

 

I took this picture on an October Saturday in 1965 at Retford. D9011 is on a Sunderland-Kings Cross express. 

 

 

I should let others comment on exact vehicle types - HOWEVER, having been reading through my reference books in the light of these discussions, I believe the one of the left to be the one that  ... er ... most closely matches these Dapol 'LMS' van type that there was been so much talk about, which therefore makes either a D2039 or BR 1/204 (is that anywhere near right?).

 

I will make what I believe to be an informed comment on stickers. From what I've read, traders' labels became a common practice in the 1960s. Hollar make various types of labels that you can buy to stick on your wagons thus. BUT, it was very much a 1960s thing, which fits in with your 1965 photo date, Tony. 1958? Perhaps not so much so ... or even at all

[t-b-g]

34 minutes ago, Headstock said:

 

Good morning Lloyd,

 

General merchandise wagons tended to emphasise floor space over height in terms of internal volume. A a result, they tended to have longer bodies than coal wagons. One major difference was that they had big doors that could be lowered to form a ramp to facilitate loading by barrow etc. Mineral wagons had small doors, often with a top flap designed to hold back the volume of coal etc. Everything about the mineral wagon was more robust due to the more violent loading and unloading procedures and the way the weight of the load acted on the wagons structure. Mineral wagons often had end doors or bottom doors or both.

 

General merchandise wagons could be used as coal wagons when required but sustained use would damage them rather quickly. Likewise, mineral wagons could be used as General merchandise wagons but loading was harder and they required cleaning out in order to perform these duties. Mineral wagon just refers to other substances that could be carried other than coal, coke for instance. General Merchandise wagons usually had rings to facilitate sheeting and also came in fitted versions for fast freight operations. Fitted mineral wagons were not a thing until much later.

 

I would add that General merchandise wagons usually came in High goods, 5 or 6 plank, 3 plank Medium goods or 1 plank low goods. The fitted versions would be Highfit, Medfit, Lowfit.

 

I was once told that the easy way to tell wooden open and coal/mineral wagons apart was to look for a continuous top plank. Mineral wagons often had one for extra strength. Open goods wagons usually didn't have one to make it easier to load or unload items that might be higher than the sides. There may be exceptions but as a general rule, it seems to apply quite well. That is the only thing I would add to your excellent summing up of the differences.

 

edit to add that a few of us have duplicated but we all seem to have added a little bit of extra information.

Edited December 29, 2021 by t-b-g
To add content

[Tony Wright]

Thanks again Graham,

 

I've got several of Hollar's lovely stickers to put on. I'll hold fire on them then............

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

[Headstock]

1 minute ago, t-b-g said:

 

I was once told that the easy way to tell wooden open and coal/mineral wagons apart was to look for a continuous top plank. Mineral wagons often had one for extra strength. Open goods wagons usually didn't have one to make it easier to load or unload items that might be higher than the sides. There may be exceptions but as a general rule, it seems to apply quite well. That is the only thing I would add to your excellent summing up of the differences.

 

Thanks for your feedback,  your comments on height being greater than the sides is a good one, as it would also facilitate a persons body passing through the opening.

[Headstock]

18 minutes ago, LNER4479 said:

It's a fair question Lloyd ... and has a long answer!

 

At the risk of stating the obvious, a coal wagon is specifically designed to carry coal(!) Coal is quite a dense cargo and the limiting factor in wagon design is axle load. So the overal size and shape of a coal wagon takes this into account. Another significant factor is how it is loaded and emptied. The quicker these activities are undertaken, the more efficient the wagon becomes. In particular, for emptying, many of the wagons had end doors. I've seen a startling picture somewhere of one being emptied at a power station. They're all uncoupled individually, the catches on the end door released then each wagon was raised with a hydraulic ram under the axle at the other end until it was at a crazy angle (about 70degrees) thus allowing the coal to slide out into the pit below the rails. Once you've invested in such equipment at a power station site then you need to keep building wagons that are compatible! It all changed as part of the MGR revolution, which did away with the individual uncoupling of wagons and the wagons were then designed as hoppers, with the load released with side catches as the train slowly passes through the discharge shed without even stopping. Whole vehicle tippling is the other dramatic, efficient way of emptying a coal wagon, as used on mechacnial coaling plants.

The NER - where coal was king(!) - was keen on bottom discharge so their wagons had doors at the bottom and a slightly raked body shape, leading to the classic wagon staithes discharge arrangement into bunkers below the tracks.

 

A general merchandise wagon COULD be used for coal - I posted a picture earlier of just this happening at Rugby in 1937. I think it would be more unlikely for a coal wagon to be used for general merchandise. But in a nutshell I think the answer is 'it's all based around the load that is to be carried'.

 

A coal wagon is a type of mineral wagon; other classic 'minerals' include iron ore and limestone, each of which have design styles all of their own. Iron ore is denser still than coal so the classic wagons of this generic type were smaller still in size as a consequence, almost invariable of a steep sided hopper design.

 

As Andrew (Headstock) and others repeatedly - and correctly - point out, RTR wagon manufacturers are notorious for taking a basic moulding and milking it for all it's worth, leading to many abberations of general merchandise wagons painted up in PO coal wagon liveries. I'll happily confess to 'falling for it' in my younger modelling years and I still have quite a few such 'nonsense' wagons in quiet corners of the layout, waiting their turn to be expunged.

 

No need to apologise Graham, can you believe this is Wright writes?

[LNER4479]

7 minutes ago, Tony Wright said:

Thanks again Graham,

 

Regarding coal trains (empty and full), there are enough Colin Walker pictures (in BR days) showing them coming on/off the Nottingham road at Grantham for me to run them through Little Bytham. 

 

And (you're right!), given that I like a good argument, I didn't 'hyphenate' 'typical', I enclosed it in inverted commas. Had I hyphenated it, could it have been ty-pical? 

 

Anyway, enough pedantry.

 

Could this be the equivalent of a 'barn find'?

 

 

Discovered at the bottom of a rotting cardboard box, as part of a collection, here we have a Jamieson Jubilee and a scratch-built Jinty - builder(s) unknown, and, no doubt, long since deceased.  The Jub has no motor and, though the Jinty has one it doesn't work.

 

They're yours if you'd like them, FOC (though a modest donation to a charity of your choice would be nice). If Donny Show goes ahead (Covid and all that, but it's still on), I'll hand them over to you then (along with that LNWR brake). Unless you'd like to pop down beforehand and sort my freights out (one of the signals has gone 'sticky' again).

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

 

 

Thanks Tony. I will of course make a modest donation. And put the locos into the round tuit pile. The Jinty at least looks like it might be a fairly straightforward project.

 

And yes - my mistake - I did of course mean in quotation marks (doh!).

 

I'd love to see the picture that you based the Austerity coal train on. Wagon 5 sticks out to me. That's a coke wagon. The extra planks are there on account of coke being a less dense material hence more volume can be carried. I'm not saying it's out and out 'wrong'; I'm just unsure re their continued use into the late 1950s or at least whether they'd be seen in such a block train. Anybody out there care to comment more knowledgeably?

 

 

[LNER4479]

15 minutes ago, t-b-g said:

 

I was once told that the easy way to tell wooden open and coal/mineral wagons apart was to look for a continuous top plank. Mineral wagons often had one for extra strength. Open goods wagons usually didn't have one to make it easier to load or unload items that might be higher than the sides. There may be exceptions but as a general rule, it seems to apply quite well. That is the only thing I would add to your excellent summing up of the differences.

 

edit to add that a few of us have duplicated but we all seem to have added a little bit of extra information.

With apologies to those who are already well aware, if you want to read all about the idiosyncracies of the classic railway coal wagon and how to model them then you can do a lot worse than obtain a copy of this seminal work:

 

Not only are there copious step-by-step illustrations of the various builds, but it is equally laced with no end of glorious pictures of the prototype, both individual details and wonderful overall pictures of the bygone railway, from vast yards full of wagons to country coal yards. As Jonathan rightly says, when you read a book like that, you realise how little you know and how much more there is to learn.

(Incidentally, the photo I mentioned of the end door discharge procedure is in there. It's on page 63 and is a posed picture taken at Slough Gas Works - as the caption wryly remarks, the end door is actually closed in the (staged) picture!)

[LNER4479]

18 minutes ago, Headstock said:

 

No need to apologise Graham, can you believe this is Wright writes?

Indeed, Andrew. I do think it suits its own thread though ... but if everyone's happy with such posts being here?

[SP Steve]

54 minutes ago, Tony Wright said:

 

I've got several of Hollar's lovely stickers to put on. I'll hold fire on them then............

 

 

The 4mm scale Hollar van posters are now available as free downloads in PDF format from

the Scalefour Society and in 7mm scale from the Gauge O Guild so you can print as many as required!

 

P.S. I have tried adding the necessary links but for some reason the post won't upload with them included.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 29, 2021 by SP Steve

[jwealleans]

51 minutes ago, Tony Wright said:

I've got several of Hollar's lovely stickers to put on. I'll hold fire on them then............

 

I intersperse those with plain paper, edges distressed with a burnishing stick, to look like old posters torn off.   T hey can be added before, during or after weathering to vary the effect.

 

 

[Tony Wright]

Just to inform all those generous people out there............

 

I've just written the last cheque for Cancer Research UK this year, making a grand total of over £5,000.00 (yes 5K!) over the last 12 months. 

 

May I please thank all those who've donated via me (particularly those who've lost loved ones to the terrible disease), put donations in my box attached to the layout, donated because of my fixing things, donated models (particularly Dave Hunt) and those who've bought models I've sold on behalf of bereaved families (10% of sales goes to CRUK)?

 

The 'milk of human kindness still flows'............. 

 

 

[t-b-g]

40 minutes ago, LNER4479 said:

With apologies to those who are already well aware, if you want to read all about the idiosyncracies of the classic railway coal wagon and how to model them then you can do a lot worse than obtain a copy of this seminal work:

 

Not only are there copious step-by-step illustrations of the various builds, but it is equally laced with no end of glorious pictures of the prototype, both individual details and wonderful overall pictures of the bygone railway, from vast yards full of wagons to country coal yards. As Jonathan rightly says, when you read a book like that, you realise how little you know and how much more there is to learn.

(Incidentally, the photo I mentioned of the end door discharge procedure is in there. It's on page 63 and is a posed picture taken at Slough Gas Works - as the caption wryly remarks, the end door is actually closed in the (staged) picture!)

 

I wonder how many of those who go to great lengths to get their locos correct have such volumes on their shelves? I have quite a few wagon books now. After being a bit slapdash about them early in my modelling career, I have come to appreciate the subtleties of variation and design that they show.

 

There have also been some very nice in depth articles in MRJ issues 12,13 & 14 and a few other articles by Chris Crofts and others, which contain a lot of interesting prototype information.

 

One of the best things about the hobby is that I never stop learning. I had known about the mineral wagons with the top planks removed above the doors but I had read once that it was so that they could be used as open wagons. I didn't know about the financial implications, or if I did, I had forgotten!

 

I am no wagon expert but I do try to get things as correct as I can for the period I am modelling. When I built Tickhill & Wadworth, Bachmann had produced a correctly liveried "Maltby Main" wagon, with the early livery with lots of lettering rather than just the big "Maltby" as seen on the book cover. I got hold of one and ran it on the layout and I had it pointed out to me (without the whole world being told) that the body was a 1923 RCH type and would not have been around in 1910. At the time, I had no idea that the design had changed so obviously but I looked into it and replaced the 1923 wagons with models of earlier patterns from Cambrian and Slaters kits. Placing the 1923 design model against the earlier ones is like putting an 3.5mm scale model next to a 4mm scale one. The difference is very clear when you see it!

[Compound2632]

4 minutes ago, t-b-g said:

Placing the 1923 design model against the earlier ones is like putting an 3.5mm scale model next to a 4mm scale one. The difference is very clear when you see it!

 

[Headstock]

2 hours ago, FarrMan said:

Very many thanks for the very informative contributions re wagons. One query though. Can someone tell me the difference between an general merchandise open wagon and a mineral wagon, and is a coal wagon the same as a mineral wagon?

 

Thanks in anticipation.

 

Lloyd

 

 A quick addition, to flesh out a point highlighted by TGB (Tony). Its an obvious difference but easily forgotten The nature of the loads mean that a GM wagon can be loaded up above the body sides or beyond the ends, while a mineral wagon can not. The sheeting is then important, not only to protect the contents from the weather but also to secure the load in the wagon. See the image of the MR wagon below, awaiting its sheeting. I also include an image of an over hanging load and of baskets being loaded into GWR Highbars. The Highbar provides a frame for the sheeting. Some of these loads would be quite difficult to get into a van.

 

 

 

 

Edited December 29, 2021 by Headstock
clarify a point

[SP Steve]

On 28/12/2021 at 19:38, Leander said:

I'd heard of 'Ince Wagon Works' and especially recall seeing photographs of their loco scrapping activities. I didn't realise that 'Wigan Wagon Works' referred to the self-same place however.

 

The two entities were separate companies rather than one and the same.

 

The whole picture of these scrapyards is quite confused given that they were all in close proximity to each other on the New Springs branch and isn't helped by them being wrongly titled.

 

Ince Wagon Works and Thompson & Company were sited to the east of the branch and both eventually became part of Central Wagon Co who already had premises on both sides of the branch. (Loco scrapping was carried out in the vicinity of Thompson's yard).

 

Wigan Wagon Company was sited to the west of the branch and became part of Wagon Repairs Ltd c1945 before closure in 1965.

 

I have a Central Wagon "catalogue" which shows a PO Box address as seen below.

 

Edited March 31, 2022 by SP Steve

[Compound2632]

Since a photo of a Midland D299 5-plank 8 ton open has been posted, I'll mount the hobby-horse I was resisting when the distinction between merchandise and mineral opens was being discussed. These wagons, of which 62,000 were built between 1882 and 1902, had side and bottom doors and were used for both goods and mineral traffic. They were, however, classed as merchandise wagons in the official returns of stock, so the Midland's stock of "mineral wagons", which peaked in the mid 1880s with the mass purchase of private owner wagons (many quickly replaced by new D299 wagons), dipped to an anomalously low level in the early years of the 20th century. From 1911, D299s were renewed by either 5-plank 10 ton merchandise wagons or 7-plank 12 ton mineral wagons, so the distinction returned. However, the total number of open merchandise wagons and mineral wagons remained more-or-less constant throughout the period.

Edited December 29, 2021 by Compound2632

[t-b-g]

13 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

 

I appreciate the attempt to illustrate the point but comparing a 5 plank to a 7 plank wagon is, I would suggest,  not really a fair way to show the difference.

 

It was a more subtle difference in length, width and height between the 1923 12 ton 7 plank designs and the earlier 10 ton 7 plank types that I was thinking about.

[LNER4479]

12 minutes ago, Headstock said:

 

 

 

 

 

Andrew,

 

What wonderful pictures, thanks for taking the time for posting. The second picture in particular is (presumably?) an object lesson in the 'pooling' practice that you and others have previously highlighted - I'm marvelling at the different company letterings that can be discerned.

 

I just love the juxtaposition of the old nag waiting patiently at the bottom whilst organised chaos reigns in the background. How can anyone fail to be fascinated by the wonders of goods train operation?

[Compound2632]

6 minutes ago, t-b-g said:

I appreciate the attempt to illustrate the point but comparing a 5 plank to a 7 plank wagon is, I would suggest,  not really a fair way to show the difference.

 

It was a more subtle difference in length, width and height between the 1923 12 ton 7 plank designs and the earlier 10 ton 7 plank types that I was thinking about.

 

Except that the 8 ton capacity wagons were as common as 10 ton wagons; wagons built to the 1887 RCH specification were the same length over headstocks; the principal visible difference was the depth - 8 ton wagons being typically 3'0" deep, giving a capacity of just under 300 cubic feet; 10 ton wagons 3'8" - 4'0" deep, cubic capacity about 360 - 400 cubic feet. (The number of planks is a bit of a red herring since wider planks remained in widespread use up to the end of the 19th century - 8 ton wagons could have 4 or 5 planks, 10 ton wagons 6 or 7 planks.) Later RCH specifications - 1907 etc - introduced longer and wider wagons of 12 ton and 15 ton capacity, the former being of the 16'6" length over headstocks of the 1923 RCH specification wagons. The really significant advances of the 1923 specification over what was being built in 1922 were not in size or capacity but in the complete specification of standard components, self-contained buffers*, and split oil axleboxes.

 

*in lieu of transverse leaf springs - prone to cracking, a pain to replace, and needing rectangular slots in the end longitudinals and diagonals.

 

So I contend my photo does adequately illustrate the difference between a typical mineral wagon of the turn of the century and a 1923 standard wagon.

[Headstock]

22 minutes ago, LNER4479 said:

Andrew,

 

What wonderful pictures, thanks for taking the time for posting. The second picture in particular is (presumably?) an object lesson in the 'pooling' practice that you and others have previously highlighted - I'm marvelling at the different company letterings that can be discerned.

 

I just love the juxtaposition of the old nag waiting patiently at the bottom whilst organised chaos reigns in the background. How can anyone fail to be fascinated by the wonders of goods train operation?

 

Morning Graham,

 

I think it is easily forgotten how dominant the General Merchandise wagons was, well into the BR period. The take over by the van / container was probably aided by the simultaneous decline in freight traffic. Your going to have problems fitting planks of wood in a 12 ton van, better to put them on a lorry.