Goods Train Operation

[andyrush]

I like looking at model railways. I like looking at model railways that are skilfully made and are properly presented. I like looking at model railways that reflect the scene as I knew it from the mid 1950’s onwards (and, yes, that does include the present day). I like looking at model railways that work properly. Above all, I like looking at model railways which reflect the period they are supposed to represent, with everything appropriate there and working properly, be it the signalling, the touching corridor connections, the basic train movements and operation.

 

Sometimes, I go to an exhibition and see a model railway like this, but increasingly rarely. And even if everything mentioned above is present and correct, the passage of the first or second goods train usually destroys the illusion! The knowledge of how goods traffic was dealt with on the ‘steam railway’ appears to have died with those who saw it, as with the exception of a few well known people (Don Rowland, Bob Essery etc), nobody seems to have tried to write down clearly enough a ‘how to do it’ for modellers who want to get goods train operation ‘looking right’.

 

So, this thread will tackle Goods Train Operation from Pre-Grouping days to the death of the Steam Railway - not when steam engines went, but ten years or so later when the railway environment had changed so much that ‘traditional’ operation was largely impossible. I will kick off the discussions with my own thoughts, which largely relate to BR (ER) and its predecessors, but I know that there are others on this group who are able to provide contributions on differing Railway/Regional practices.

 

As a result of discussions on ‘4479’s’ thread about Grantham, I am going to kick off with the following:

 

PO COAL WAGON USE 1923-1939

 

The major considerations in the ‘what PO coal wagons would be seen where pre 1939’ debate are as follows:

1. Where did the coal originate from?

2. Who did the wagon belong to?

3. What type of coal was it?

4. Where was it going to?

5. What route would it have taken to maximise the revenue for the originating company, subject to RCH routing

agreements?

 

Now, I am sure that it will be easy to find exceptions to the general ‘rules’ mentioned later, but if prototypical mundanity is the aim, the exceptional is best avoided. The opinions (because that is what they are) set out below apply to the Southern Area of the LNER, GN and GE sections. They have been formed by a lot of looking at photographs, reading railway company and RCH routing instructions and other miscellaneous correspondence, as well as talking to a lot of people much older than me during my early days in the railway industry. The first of the above headings follows in this post, and some more will appear when I’ve had my dinner (and wine!)

[andyrush]

Now that dinner has been consumed (and you're all stunned into silence), here is another bit:

PO COAL WAGON USE 1923-39

 

2. Broadly speaking, I reckon there were five kinds of owners of coal wagons

The railway company itself and, although outside the scope of this PO wagon discussion, the use of railway company wagons for moving coal is an

interesting subject in its own right

A colliery company, which might often by the 1930’s be a grouping of several collieries

A coal factor or wagon owner who hired wagons to all and sundry

An industrial concern who sent their wagons to various collieries to transport coal to their works

A coal merchant who had a few wagons lettered up with his name for publicity purposes and sent them to collieries to be loaded. Quite often, he

owned/leased insufficient wagons for all of his business, the remainder of his traffic being carried in company, colliery or coal factor wagons.

3. The type of coal in a wagon COULD indicate what sort of facility it was destined to and MIGHT have a bearing on the grouping of wagons in a train.

Coal merchants wagons would tend to convey coal that was screened to a size suitable for domestic use, industrial coal would tend to be of a

smaller size, although I think the very fine dust seen in modern MGR wagons dates from the 1950’s when the method of firing power station boilers

seems to have changed. Industrial users would often generate multiple wagons per day from a given colliery, which could result in the wagons

staying together from trip working to destination, the railway company didn’t shunt wagons into a different order because it looked prettier! It would

also be the case that the method of unloading at the destination would determine whether the wagons had bottom doors or whether their end doors

needed to be at the same end. The production and use of anthracite gave rise to a fair number of ‘counter intuitive’ wagon movements. As far as I

know, most (all?) anthracite was produced in South Wales and its major use on the eastern side of the country appears to have been in market

gardens and nurseries. Certainly, South Wales based wagons were commonly seen on the Lea Valley line and at such places as Biggleswade and

Sandy, all major glasshouse areas. For GN and GE area destinations these wagons would have arrived via the London junctions at Ferme Park

and Temple Mills and the empties would have returned the same way. The long distance movement of coke, except in block trains for industrial

purposes, seems to have been relatively unusual pre WW2, presumably because every local gasworks was producing plenty of the stuff. However,

fragmentary evidence (for Whitemoor) suggests that otherwise under utilised coke wagons with fixed raves were used by coal factors as ordinary

coal wagons under certain circumstances, where their side or bottom door unloading was suitable.

 

To be continued

[The Stationmaster]

Anthracite was mainly produced by South Wales pits - and then only the western end of the South Wales coalfield (South Walian coal is soft at the eastern end of the coalfield and gets progressively harder the further west you go). I believe some Scottish pits also produced anthracite but the main source in Britain has always been South Wales. So any wagons carrying anthracite would have been associated with pits or factors at the western end of the Welsh coalfield.

[jwealleans]

I don't mind sticking my neck out a bit, I'm looking forward to learning from this thread.

 

So, the small local coal merchant with (say) half a dozen wagons. Some gave them high numbers so it looked as if they had more than they really did. I've read of at least one who would only use even numbers. His wagons would go off to fairly local pits, where he'd negotiated to buy a grade of coal and them come home. In their 'home' yard or siding, where it cost less/nothing to stand (? there's a question, if it wasn't a private siding?) they'd remain full until the contents were bagged straight onto a cart or two. Cells would only be used if there was no alternative as once the coal was on the floor it was up to the Mk 1 shovel to lift it up into bags or onto carts again.

 

This led to a preference for smaller wagons as there was less at a time to bag/hump/store. These wagons were often a problem for the railways due to poor/no maintenance - the story of 'Scruffey' has its' roots in fact.

[Donw]

A lot of the coal would be carried in colliery wagons especially for bulk buyers however they did want to tie up wagons in yards so some Coal Merchants would have a few wagons of their own which they could unload when it suited them ideally bagged on onto the lorry for delivery thus avoiding double handling. A huge amount of coal in wales was destined for the docks there are photos of the sidings at Roath showing coal wagons as far as you can see.

Don

[Obi-Jiff Kenobi]

I've always found goods trains a fascinating subject, particularly during the glory days of the LNER under Gresley. I'll be following this one with great interest.

[andyrush]

To continue the saga

PO COAL WAGON USE 1923-39

 

4 Some destinations have been dealt earlier, but we now need to consider places where coal passed via trains on the southern part of the GN main line. The first thing to say is that whatever the pre-grouping routing had been, it stayed the same after 1923 (and in some cases into the 1960’s) unless something drastic happened (like the opening of the new yards at Whitemoor, mentioned above). So, a wagon from a Leen Valley colliery for a trader using Brixton (ex MR) coal depot would have passed on a trip working to Beeston or Toton and thence to Cricklewood for an LMS (MR Section) worked trip to Brixton via the Widened Lines. A wagon for a coal trader using Knights Hill (ex LNWR), near Tulse Hill would have been tripped by the LNER into Colwick where it would have been handed over to the LMS for its onward movement via the GN&LNW Joint Line to Welham, thence to Willesden for an LMS (LNW Section) trip via the West London Line. However, so far as loaded coal wagons for other ‘south of the Thames’ destinations were concerned, it mainly depended on what colliery the traffic originated from – if it was only served by the LNER, then it passed via the GN or the GC to Ferme Park or Neasden for onward movement as appropriate. An exception to this was the servicing of LDEC line collieries in the Mansfield/Warsop area where, presumably by reason of traffic agreements struck when the line was originally being financed with the aid of a substantial contribution from the GER, wagons for all sorts of unlikely destinations in Kent and Surrey passed via the GN&GE Joint at Lincoln, thence via Whitemoor, Temple Mills and the East London Railway. The detachment of a crippled wagon of coal at Whittlesford labelled for Monro Ltd, en route from Clipstone Colliery to Worthing surprises you less when you know this!

 

5 The routing of all traffic, not just PO Wagons, was dealt with by the Railway Clearing House, sometimes modified by bi-partite agreements between Railway Companies. The principle adopted was that the originating company worked loaded wagons by the route that gave them the most mileage, for which they gained the benefit in revenue, subject to a ‘common sense’ rule that prevented traffic being moved by circuitous routes. Empty wagons, subject to certain provisos about reloading, were mandated to be returned via the route they arrived, unless their owners or operators specified otherwise. A large number of PO wagon operators had ‘wait order’ agreements with the railway companies which meant that their wagons were automatically worked empty to a specified marshalling yard to await ‘calling off’ orders to a particular colliery. Some yards, such as New England and Whitemoor, had a huge task in shunting out wagons to wait order roads for the large wagon factors. As much as anything else, it was this activity that led to the ‘pooling’ of PO mineral wagons at the beginning of WW2.

 

So, if we consider originating points of coal wagons and the geography of the companies serving them, we can start to see what wagons ‘shouldn’t’ be on trains at certain places. I am now going to be a little unkind about ‘4479’s’ superb effort at replicating Grantham pre-1939 and I hope he will forgive me. It would be extremely unlikely to see a Stockingford Colliery Company wagon at Grantham because of the distance and torturous route it would need to take from the Warwickshire coalfield to get there for a domestic coal merchant. The probable routing would have been: LMS (MR section) trip to Nuneaton, thence via Leicester to Wisbech Sidings at Peterborough, a transfer trip to New England yard for the LNER to work to Grantham - much quicker and cheaper to get your coal from the Nottinghamshire coalfield. All of the same reasons would apply to the same wagon passing THROUGH Grantham. Similar principles can be applied to the Joshua Gray wagon. Where WOULD this coal merchant be getting his coal from to require a loaded wagon going (presumably north through Grantham) to Haworth, on the LMS Oxenhope branch? The golden rule, when making up a train of PO wagons, loaded or empty, is to consider where they might have come from and where they might be going and whether those journeys would be appropriate for the train. So far as Grantham is concerned, the safe option is to use large coal factors and colliery company wagons (the right collieries, of course, depending on whether the train has originated from or is going to, Colwick, Dukeries Junction, Worksop, Scrooby or Doncaster). To which can be added coal merchants wagons for/from GN line stations at and south of Peterborough. Both loaded and empty trains would often have strings of the same large coal factor/wagon owners wagons together, loaded because they had been sent out of the colliery together for the same destination, empty because New England would have sorted them under the ‘wait order’ agreement mentioned above. Colliery company wagons could be similarly grouped when loaded but it was rarer to see them grouped as empties as New England would have just shunted them into the destination sorting siding (Colwick empty mineral, Doncaster empty mineral etc) where they would have got mixed in with any other PO (and company) coal wagons for that destination.

 

And when I've got my breath back, there will be some more!

 

Andy

[Obi-Jiff Kenobi]

All fascinating stuff, Andy; many thanks for taking the time and trouble to share your knowledge of this subject.

[The Stationmaster]

I don't mind sticking my neck out a bit, I'm looking forward to learning from this thread.

 

So, the small local coal merchant with (say) half a dozen wagons. Some gave them high numbers so it looked as if they had more than they really did. I've read of at least one who would only use even numbers. His wagons would go off to fairly local pits, where he'd negotiated to buy a grade of coal and them come home. In their 'home' yard or siding, where it cost less/nothing to stand (? there's a question, if it wasn't a private siding?)

If the wagon was on a railway owned siding the merchant would be charged Standage after (I think) two days grace to allow unloading - years since I last dealt with it. If he had a private siding he would pay nothing except his siding connection etc charge - however I would think that very few small merchants had private sidings, certainly very, very unusual in the BR era in my experience (on the Western). And standage (or the demurrage charge on railway owned wagons) was quite a useful source of revenue due to coal merchants tending to hang on to wagons underload for months.

 

Coal merchants also paid ground rent for use of an area in the yard and were regularly checked for something know as 'Excess Space' - i.e any extra land they were grabbing - and this continued at many places after freight train services had ceased.

[Donw]

It would be interesting to know how the costs compared for ground rent for a space to store unloaded goods compared to the standage charge or demurrage charge. These charges plus the labour costs for loading unloading meant a coal merchant needed to judge how many wagons to keep with the likely demand. Also the demand would vary summer to winter.

Don

[The Stationmaster]

It would be interesting to know how the costs compared for ground rent for a space to store unloaded goods compared to the standage charge or demurrage charge. These charges plus the labour costs for loading unloading meant a coal merchant needed to judge how many wagons to keep with the likely demand. Also the demand would vary summer to winter.

Don

It was probably a bit more complicated than that because of the involvement of different grades of coal plus the Summer/Winter price differential (I'm not sure if that applied colliery pre-nationalisation) also had a very significant effect. In BR times things worked more or less like this -

1. Many coal merchants generally preferred to keep coal in wagons and bag/load from them to avoid double handling (which of course meant that some coal turned to dust so they lost tonnage) but it also seems to have worked out cheaper than paying Excess Space.

2. Merchants always remained keen to avoid Excess Space charges even after the coal came by road instead of rail but of course they were caught as they had to unload the road vehicles and that might mean extra space if they had not sold that coal or had put in extra orders (hence they were carefully monitored).

3. Standage and demurrage rates were always low in relation to the cost of coal - even in the 1960s demurrage was only a few shillings per day (standage was usually less than demurrage).

4. Many merchants bought as much coal as they could get at summer prices (when they were available) but retailed it at winter prices if it was not sold until the winter price period and this meant storing it - the cheapest way to store it was in the wagon it arrived in and the extra profit they made on the price difference more than covered the demurrage fees.

 

I'm not sure if I've got any figures anywhere but I'll have a delve when I get the chance; I might have some demurrage rates but I expect ground rents and Excess Space charges will be difficult to run to earth - but you never know.

[Three Cocks Junction]

An interesting anecdote heard from an old railwayman who served as a relief signalman at New England East - he related that the coal traders' staff at the New England Angle coal depot sidings would try to persuade him not to report the wagons in the sidings, so they could evade the demurrage. Presumably from this it was, at that place, the signalman's responsibility to send in a return of wagons present so they could be charged.

[Buckjumper]

This is going to be a very interesting thread Andy, thanks for starting it off. It's also very timely as I've been researching this subject for the pre-Grouping period, mostly GE into London and East Anglia, but other companies working into the capital too.

 

So, if we consider originating points of coal wagons and the geography of the companies serving them, we can start to see what wagons ‘shouldn’t’ be on trains at certain places. I am now going to be a little unkind about ‘4479’s’ superb effort at replicating Grantham pre-1939 and I hope he will forgive me. It would be extremely unlikely to see a Stockingford Colliery Company wagon at Grantham because of the distance and torturous route it would need to take from the Warwickshire coalfield to get there for a domestic coal merchant. The probable routing would have been: LMS (MR section) trip to Nuneaton, thence via Leicester to Wisbech Sidings at Peterborough, a transfer trip to New England yard for the LNER to work to Grantham - much quicker and cheaper to get your coal from the Nottinghamshire coalfield.

 

And yet there are plenty of photos and much information showing wagons in places where you wouldn't expect due to factors and merchants acting as colliery agents, and by purchasing wagon loads on the London Coal Exchange.

 

Take, for example, this photo at Standon, GER, c1903-1910ish. There are five PO wagons: A.C. Itter, Whittlesea, Cambs (brickmaker); C&S Carling, Peterborough; M.M. Mitchell, Ipswich; Coote & Warren, Peterborough and Exhall, Coventry. The first four are fair enough, but Exhall? The colliery was in Warwickshire, located between Nuneaton and Coventry on the LNWR line over which the MR had running powers. Its presence here stymied me for years as I understood that the vast majority of coals into East Anglia (and London via the GE) originated in the Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Yorkshire fields, much as you've intimated above.

 

However, I later discovered that Coote & Warren, the combined factors of Peterborough (now there's a story!), acted as agent for Exhall colliery and brought coals in both its own and the colliery's wagons to GE territory. Exhall therefore became one of only a handful of Warwickshire collieries to penetrate the East Anglian market. Indeed, I should imagine that with the spread of Coote & Warren's concerns it's almost impossible to say whether the wagon came from the London Division (Coote brought Exhall coals to London via the LNWR) or from the Cambridge/Peterborough direction to Broxbourne, St. Margarets then Standon.

 

Coote & Warren is a fascinating company; some contracts seem highly unusual, even unlikely - Coote acted as agent for Apedale to supply Edmonton Hospital, and I'm not aware of any other Staffordshire colliery having a market in the GE territories.

 

Coote sometimes acted as exclusive sales agent for a colliery, some contracts lasting from the 1870s through to the 1930s, in other circumstances they were contracted as sole distributors. In addition, Coote's trading on the LCE brought wagons from distant collieries which usually had no or little previous market in East Anglia, either through spot ordering (loads delivered in addition to those contracted) or by buying wagon lots from other factors and traders. A typical week's spot ordering by Coote could result in an extra 35,000 tons ordered from fields across the country with delivery spread over a year, and Coote's purchase of wagon lots from other coal factors on the LCE would see wagons from factors and merchants not usually associated with the area sent deep into East Anglia.

 

Coote also brought steam coals and anthracite from four collieries in Wales via the Great Western which almost certainly all came up to East Anglia from the London Division.

 

In short, yes, there were good financial reasons for sourcing coals from a local coalfield - and Coote's massive contracts with the coalfields of Notts, Derby and Yorks meant they ran the first block trains in the country (over the Midland and via the GN&GE Jnt. to London), but there was an incredible amount of wheeling and dealing going on which brought, on the face of it, the most unlikely wagons into areas where you'd never expect to see them. From a modeller's perspective a high percentage of PO wagons must be of the typical - mundane, if you will - but there is room for the unusual, if applied in appropriately small numbers.

[The Nth Degree]

Great. With a late '50s/early '60s BR(E) layout in planning, I'll look forward to this. I'm hoping it will expand beyond coal and move into general goods and more specialised areas, like milk and oil?

Steve

[Fat Controller]

Anthracite was mainly produced by South Wales pits - and then only the western end of the South Wales coalfield (South Walian coal is soft at the eastern end of the coalfield and gets progressively harder the further west you go). I believe some Scottish pits also produced anthracite but the main source in Britain has always been South Wales. So any wagons carrying anthracite would have been associated with pits or factors at the western end of the Welsh coalfield.

To enlarge on what has been posted above about anthracite; it's a very low-smoke coal, and so was popular for maltings, hop-drying facilities (oast-houses and similar), and later for fuel in 'smokeless zones'. As a small child in the early 1960s, I remember seeing 21t hoppers branded 'Charringtons' at Sandy Junction Yard, heading to London and the south-east.

Anthracite is basically coal which has been metamorphised by heat and pressure, so that a lot of the volatiles have been driven off. The anthracite field has lots of thin, heavily-faulted, seams, which makes extraction very expensive. In the 1950s and 1960s, the NCB spent a lot on upgrading pits like Cynheidre, only to find the output far less than they expected. Such mines that still exist are fairly small drifts, producing a few hundred tonnes per week; this can still be lucrative. On the Shuttle to work, a few weeks ago, I spoke to a lorry driver running anthracite to Belgium for a maltster; he would do a couple of runs per week, and get a reasonable return.

[andyrush]

SNIPPED

 

However, I later discovered that Coote & Warren, the combined factors of Peterborough (now there's a story!), acted as agent for Exhall colliery and brought coals in both its own and the colliery's wagons to GE territory. Exhall therefore became one of only a handful of Warwickshire collieries to penetrate the East Anglian market. Indeed, I should imagine that with the spread of Coote & Warren's concerns it's almost impossible to say whether the wagon came from the London Division (Coote brought Exhall coals to London via the LNWR) or from the Cambridge/Peterborough direction to Broxbourne, St. Margarets then Standon.

 

Coote & Warren is a fascinating company; some contracts seem highly unusual, even unlikely - Coote acted as agent for Apedale to supply Edmonton Hospital, and I'm not aware of any other Staffordshire colliery having a market in the GE territories.

 

One of the things I didn't mention (because I forgot!) was that a number of the larger wagon owners/coal factors seemed to have acted as agents for specific collieries or groups of collieries and this resulted in 'wait order' coal being dispatched from pits to a marshalling yard to await a 'call off' order. Stephenson Clarke was one concern that did this and had a road allocated in Whitemoor Up Yard for the purpose, a facility they presumably paid for. I have never discovered which collieries were involved in this arrangement, but it would be interesting to know what other wagons might have been mixed up with the SC vehicles. Judging by the very few photos I have seen, one of them (if there were more than one) MIGHT have been DCA (Doncaster Collieries Association) as I have seen an SC/SC/DCA/SC series of loaded wagons in a photo of an up coal train at Whittlesford. Incidentally, I heard a number of probably apocryphal tales about how wagons were labelled up in the SC road at Whitemoor, which involved a Christmas bottle of whisky to the guy at the firm in exchange for the yard staff being able to label up the wagons so as to keep shunting to a minimum......

 

I didn't know about the Coote & Warren situation, that's very interesting. In my appeal for 'mundanity' I don't want to try and rule out genuine 'odd' occurrences if there is photographic or documentary evidence for them, but the trouble is that the unusual becomes the norm. I wouldn't be surprised if every GE area pre-group layout doesn't now feature a train with an Exhall wagon in it, joining the inevitable Time Coal Company of West Green!

 

All interesting stuff.

 

Andy

[28XX]

To enlarge on what has been posted above about anthracite; it's a very low-smoke coal, and so was popular for maltings, hop-drying facilities (oast-houses and similar), and later for fuel in 'smokeless zones'. As a small child in the early 1960s, I remember seeing 21t hoppers branded 'Charringtons' at Sandy Junction Yard, heading to London and the south-east.

Anthracite is basically coal which has been metamorphised by heat and pressure, so that a lot of the volatiles have been driven off. The anthracite field has lots of thin, heavily-faulted, seams, which makes extraction very expensive. In the 1950s and 1960s, the NCB spent a lot on upgrading pits like Cynheidre, only to find the output far less than they expected. Such mines that still exist are fairly small drifts, producing a few hundred tonnes per week; this can still be lucrative. On the Shuttle to work, a few weeks ago, I spoke to a lorry driver running anthracite to Belgium for a maltster; he would do a couple of runs per week, and get a reasonable return.

 

How sad, it should go by train via the Channel Tunnel.

[devondynosoar118]

I have to confess to cheating on my Kingsbridge layout, having set it in 1943 when all PO wagons had been common user for a while, thus I can use whatever takes my fancy but they all have to be pretty heavily weathered and have end door stripes added.

On the subject of Milk, there have been a few good articles in the model press lately, the simple method seems to be to get dates of rolling stock changes fixed, e.g. shift to 6 wheel stainless tanks, then look at where your nearest creamery might have been or wether regular runs to a city creamery were the norm. This should dictate traffic size and flow, depending on where it's going.

Good thread on a topic that really ought to be top of every modellers must learn list, after how to actually build something!

[Fat Controller]

How sad, it should go by train via the Channel Tunnel.

It does, at least for part of its journey..

[LNER4479]

Hi All,

 

As one of the unwitting instigators of this thread I ought to stick my head above the parapet

 

First of all many thanks to Andy for setting out his expertise on the subject. I am immediately struck by the depth of knowledge displayed by yourself and others on the subject of the humble coal wagon, only a tiny bit of which I already knew.

 

To continue the saga PO COAL WAGON USE 1923-39 4 Some destinations have been dealt earlier, but we now need to consider places where coal passed via trains on the southern part of the GN main line.

 

I am now going to be a little unkind about ‘4479’s’ superb effort at replicating Grantham pre-1939 and I hope he will forgive me. It would be extremely unlikely to see a Stockingford Colliery Company wagon at Grantham because of the distance and torturous route it would need to take from the Warwickshire coalfield to get there for a domestic coal merchant. Similar principles can be applied to the Joshua Gray wagon. Where WOULD this coal merchant be getting his coal from to require a loaded wagon going (presumably north through Grantham) to Haworth, on the LMS Oxenhope branch? The golden rule, when making up a train of PO wagons, loaded or empty, is to consider where they might have come from and where they might be going and whether those journeys would be appropriate for the train. So far as Grantham is concerned, the safe option is to use large coal factors and colliery company wagons (the right collieries, of course, depending on whether the train has originated from or is going to, Colwick, Dukeries Junction, Worksop, Scrooby or Doncaster). To which can be added coal merchants wagons for/from GN line stations at and south of Peterborough.

 

Secondly Andy (and others) please do not in any way apologise for pointing out errors (howlers would be more like it!) in what I am trying to portray. The whole purpose of a forum like this is to pool and share knowledge; I'm not proud and I positively welcome such criticism from those who obviously 'know their stuff' in an effort to get as much 'right' as I can with my project. I will however offer the following 'pleas'(!):

 

First of all, virtually all of the wagons in this train are from my previous layout 'Gowhole Sidings'. This was based on a BR(LMR) prototype and I followed the premise others have already alluded to, namely that post-war, the wartime requisitioned PO fleet were 'scattered to the four winds', previous PO working arrangements largely (totally?) abandoned and were in very unkempt condition. Many had patch repairs (individual planks replaced with plain wood) or repainted in unfitted grey and were rapidly being phased out just as fast as the steel replacements could be produced. Hence 'any wagon, anywhere'. So I have previously been not particularly fussy which which wagon(s) I bought.

 

Secondly, all are RTR wagons. It is probably the case that many RTR wagons portray 'interesting' or 'pretty' PO names, rather than mainstream or typical names. For example, has any RTR manufacturer yet produced a 'Maltby Main' wagon (which we identified on the Grantham thread as being seen in two LNER (Southern) coal train photos)? Hence a great deal of kit building or POW sides re-working of wagons may be necessary to get a true representation. I'm probably going to need to have up to 100 coal wagons alone available for Grantham - and I have a layout to continue to build at the same time!

 

Great. With a late '50s/early '60s BR(E) layout in planning, I'll look forward to this. I'm hoping it will expand beyond coal and move into general goods and more specialised areas, like milk and oil? Steve

 

Yes, I too am hoping to either participate in or contribute to discussions about other types of goods trains. My 'wish list', based entirely selfishly on the requirements for my layout, is:

• Coal trains (excellent debate already started)
  
• Iron Ore trains - Jonathan has already assisted me greatly with this research so we have 'something to bring to the party' on this one
  
• Express Goods trains - ECML layouts of course feature the (in)famous Scotch Goods (3.35pm from King's Cross goods yard) and indeed many other routes would have the 'crack' express goods train of the day. For 1930's LNER, this was the very type of train that the 4771 'Green Arrow' and her sisters were originally built for and, due to it being an afternoon timed train, there are many pictures of 4771 (and others) on this train on the southern section of the ECML.
  
• Fish Trains - bit of an LNER/ER preserve these (although there were others elsewhere of course). A particular favourite of Jonathan's I understand!
  
• General Goods - can I call them that?(!) Largely unfitted (perhaps with a fitted head), conveying general merchandise or raw materials of almost infinite variety. I have one made up at the moment that I think would have Andy rolling around, clutching in sides in helpless laughter (either that or 'tutting' and moving on to the next layout...) I would like to get from that to something more convincing/typical running through Grantham.
  
• Local/Pick-up goods - Being a reasonable sized market town, some traffic must have originated from or been destined for Grantham! There were certain well-known local firms, such as Ruston & Hornsby and Aveling-Barford, the latter apparently being the origin of the glorious picture in Keith Pirt's wonderful colour book (page 92). Also the almost bizzarre sounding complete block train (A3-hauled) that left Grantham one afternoon conveying 'Hotpoint washing machines for Australia, packed by Barrett Packaging Ltd, Grantham, England'! There was a goods yard at Grantham (well in fact there appeared to be two, one either side of the line) with a goods shed and facilities for cattle (livestock), grain (Lee & Grinling Maltsters) and of course coal(!) How often was the goods yard served? Was it a 'pick up goods' that called in on its way from some other origination point? Was Grantham a large enough place to warrant it's own train (but if so, in which direction did it head?) Were wagons loaded in the main yard on the 'up' (southbound) side destined for the north tripped across to the 'down' (northbound) to await a 'general goods' to call in and pick them up?(!) These and many more questions are vital ones to be answered if I am to portray the movement of wagons in and out of the yards at Grantham in a convincing enough manner to keep Andy leaning on the barrier.
  

In my appeal for 'mundanity' I don't want to try and rule out genuine 'odd' occurrences if there is photographic or documentary evidence for them, but the trouble is that the unusual becomes the norm.

Completely agree. But, mainly because of the limitations of time and money, I may have to plead 'unusual' from time to time in order to get the layout up and running!

 

What I would be very happy to do as part of this thread is to post various pictures of goods trains on my layout(s) and openly invite criticism. I can then hopefully correct and re-post the amended train to iterate towards what I believe to be this thread's end goal ie the correct representation of good trains on model layouts. This might hopefully prove useful for others striving for the same aim (and maybe encourage them to provide their own postings likewise).

 

To finish - and apologies to those that have already seen it - I'm posting a general view of Gowhole Sidings. This is a model rail forum at the end of the day!

I spent quite a bit of time researching the working timetable and setting up the workings in and out of the yard accordingly (something I can share on this thread). Conversely, with the layout still extant (for now), I can set up a portrayal of any particular goods train topics (that I have wagons for!) to illustrate any discussion point, as indicated above.

 

Great thread chaps - this is what a forum should be all about (IMHO)

 

'Robert'

[Fat Controller]

Mainy years ago, I believe Trix did a 'Maltby Main' or 'Maltby' 7-planker. It used their rather curious hybrid underframe, with secondary springing , a scale 17'6" over headstocks. I don't know what plastic they used for the underframes, but the free-running qualities were amazing...

[LNERGE]

Is this of interest? Andy, I have enough of these if you want one?. What i was actually looking for was some 'wagon return sheets' i have lurking somewhere.

 

[LNER4479]

Thanks Brian - I'll keep a look out.

 

Also found this on t'internet:

http://www.robbiesrollingstock.co.uk/images/Lancs_Yorks/Maltyby-Main00.jpg

 

Seems to be a large selection on offer; anybody we know?

[andyrush]

Staying with the PO Wagon theme for the moment and looking at Grantham in the immediate pre-WW2 period, rather than worrying about the relatively few 'confirmed sightings' of particular wagons, perhaps an easier approach would be to consider what PO wagons would have pretty definitely worked through and on what trains. Just using the Powsides list, I have come up with the following:

 

Trains to and from Colwick, Dukeries Jcn, Scrooby or Doncaster

0009 Stephenson Clarke

0027 Pugh & Co

0031 B&C

0033 Bawco

0046 Stephenson Clarke

0066 Ricketts

0067 Rickett

0073 Parry

0075 POP

0129 Coote & Warren

0149 Sharlston

0165 Denaby

0199 Spiers

0216 Charringtons

0226 Thrutchley

0242 Wood & Co

0266 Wood & Co

0276 Cory

 

Trains to and from Doncaster

0014 Micklefield Coal Co

0028 Bullcroft

0039 Pontefract

0040 Dearne Valley

0048 Barnsley Main

0051 Monckton

0052 Monckton

0063 Carlton

 

Trains to and from Scrooby

0007 BW&C Harworth

0245 Maltby

0296 Firbeck

 

Trains to & from Dukeries Junction

0209 Blidworth

0285 Bolsover

 

Trains to and from Colwick

0024 Pinxton

0025 Staveley

0042 Staveley

0069 Gedling

0076 Grassmoor

0082 Sheepbridge

0118 NHC

0119 Newstead

0124 Linby

0130 Notts & Derby

 

This is a quick and dirty exercise and I haven't checked the dates of the particular liveries offered by Powsides, but I reckon all of the above would probably stand up to inspection by most wagon nerds (who me?)

 

Certainly, a cursory look round suggests that there aren't many authentic RTR PO wagons suitable for Grantham on the market at the moment. I must pay more attention to what the liveries are of the ones I buy up cheap (a fiver and under) in order to repaint them into 1956 condition!

 

Andy

[andyrush]

Is this of interest? Andy, I have enough of these if you want one?. What i was actually looking for was some 'wagon return sheets' i have lurking somewhere.

 

 

Hello Richard

 

Yes please!

 

Andy