More Pre-Grouping Wagons in 4mm - the D299 appreciation thread.

[wagonman]

One peculiarity of the SC 'house' design (this from memory with all the usual caveats) is that it had internal diagonals as well as the external ones – but they ran in the opposite direction as can be seen by the line of bolts/nuts visible (I hope) on the side sheeting.

 

OK I've dug out a few photos and can confirm the above and that the Gloucester built batch from 1900 included numbers 3663 and 3801 as well as 4000 – all photographed at the works. There is also a photo of the pattern wagon no.1006 but I can't make out the name of the builder. The order was for 500 10-ton wagons at £68 each, in addition to which there was a repair contract for them for 7 years, subsequently renewed.

 

 

Richard

 

PS: I wonder if it's worth trying to persuade one of our small producers (are you listening Bill?) to draw this wagon up for 3D printing on the basis that there were several thousand of them in use all over the southern half of Britain?

[Compound2632]

One peculiarity of the SC 'house' design (this from memory with all the usual caveats) is that it had internal diagonals as well as the external ones – but they ran in the opposite direction as can be seen by the line of bolts/nuts visible (I hope) on the side sheeting.

 

OK I've dug out a few photos and can confirm the above and that the Gloucester built batch from 1900 included numbers 3663 and 3801 as well as 4000 – all photographed at the works. There is also a photo of the pattern wagon no.1006 but I can't make out the name of the builder. The order was for 500 10-ton wagons at £68 each, in addition to which there was a repair contract for them for 7 years, subsequently renewed.

 

 

Richard

 

PS: I wonder if it's worth trying to persuade one of our small producers (are you listening Bill?) to draw this wagon up for 3D printing on the basis that there were several thousand of them in use all over the southern half of Britain?

 

Yes, I'd noticed these bolts indicating the internal diagonal - they're clear on the photo of 4000 and also the 7 mm scale drawing (by S.T. Turner) accompanying the Modelling Railways Illustrated article. The photo as reproduced has cropped the usual Gloucester placard giving the dimensions and colours but on starting to re-draw the drawing to 4 mm scale and looking at the spacing of the ironwork on the ends of the solebars, it becomes evident that these wagons are 16' or thereabouts over headstocks. This makes the idea of using the Slater's Midland solebars less attractive, as they'll be 4 mm too short. A 3D printed resin body would be good!

 

Nos. 3663 and 3801 are also mentioned in the article. As I noted, 3034, which appears end-on in one of the Huntley & Palmers photos (dated 1922), appears to be of the same design, as does 2168 in the 1890s train photo. I'm interested that the pattern wagon is 1006 since that's a lower number than one of the dumb buffered wagons in the latter photo, which appears to have a four-digit number starting 14xx. I assume 1006 is the pattern wagon for the sprung buffered type? The dumb buffered wagon has no visible diagonal ironwork but otherwise looks to be the same proportions - though 16' over headstocks seems to my limited knowledge to be quite long for a pre-1887 wagon.

 

Thanks once again for contributing your knowledge!

[Penlan]

PS: I wonder if it's worth trying to persuade one of our small producers (are you listening Bill?) to draw this wagon up for 3D printing on the basis that there were several thousand of them in use all over the southern half of Britain?

In MRJ 254, Semley, page 92, bottom photo caption, it states the layout owner,

Martin Finney, had these resin moulded from a pattern made by Tom Mallard.  

[Compound2632]

In MRJ 254, Semley, page 92, bottom photo caption, it states the layout owner,

Martin Finney, had these resin moulded from a pattern made by Tom Mallard.  

 

Yes - internal diagonal ironwork and all. Very nice. I spot 3801, along with 4000 in the train on p.95. Black corner-plates, I note. The drawback of a resin moulding is that it's not so easy to kitbash back to dumb buffers - even if the dumb-buffered wagons were to the same basic dimensions...

Edited July 30, 2017 by Compound2632

[wagonman]

I would assume the Gloucester batch to have been numbered 3501-4000, but that is only an assumption...  1006 could have been numbered out of sequence, or some of the DB wagons could have been converted or disposed of by the mid-90s and this would have been a replacement. There were also some more typical Gloucester wagons taken on simple hire starting back in 1887 and seemingly renewed on a regular basis up to 1900 or so. Initially 100 10-ton wagons the order had increased to 300 by 1899 when another 500 were added.

 

There is a Gloucester works photo of one of these which carries all-black livery and the ciphered number 0318 as well as Gloucester owner's and repairer's plates and a GWR registration. It's a standard 6-plank end door wagon of the early 1890s – the photo is dated Oct 1893 which is odd as the only order I can find in the Gloucester records for that year is dated January and is for 100 S/H 10-ton wagons on weekly hire!

 

Hey ho.

 

 

 

Richard

[Western Star]

Following on from the "taster" post of last week, here is the full text that I received in response to my questions about the Zinc smelting process at Avonmouth and Swansea.  I contacted Mr. Terry Dumbrell who worked at the Avonmouth facility (and who posts to the 7mm Yahoo Group)...  he has consented to his response being posted to RMWeb:-

 

 

One of the problems in the production of zinc is the way it oxidises rapidly when hot. For this reason, zinc is produced electrochemically nowadays through most of the developed world. However, electrochemical cells are easily poisoned which means that only high-grade zinc ores containing very few impurities can be used. This is a problem because zinc co-exists with arsenic, antimony, bismuth, thallium, copper, cadmium and lead. It may also contain values, such as silver and gold. So, pyrometallurgical processes were developed to handle such materials. The ISP [imperial Smelting process] was the last and most successful. It used the trick of vaporising the metals from a lead-zinc blast furnace and then condensing the zinc vapour into molten lead before it could oxidise. This was very successful. The first was built at Swansea while the last [no 4] was built at Avonmouth.

 

The National Smelting Co was formed during WW1 to coordinate zinc production for armaments, mainly brass shell-cases. That was when the site at Avonmouth was established by the docks where it was thought to be harder to reach than Swansea by German coastal raiders. NSC later became Imperial Smelting [iSC], then Commonwealth Smelting {CSC}. Ownership changed over the years.

 

Before the ISP process was developed, vertical retorts were used to refine zinc. This involved briquetting the calcined feed-materials and coal to withstand the mechanical loads within the retorts. The ISF blast-furnace produced a sintered feed-material which was mixed with coke and fed into the top of the ISF. Bottom products were lead bullion and slag [which was granulated by hitting with water jets]. Top product was zinc lead which was then transferred to the refinery where it was fed into two zinc distillation columns followed by a cadmium distillation column. Bottom products were lead bullion, zinc ingots and cadmium ingots.

 

Lead bullion was sent elsewhere for refining. Zinc ingots were sentenced on cooling into the different alloy grades, Zn1, Zn2, Zn3, Zn4. Special alloys were produced by additions: eg aluminium to make Zn3S for British Steel.

 

The feed-preparation and all other hot or dry processes produced dusts that had to be recovered from the off-gases. They were recycled within the site and sold on to other users.

 

I have explained all this so that you can see that there were two distinct reasons for protecting products from the weather:

1. zinc ingots contain micro-cracks from cooling which could hold rainwater and would explode to steam when the galvanizer added it to his bath;
2. dusts generated by the smelter could be sold on and dusts generated by clients, such as galvanizer's ashes, tube-blowings, etc, would also be imported and blended into the feed to the ISF. The contaminants in these dusts would generate nasty off-gases when wetted: eg, arsine, stibine. And wet dust would be hard to handle, anyway.

 

The UK zinc industry was fully-integrated as a vast recycling system, recovering things like arsenic, antimony, etc., which are valuable nowadays.

 

In general, the zinc or lead-zinc ores would have been sulphide concentrates [galena, sphalerite and all the complexities]. The off-gas would be used to make sulphuric acid which was then used to make fertilizers. That was why large fertilizer plants were developed alongside the smelter at Avonmouth stretching upstream along Severnside.

 

Oxide ores were usually laterites which were basically weathered sulphide deposits. These are refractory so had to be blended with sulphides. The retort briquettes were dirty oxides while the ISP sinter was clean oxides in lump form.

 

Spelter is just an old term for a zinc alloy, of which there are many, because these metals and their neighbours in the periodic table form pretty continuous solid solutions. It makes drawing phase diagrams interesting!

 

There were many minor feed stocks entering the ISF, because the way to profit is to buy cheap when your main product is regulated on the LME. Some unusual ones were surrendered guns and knives [Police], contraband goods [HM Customs] and excavated topsoil from old firing ranges, etc, being developed for other uses.

 

The VR process used coal while the ISF required metallurgical coke, latterly from Cwm using Welsh or imported coals.

 

Other raw materials would include lime or limestone, to control slag fluidity and effluent chemistry, or to precoat dust bags. And sometimes silica sand would need to be imported to control the chemistry the acidic way: ie, SiO2 for acid, CaO for alkali.

 

All gone now,

Terry

 

PS I suggest you watch Zinc works at Swansea for Horizontal retorting at Swansea No1 and Vertical Zinc Distillation for the ISP.

 

regards, Graham

[Compound2632]

Graham, thanks for posting that - it's fascinating - and adequately explains why the Midland was obliged to provide wagons with sheet rails, given what one reads about the problems with water damage from improperly sagging wagon sheets. I think the zinc works in the first film must be the Swansea Vale site at Llansamlet that we've been discussing - comparing the aerial photos. As one of the comments on YouTube says, it's no surprise to learn that the average male life expectancy was 45.

 

Back to the hopefully more salubrious biscuit industry! (There is a connection with Swansea Vale - a major part of Huntley & Palmer's site was given over to biscuit tin manufacture - both for their own biscuits and for other firms - this side of the business was carried on through a separate firm, Huntley, Boorne & Stevens. Presumably goods inwards would be sheet tinplate?) The two new Huntley & Palmers wagons are now finished. Here’s dumb-buffered No. 1 of 1873, alongside iron-framed No. 6 of 1883, both built by the Birmingham Carriage & Wagon Co.:

 

 

The lettering is POWSides. These are the rub-down type, so positioning is critical because one only has one chance. The POWSides transfers are based on the livery of Gloucester-built Nos. 21 – 25 of 1908, which followed the fashion of the day for diagonal lettering, and also reads ‘HUNTLEY & PALMERS L^TD’ on one line (see below) – so the lettering needed spacing out. I cut out the individual letters and used some low-tack tape to pick them up and position them:

 

 

It’s vital to cut and position the piece of low-tack tape so that it doesn’t come into contact with any of the lettering already applied, as it can lift the transfer. (No prizes for guessing how I come by this piece of wisdom.) As you can see, I worked inwards from the H and S to give me room for the tape. A wagon-interior-sized block of wood is used to support the side while the transfer is rubbed down – using a bluntish pencil. The central ‘Y & P’ is about the right spacing as it comes, so this was applied in one go, the carrier sheet being held by tape top and bottom. The 1-plank-high L in LTD is cut down from the larger L provided – a fiddly business, as all cutting of the carrier sheet is done with scissors – I fear that trying to use a knife would result in transferring the letter to the cutting board. At least READING and the tare weight could be applied whole in one go!

 

I had given the wagon sides a coat of gloss varnish before applying the lettering and a coat of matt afterwards, to seal the transfers; both Humbrol spray-can varnishes. The livery of purple-brown with black ironwork follows the Gloucester wagon; I’ve no hard evidence the same livery was applied to the earlier wagons – in the reference photo (1890s) they might just as likely be black.

 

Here’s No. 24, built in 1908 by the Gloucester Carriage & Wagon Co. – wearing the lettering style for which the POWSides transfers are designed, alongside Bachmann’s interpretation of the same livery, applied to their rather fine but grossly inappropriate model of an RCH 1923 specification 12 ton, 7-plank wagon:

 

 

I need to get the Gloucester solebar plates! I don’t think POWSides do these; I thought I’d seen them on the Fox website but couldn’t find them just now. Compare with the prototype. Once again, this demonstrates just how much bigger the 1923 wagons were compared to the 8 and 10 ton wagons of the late Victorian and Edwardian era. At least the forthcoming Hornby version, using their 6-plank wagon, will be the right size – see the side-by-side shot of No. 24 and the Hackett wagon in post #500. The Hornby wagon is a bit of a puzzle: how did they light on No. 18, and why give it black solebars? (The underframe moulding is black plastic but Hornby have painted solebars – but not headstocks – body colour on a number of these wagons, such as the Hackett and Ayres ones I’ve been upgrading.) Black would be the solebar colour for a steel-framed wagon, such as Nos. 11 – 20 were (built by Birmingham C&W Co. in 1903); are they working from a photo of one of these? Probably not, they’ve given their No. 18 Gloucester plates – the Ayres wagon shows they can do a Birmingham hire plate when the fit takes them!

 

I’m still in a quandary over these 1903 wagons. Are they 4-plank wagons identical to the 1889 wagons, or is the 6-plank wagon with Birmingham plates in this photo one of them? (I believe the 1922 date given for this photo; comparing the buildings in the group of photos in the Huntley & Palmer collection showing one of the Black, Hawthorn 0-4-0ST engines at work, c. 1900, the aging and development of the site can be seen.)

 

To finish, here’s a review of private owner wagon development over 35 years, from the dumb buffers of 1873, through the vogue for iron frames in the 1880s, up to the latest fashion of 1908: high sides, brakes both sides, and that trendy diagonal lettering:

 

 

 

 

Edited September 3, 2022 by Compound2632
Images re-inserted

[Miss Prism]

Love that biscuit stuff, and dammit, I've just run of out Crunch Creams.

[57xx]

There’s also this photo, said to be taken in 1922, showing the door end of 3034, also a 6-planker, alongside a couple of Huntley & Palmer steel-framed 6-plank wagons on hire from the Birmingham C&W Co. – 

 

Woah, that's some huge hunks of coal there. I wonder how long they had to stand posing for the photo, must have taken some effort for that one.

[Compound2632]

In MRJ 254, Semley, page 92, bottom photo caption, it states the layout owner,

Martin Finney, had these resin moulded from a pattern made by Tom Mallard.  

 

D299 spotting, model and full size:

 

MRJ 254, p. 95: Martin Finney's Semley, top photo of the coal yard, middle wagon of the further rake.

 

Grays Chalk and Whiting Company Quarry, Essex - linked to elsewhere by Siberian Snooper, thanks! One at each end of a five wagon rake. The fourth wagon has large letters N E - the North Eastern Railway's style from April 1911, so reasonably well after that date - post-pooling, at a guess.

[Penlan]

...... The fourth wagon has large letters N E - the North Eastern Railway's style from April 1911, so reasonably well after that date - post-pooling, at a guess.

The 'Cambrian' wagon livery started in in 1915.

[Poggy1165]

The "CAMBRIAN" style was adopted during WW1 I think, replacing "CAM RYS".

[Penlan]

W

 

The "CAMBRIAN" style was adopted during WW1 I think, replacing "CAM RYS".

WW1 was 1914 - 1918, thus true, CAMBRIAN was introduced in 1915 - Livery information from HMRS' 'Great Western Way' (First Edition).

[Poggy1165]

Indeed, we posted at the same minute, you were however more specific and accurate.

[Penlan]

[Compound2632]

D299 spotting: S W A Newton photo in Leicestershire CC archive, High Wycombe goods yard c. 1906 - pre-pooling. Many Great Western wagons of course and a number of POs but, with its door down, a D299 at the further end of the line of four wagons to the left and behind the iron mink at the right of the picture. I found this through Western Star's PO topic - thanks!

Edited August 2, 2017 by Compound2632

[wagonman]

I would assume the Gloucester batch to have been numbered 3501-4000, but that is only an assumption...  1006 could have been numbered out of sequence, or some of the DB wagons could have been converted or disposed of by the mid-90s and this would have been a replacement. There were also some more typical Gloucester wagons taken on simple hire starting back in 1887 and seemingly renewed on a regular basis up to 1900 or so. Initially 100 10-ton wagons the order had increased to 300 by 1899 when another 500 were added.

 

There is a Gloucester works photo of one of these which carries all-black livery and the ciphered number 0318 as well as Gloucester owner's and repairer's plates and a GWR registration. It's a standard 6-plank end door wagon of the early 1890s – the photo is dated Oct 1893 which is odd as the only order I can find in the Gloucester records for that year is dated January and is for 100 S/H 10-ton wagons on weekly hire!

 

 

 

Replying to my own post – not entirely solipsistic – as I have now discovered that the Gloucester built batch of Stephenson Clarke & Co wagons were numbered 3529-4000, or at least the ones registered by the GWR were. Yes I know that's not 500 wagons but who registered the other 29 I know not. Yet.

 

 

Richard

[Western Star]

Replying to my own post – not entirely solipsistic – as I have now discovered that the Gloucester built batch of Stephenson Clarke & Co wagons were numbered 3529-4000, or at least the ones registered by the GWR were. Yes I know that's not 500 wagons but who registered the other 29 I know not.

Then you are going to feel for Ian...  Ocean no.917 carries a RCH plate saying registered by the GWR and yet there is no corresponding entry in (what appears to be) the relevant batch of registrations in the GWR Freighters Register.  Unfortunately the registration plate is not too clear and so uncertainty exists as to the registration number.  Ian has tried (most of) the possible numbers and several come up as Ocean wagons, just not no.917.  (need to be careful here, I think that the running number is 917, then again might be 971 - point is that we have a Gloucester photo with a RCH plate which, together, do not agree with an official GWR document.  Both the Gloster and GWR material are prime sources, just need to know how to interpret what is on the table).

[Compound2632]

All these biscuit wagons are making me feel peckish, if not Peckettish. Casting around for other snack-related wagons I’m reminded of – no, not this! – this: a Cadbury’s wagon. As the caption on the Black Dwarf Lightmoor publicity page for Keith Turton’s Private Owner Wagons: An Eighth Collection states, it’s a six-plank side-door wagon built by the Birmingham Railway Carriage and Wagon Co. in 1909. The date is strictly speaking a little late for me but it fits with the Birmingham RC&WCo. theme I seem to have going at the moment and also it’s a possible candidate for a North Warwickshire/Cannock Chase coalfields – Midland lines south of Birmingham traffic flow. But I have to admit the real attraction is that it is reputed to be yellow, with blue lettering, solebars, headstocks and end timbering. Yellow and blue wagons are usually the stuff of fantasy and indeed the body colour in the photo seems relatively dark – perhaps yellow ochre (hydrated ferric oxide). Harking back to earlier discussions about paint chemistry of the period, the other likely pigment is lead-based chrome yellow (lead (II) chromate), a rather brighter, though still warm, yellow. The suggestion is made that the livery reflects contemporary Cadbury’s advertising; a hunt online for Edwardian Cadbury’s advertising shows no very consistent choice of colours – the classic Cadbury purple seems to date from the introduction of Dairy Milk in 1905 but took a while to become a dominant colour in their advertising. Curiously, the only examples of the rather angular lettering style on this wagon are from a white-on-red enamel sign and a poster, both dated to the 1920s – I wonder how reliable that dating is? The cocoa essence tin in the poster proves frustratingly difficult to date, partly, it would seem, because Cadbury’s produced a retro-style tin based on it in the 1970s.

 

Like Huntley & Palmers in Reading, Cadbury’s Bournville factory had an extensive internal railway system, with a small fleet of assorted engines and a substantial fleet of wagons. There was a fascinating topic on the planning of a 7 mm model based on this, which unfortunately seems to have fizzled out, and also a good selection of photos on the Railways in Worcestershire website and of course Warwickshire Railways. In the earlier photos, Midland stock predominates – passenger-rated fruit and milk vans to D419 and even the otherwise-elusive D466 48’ clerestory party saloons (4^th photo down) – and of course D299 5-plank opens galore. Many of Cadbury’s wagons, especially vans, seem to have been internal user only – there was a preference for vans with tarpaulin-covered roof-hatches, like the L&Y D3 I built a few weeks ago; presumably this was for some operational reason. The vans seem to have been second-hand but evidently new coal wagons were delivered in this livery style which would appear to be dark blue with yellow lettering, on the evidence of a pre-war Hamblings model (subsequently copied by Merco), though the Hornby tinplate van is a lighter blue. (The Hornby tinplate van should not, however, be taken as evidence that vans liveried thus existed, any more than their Huntley & Palmers van did – ancestors of the Kit Kat van. Pale blue with yellow lettering also appeared on hopper wagons, the colour being interpreted thus by Mainline. I’m no expert on steel hopper wagons – not my period – but the Mainline one looks too tall, though closer than this later Dapol offering. Dapol also currently offer the ex-Mainline hopper in pale blue and previously in yellow, for which I think there’s no warrant.

 

Later on, a dark red, matching the engines, was used for internal user wagons, as on this preserved van. There were also white-painted ferry wagons (not like this) but like the hoppers these are all outside my period.

 

Dapol also currently do a 4-plank wagon in a dark red livery, as No. 12 with CADBURY BOURNVILLE in block white letters shaded black, and – lo and behold – a Birmingham RC&W Co hire plate (26982), which suggests they’ve worked from a photo. Unfortunately it’s on their generic 10’ wheelbase steel-pattern underframe, so has no claim to dimensional accuracy. The style does though seem to be that of the wagon seen here; this photo dates from between 1885 and 1894.  Apart from the yellow wagon in Turton (Op. cit.) the only other reference to a Cadbury’s wagon in the Lightmoor list is in British Carriage & Wagon Builders and Repaiers 1830 – 2006, by Chris Sambrook (Black Dwarf Lightmoor) – maybe this contains the photo Dapol used?

 

Dapol also produced a model based on the yellow wagon I started with, as a limited edition for BRM. Notwithstanding the 1909 date quoted by Turton and attested by the paint date on the solebar, it’s described as a livery carried in the 1920s and 30s. This is closer to scale dimensions than Dapol’s other offerings, as it uses their 9’ wheelbase wooden underframe with Ellis axleboxes – the latter the only detail in which the wagon is spot on! Phil Parker missed out on these when he gave a spare body a Peco Wonderful Wagon underframe but he did give it some blue paint (Humbrol 25) in the appropriate places. The body is Dapol’s generic one for this underframe, so seven planks rather than six and siderails that lack cut-outs for the headstocks (so the body sits too high) – I have inveighed against it elsewhere – though it does have the door catches above rather than to the side of the door. Unfortunately the lettering, while capturing the style, isn’t laid out as in the photo – ‘Cadbury’ should be stretched out more, so the ‘y’ is up against the door ironwork and the ‘C’ overlaps the corner-plate; equally, the ‘E’ of Bournville should be entirely on the corner plate.

 

The current Hornby model makes a much better stab at this livery:

 

 

Although the body colour is, like the Dapol version, a more banana-ish shade than I’m inclined to believe in, the layout of the lettering follows the photo more rigorously; it’s interesting that Hornby have chosen a colour closer to Cadbury Purple than Dapol’s mid-blue. There’s no attempt at blue elsewhere. In terms of dimensions and details, the body gets much closer – for starters it’s 6 planks, being the same wagon as the Hackett and Ayers wagons I’ve already had a go at improving. The relationship between the outer spring shoes and solebar/headstock ironwork convinces me that this wagon is 15’ over headstocks – the model is 60 mm. I discussed the generic detail issues in the context of the Hackett wagon – for which I didn’t attempt to improve the recessed side rail which is at least otherwise correctly shaped (More correctly, curb rail, I learn). For the Cadbury wagon, other points of detail include door catches to the side rather than above, and J-shaped ends to the side knee washer plates rather than straight – trickier. The corner plates look a bit on the wide side too – compare how the ‘E’ fits on model and prototype. There’s not much printed detail on the solebar which would anyway need painting blue, so this time round I’m using a Cambrian Gloucester underframe – less hacking away at unpleasant black plastic! Some detail points I will need to keep in mind are: the prominent wooden door stop; angled grap handle on the end; Ellis axleboxes; and brakes one side only but levers on both sides connected by a cross-shaft. The latter is arranged with one V-hanger on each side, mounted behind the solebar. The lever on the non-brake side must use the Morton clutch.

 

The Cambrian Gloucester underframe needs some modification to match this Birmingham RC&W Co. design. The outer V-hanger has to be removed but in its place there are two vertical washer plates for the bolts that secure the inner V-hanger; I made these by carefully paring away the V-hanger moulding from the solebar and re-positioning the pieces. I used microstrip to build up a representation of the distinctive ‘ears’ of the Ellis axlebox. Left, the Cambrian Gloucester underfame pieces as they come; right, modified:

 

 

I’ve even moved the horse hook to straddle the right-hand side of the crown plate. The Cambrian headstock moulding has ribbed buffer housings; the ribs were carefully pared away to produce the plain type sported by this wagon.

 

After solventing the solebars and axleguard units together, these and the headstocks were sprayed with Halfords grey primer and the ironwork below the solebar painted black. I then remembered to add the door stops, carved from 60 thou square microstrip. Having removed the body from the Hornby underframe and carved away the moulded lugs that the couplings screw into, the underframe was assembled onto the body – fortunately the body moulding is of a plastic that MekPak will work with. The door catches were added in microstrip, as for the Huntley & Palmers Gloucester RC&W Co. wagon. The body is painted, not yellow plastic; I’ve touched one catch in with Humbrol 154 insignia yellow, which seems to be a good match. Humbrol 25 blue is too light a colour to match the lettering, as can be seen from the trial patch on the solebar. The colour should be nearer Navy Blue than Cadbury Purple; I don’t have much in the way of blue in my paint tin collection; inspection of the Humbrol colour chart doesn’t throw up an obvious match. Here’s progress so far, with the end woodwork given an undercoat of grey where it will also finally be blue:

 

 

I'm in two minds about attempting to improve the curb rail by building it up with microstrip - I'd loose the printed tare weight and the area around the door hinges would be fiddly. Anyway, this is as far as I’m going to get before a three week holiday – alternating between proximity to the North Western and North Eastern main lines in the North Country; I’ll be taking some appropriate projects to keep me going. For my return, the various brake vans in progress are queuing up for handrails and there’s a phalanx of D299s to work on. I dare say I’ll get distracted onto something else… biscuit wagons, chocolate wagons – what next: ice cream vans?

Edited September 3, 2022 by Compound2632
Images re-inserted

[wagonman]

The photo of the Cadbury wagon used by Sambrook is the same as that in Turton 8. If you find you have time to kill, a saunter through the Robert Opie Collection might be of interest – before it disappears.

 

 

 

 

Richard

Edited August 7, 2017 by wagonman

[Mikkel]

Another interesting "mashup", Stephen. And much info on the side, thanks for writing it up. A good example, I think, that a single wagon can be the entry point to a whole industry and even an entire era.

 

You even got the D299 leit motif in there. The challenge is to find a place they didn't go!

[relaxinghobby]

Chromate yellows are an expensive paint, budget minded companies may choose an alternative colour, perhaps that's why yellow was not such a popular wagon livery.

[Compound2632]

Bought Vol. 3 of Bill Hudson's PO Wagons second-hand in Sedbergh. Instructive essay on coalfields. To my delight I learn that coal from the North Warwickshire coalfield was particularly suited to biscuit-making - cf. my favourite reference photo for the Huntley & Palmer's wagons, with Midland wagons also in the train.

[wagonbasher]

Bought Vol. 3 of Bill Hudson's PO Wagons second-hand in Sedbergh. Instructive essay on coalfields. To my delight I learn that coal from the North Warwickshire coalfield was particularly suited to biscuit-making - cf. my favourite reference photo for the Huntley & Palmer's wagons, with Midland wagons also in the train.

 

And Jam making

 

Warwickshire coal was taken down in pairs of working boats on what is now the grand union canal to the Kearley and Tonge  jam factory in Southall.  The dock at the factory was called the Jam 'ole and it was referred to as the Jam ole run.

 

I think Kearsley and Tonge also made biscuits

 

Andy

[Brassey]

http://www.lnwrs.org.uk/Mystery/index.php?display_large_photo_desktop=233

 

Apparently this is on the GER with the two LNWR carriages damaged.

Edited August 20, 2017 by Brassey