Prior to WWII did PO coal wagons run with unpainted replaced planks?

[Martin S-C]

Following the depression of the early thirties, many PO wagons, especially those belonging to small traders who only owned a few, received only the most essential maintenance.

Statements like this always make me wary. Can you support this assertion with evidence?

 

Private owner wagons were often hired from wagon building companies and a part of the hire agreement would be a contract to keep them painted every 3 years on average and of course to keep them repaired. Even wagons bought outright would carry a repairs and maintenance agreement because the Board of Trade required railway vehicles to be in safe condition. Even a single wagon owned by a coal merchant resident at a single rural station would, included in the lease agreement, have the costs of repairs and repaints covered in the monthly payments. As long as the lessee maintained payments his wagon would be kept in good repair. If he did not maintain payments, it could be seized by the lessor. I see no technical reason how or why any PO wagon might go around in a condition more shabby or poorly maintained than any other, be the owner rich or poor, successful or struggling in his business.

 

I have great difficulty buying into statements that small companies that were not financially secure would be more inclined to operate a shabbier fleet. The process of leasing argues convincingly against that.

 

When they did get replaced, any retouching of the finish might not have been carried out to the same standard as the original signwriting.

 

Why? The owner isn't doing the maintenance. He is paying a third party to do it. Unless you can support your statement with any evidence I am inclined to dismiss such assertions.

 

Take photos in books on PO wagons with a pinch of salt. Their authors would have sought out illustrations showing the liveries in the best condition and they are often works or owners' pictures, taken before the wagons had even carried their first load. As such, they will not reflect the typical in-service wagons of the period.

 

We are not discussing photos of brand new wagons, but wagons that are clearly in service. Have you fully read through the foregoing discussions?

[jim.snowdon]

 

Statements like this always make me wary. Can you support this assertion with evidence?

 

Private owner wagons were often hired from wagon building companies and a part of the hire agreement would be a contract to keep them painted every 3 years on average and of course to keep them repaired. Even wagons bought outright would carry a repairs and maintenance agreement because the Board of Trade required railway vehicles to be in safe condition. Even a single wagon owned by a coal merchant resident at a single rural station would, included in the lease agreement, have the costs of repairs and repaints covered in the monthly payments. As long as the lessee maintained payments his wagon would be kept in good repair. If he did not maintain payments, it could be seized by the lessor. I see no technical reason how or why any PO wagon might go around in a condition more shabby or poorly maintained than any other, be the owner rich or poor, successful or struggling in his business.

 

I have great difficulty buying into statements that small companies that were not financially secure would be more inclined to operate a shabbier fleet. The process of leasing argues convincingly against that.

 

 

Why? The owner isn't doing the maintenance. He is paying a third party to do it. Unless you can support your statement with any evidence I am inclined to dismiss such assertions.

 

 

We are not discussing photos of brand new wagons, but wagons that are clearly in service. Have you fully read through the foregoing discussions?

 

Leased wagons could be under either of two arrangements - one where the wagon hire company undertook all the maintenance as part of the hire fee, the other where the wagon operator undertook to maintain the wagon to a condition that would have been defied in the lease arrangement. In either case, the actual owner of the wagon would have wanted it to be maintained in such a condition that he would not be saddled with a maintenance bill when the wagon returned from lease and hired out to someone else. Paintwork will be fairly low down on the list, not least as it is only the outside of the wagon that is painted. Of greater concern would be that the wagon was not damaged and generally kept in good order.

 

The Board of Trade is not the governing authority as regards the condition of wagons, although if, through neglect, a wagon was the cause of an accident, it would be HM Railway Inspectorate that undertook any investigations and initiated any prosecutions. The bodies that had to be satisfied that any wagon was maintained in a fit state to run on their railways were the railway companies themselves, acting through their wagon inspectors, and, in terms of common standards, through the Railway Clearing House. The whole impetus for minimum design standards for privately owned wagons in the late 1880s came from the lamentable standards to which some builders and owners were building and maintaining, or rather not maintaining, their wagons.

 

Whether a wagon was leased or owned, the amount of maintenance it would have received would have been the minimum required to meet the standards - maintenance costs money, and no company ever spent more than it needed to, especially when money was tight generally.

 

The last comment, about a lot of the published photographs, is clearly aimed at the wider audience that will be reading this forum topic, and since it is a public forum, that is not unreasonable. Topics exist not only to answer the questions posed by the original post but also to educate others.

 

Jim

[DCB]

I think the explanation is a bit more complicated and pragmatic than suggested in earlier posts.

The P.O wagons were pooled quite abruptly and as a result many wagons were used for journeys away from their owners facilities.  It would be those maintained, repaired away from their usual maintenance facilities, or repaired as quickly as possible due to pressure of traffic which would have had the temporary repairs such as unpainted timber, or under coated or wrong coloured paintwork.   It is pretty unlikely that anyone would carefully match the paint colours and lettering with shading while repairing someone elses' PO wagon, though it probably did occur in some instances.  The Pooling was a temporary measure and but for the 1945(?) election would have ceased with the end of the war.

The vast money no object obsolete wagon building program by the railway executive must have driven the P.O wagons to the scrap yards in their thousands by the early 30s and I would be surprised if any survived with legible P.O paintwork after about 1952.  Obviously they would have had sludge grey paint splashed over them if they needed any substantial repair in BR days.  A few obviously lingered but with the colours barely visible under a coat of neglect.  Doesn't stop me running a filthy P.O 7 plank in an otherwise grey 1958 coal train but you have to look very close to read the name.

[Caledonian]

Not entirely true. Conscientious Objection was still a prisonable offence unless you registered for it and you still needed a good reason. However some were "put down the mines" rather than punished.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscientious_objector#United_Kingdom

 

 

Bevin Boys were entirely conscripted by drawing of lots. It was well after the start of the war and was mostly teenagers.

 

Some of those conscripted were quite vocal about it as they wanted to serve in the forces. I read somewhere that Eric Morecambe always reckoned his health problems were caused by being sent down the mines and he wanted to join the RAF instead, but they refused.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bevin_Boys

 

 

 

Jason

 

Yes indeed. My late father had his name down for the Navy as an engine room artificer and the promise of P.O. rank as his call up was [slightly] deferred until he'd completed his engineering apprenticeship. 

 

Instead he went down the pit at Valleyfield in Fife, but was still registered as belonging to the Navy and perhaps apocryphally he used to tell how he noticed how at the war's end a lot of his fellow conscripts were being discharged ahead on him. When he enquired at the office, the manager looked at his file and fell about laughing because it turned out that a certain percentage of naval conscripts were being temporarily retained for minesweeping duties

[asmay2002]

A

 

Thank you gents for all your input. It seems that for years I've been working under the misunderstanding that around the start of 1940 an organised programme to mark up the ex-PO wagons was undertaken. That didn't happen, or if it did happen it happened very slowly with many ex-PO wagons running in increasingly battered condition before being so marked and some even being scrapped before the BR marks were applied. I think the main result of my error was that I inferred that "no pool markings must equal pre-1940" and that assumption was false.

This old dog has learned a new trick.

 

Thanks all.

According to David Larkin it was late 1949 before P numbers started to be issued.  They finally gave up doing it in 1957 by which time many, many wagons had been broken up without ever being issued with a P number.  This was partly because they weren't allowed to renumber a loaded wagon.

[Nick Holliday]

I think the explanation is a bit more complicated and pragmatic than suggested in earlier posts.

The P.O wagons were pooled quite abruptly and as a result many wagons were used for journeys away from their owners facilities.  It would be those maintained, repaired away from their usual maintenance facilities, or repaired as quickly as possible due to pressure of traffic which would have had the temporary repairs such as unpainted timber, or under coated or wrong coloured paintwork.   It is pretty unlikely that anyone would carefully match the paint colours and lettering with shading while repairing someone elses' PO wagon, though it probably did occur in some instances.  The Pooling was a temporary measure and but for the 1945(?) election would have ceased with the end of the war.

The vast money no object obsolete wagon building program by the railway executive must have driven the P.O wagons to the scrap yards in their thousands by the early 30s and I would be surprised if any survived with legible P.O paintwork after about 1952.  Obviously they would have had sludge grey paint splashed over them if they needed any substantial repair in BR days.  A few obviously lingered but with the colours barely visible under a coat of neglect.  Doesn't stop me running a filthy P.O 7 plank in an otherwise grey 1958 coal train but you have to look very close to read the name.

The pooling certainly was abrupt, but I suspect that, at least for the first couple of years, most wagons would have remained on tasks similar to their pre-war roles, such as the vast number of Welsh wagons shuttling back and forth between colliery and docks, although, as the war went on, wagons would stray and end up many miles away from their original stamping ground, with Scottish wagons carrying rubble from the London blitz. However, as others have said, I believe owners were still paying rental or lease agreements which included a degree of maintenance.  Any repairs would generally be undertaken by a general wagon repairer, rather than a specific owner, although the larger coal factors and colleries might well have their own facilities, and there wouldn't be many instances of repairing someone else's wagon, and no doubt a wide range of paints would have been available for a good match.

I would like to know the references for the comment regarding the wagon building programme having any impact on PO wagons.  Len Tavender, in Coal Trade Wagons, analyses the number of PO wagons taken into public ownership in 1948. At that time there were around 589,000 PO wagons on the rails and only 30% had been built AFTER 1930, 56% dated from before the start of WW1, 4% being Victorian!

It is interesting to hear of the expected frequency of repainting, at least before the conflict, which would suggest that a third of stock had received attention to its paintwork in 1939, and given that mainline companies considered 7 years a reasonable working life for paintwork, it would point to a situation at the end of the war when the livery of over half the stock might be still within the main line criterion of still being fit for use. It is obviously difficult to draw too many conclusions from photographs as to proportions, since the camera lenses might be pointed in the direction of the more interesting or picturesque examples, rather than whatever was the more commonplace items. Looking at books such as Wartime Southern and The Big Four in Colour shows that up until 1942, at least, the condition of most PO wagons was unchanged from their state in the thirties, which wasn't always as pristine as modellers think..

With regard to the Bevin Boys photo, I wonder if either the Dewey or Wombwell wagons were actually still mobile, as the latter has no number visible, and the Dewey wagon looks rather battered. I suspect that the task in hand was akin to the shovelling snad around camp, as a punishment.  The boys were learning how to handle the timber, and once the wagon was unloaded, I suspect they, or the next team, had to re-load it, ad infinitum. I don't think the timbers would actually end up on one of the Kentish coal mines, particularly after the handling they had experienced.

Finally, another random inspection of a Turton volume, this time the eighth, came up with an interesting example. The Coalition Coal & Shipping Co. of Cardiff had five wagons built for them in April 1943 by the Gloucester RCWCoLtd and they were resplendent in full large lettering livery, no "pool lettering" here, albeit on a black background, although most Welsh wagons were black too.  There was even a further order for three wagons in 1946, although these were painted in an austerity style, with small lettering and number bottom left. Apparently GRCW received twenty orders for wagons in 1946. The first volume of Turton has a piece on wagon building after 1939 as well, with other fully lettered wagons appearing up until 1942.

[Wickham Green]

One point that doesn't seem to have been mentioned above is that the nominal load capacity of all 12T open goods and mineral wagons was increased to 13T early in the war ( and 20T to 21T etc. ) so that's another reason the photo in post 4 cannot be pre-war ............. and any model wagon that purports to have survived the war and swapped a few planks in the process should not be marked 12T ( nor, of course 10T if it's a 1923 standard vehicle ! ).

[Fat Controller]

With regard to shipping coal; apart from some supplies to Ireland, most ceased with the fall of France, and the other countries of Western Europe that had been invaded by the Germans. Instead, more traffic was conveyed by rail within the UK.

[john new]

I think the explanation is a bit more complicated and pragmatic than suggested in earlier posts.

The P.O wagons were pooled quite abruptly and as a result many wagons were used for journeys away from their owners facilities. It would be those maintained, repaired away from their usual maintenance facilities, or repaired as quickly as possible due to pressure of traffic which would have had the temporary repairs such as unpainted timber, or under coated or wrong coloured paintwork. It is pretty unlikely that anyone would carefully match the paint colours and lettering with shading while repairing someone elses' PO wagon, though it probably did occur in some instances. The Pooling was a temporary measure and but for the 1945(?) election would have ceased with the end of the war.

The vast money no object obsolete wagon building program by the railway executive must have driven the P.O wagons to the scrap yards in their thousands by the early 30s and I would be surprised if any survived with legible P.O paintwork after about 1952. Obviously they would have had sludge grey paint splashed over them if they needed any substantial repair in BR days. A few obviously lingered but with the colours barely visible under a coat of neglect. Doesn't stop me running a filthy P.O 7 plank in an otherwise grey 1958 coal train but you have to look very close to read the name.

At least one survived with legible lettering later than 1952 as I can recall being with my Dad as he was jotting down details in Chandlersford Yard. As I wasn't born until 1952 that would make it late 50s. Dad's sketch books exist but I haven't currently got access to check dates.

Edited September 19, 2018 by john new

[jwealleans]

Roye England photographed many such wagons postwar and his photos feature heavily in John Hayes and Keith Turton's books.  Most are so dirty/faded/worn that he had to chalk round the lettering to render it intelligible, but there were a handful in surprisingly good condition until very late in the 1950s.

[DaveF]

I hope this isn't too far off the original topic.

 

I've had a quick look through Dad's late 40s/very early 50s photos for anyone wondering what (ex)PO wagons looked like in the very early years of BR. The are some nice locos too.

 

They are not all very sharp but they should give some idea.

 

There are more in my thread on dad's black and white photos, see the link in my signature below.

 

 

Nottingham Wilford Road signal box and goods yard 47277 shunting c1951 JBWP177  It's my hand in the photo.

 

 

Hitchin LNER Sentinel Y3 8175 in loco yard c1948 JVol3095

 

 

Lenton Junction Nottingham Ivatt 4MT 43019 down goods c1950 JVol1050

 

 

Stapleford and Sandiacre 8F down goods Jan 51 JVol6081

 

 

Trowell 4F up goods c1953 JVol5016

 

 

Trowell Beyer 47970 Garratt up coal c1953 JVol5020

 

 

Whitemoor yard LNER 8000 shunting c1948 JVol1267rmweb

 

 

David

 

 

 

[Dunsignalling]

The obvious route of research is to look for photos of whole coal trains or substantial parts thereof. That's the best way to establish what proportion of wagons would have looked even half-decent at any given period.

 

As for ad hoc repairs, the owner's priority would be to get any failed wagon (whether the cause was mechanical or a broken plank) back to work, especially if it were loaded when it broke down. I somehow doubt that, under those circumstances, any replacement planks would have received more than a flop over with roughly the right colour. Most were black, grey or brown in any case and I'd think the restoration of lettering (other than any relevant to operation) would have waited until the wagon went in for overhaul, if it ever did.

 

Photographic evidence suggests that a high proportion of PO wagons running in the 1930s probably hadn't felt the business end of a paintbrush since they were new. That implies that many maintenance contracts only covered work necessary to keep the vehicle in traffic, not cosmetic attention. 

 

John

Edited September 23, 2018 by Dunsignalling

[Caledonian]

I hope this isn't too far off the original topic.

 

I've had a quick look through Dad's late 40s/very early 50s photos for anyone wondering what (ex)PO wagons looked like in the very early years of BR. The are some nice locos too.

 

They are not all very sharp but they should give some idea.

 

There are more in my thread on dad's black and white photos, see the link in my signature below.

 

 

a Nottingham Wilford Road signal box and goods yard 47277 shunting c1951 JBWP177.jpg

Nottingham Wilford Road signal box and goods yard 47277 shunting c1951 JBWP177  It's my hand in the photo.

 

 

Hitchin LNER Sentinel Y3 8175 in loco yard c1948 JVol3095.jpg

Hitchin LNER Sentinel Y3 8175 in loco yard c1948 JVol3095

 

 

Lenton Junction Nottingham Ivatt 4MT 43019 down gods c1950 JVol1050.jpg

Lenton Junction Nottingham Ivatt 4MT 43019 down goods c1950 JVol1050

 

 

Stapleford and Sandiacre 8F down goods Jan 51 JVol6081.jpg

Stapleford and Sandiacre 8F down goods Jan 51 JVol6081

 

 

Trowell 4F up goods c1953JVol5016.jpg

Trowell 4F up goods c1953 JVol5016

 

 

Trowell Beyer 47970 Garratt up coal c1953 JVol5020.jpg

Trowell Beyer 47970 Garratt up coal c1953 JVol5020

 

 

Whitemoor yard LNER 8000 shunting c1948 JVol1267rmweb.jpg

Whitemoor yard LNER 8000 shunting c1948 JVol1267rmweb

 

 

David

 

I do have to say that this lot look very Bachmann-like

[Wickham Green]

I do have to say that this lot look very Bachmann-like

............. apart from the significant number of grease-boxed ten-tonners which the ready-to-run trade has yet to offer.

[PenrithBeacon]

IIRC wagon repair shops were given ranges of numbers to put on these wagons, which implies that they wouldn't have had a number applied until they needed repair and if the shop had the manpower available to do it. But, assuming my recollection is true, how big would a shop be before it was given this responsibility? Would, for example the small 'shop' at Gowholes have done this sort of work?

Edited September 20, 2018 by PenrithBeacon

[asmay2002]

IIRC wagon repair shops were given ranges of numbers to put on these wagons, which implies that they wouldn't have had a number applied until they needed repair and if the shop had the manpower available to do it. But, assuming my recollection is true, how big would a shop be before it was given this responsibility? Would, for example the small 'shop' at Gowholes have done this sort of work?

There is a full list of them in David Larkin's new book  http://www.crecy.co.uk/the-acquired-wagons-of-british-railways which runs over several pages.

Edited September 20, 2018 by asmay2002

[Caledonian]

............. apart from the significant number of grease-boxed ten-tonners which the ready-to-run trade has yet to offer.

 

True, but I was talking about the paintwork or rather lack of it.

 

I think that the important point here is that the wagons do appear to be properly maintained. Repairs are being carried out but they aren't being painted, or rather their original livery isn't being restored,

 

A question then arising concerns the two weathered salt wagons currently offered by Bachmann. Once again they display raw replacement planking, but both are clearly identified as Non-Pool and presumably have a home to go to. Are these fictitious renderings or do they reflect a post-war shortage of paint?

[jim.snowdon]

True, but I was talking about the paintwork or rather lack of it.

 

I think that the important point here is that the wagons do appear to be properly maintained. Repairs are being carried out but they aren't being painted, or rather their original livery isn't being restored,

 

A question then arising concerns the two weathered salt wagons currently offered by Bachmann. Once again they display raw replacement planking, but both are clearly identified as Non-Pool and presumably have a home to go to. Are these fictitious renderings or do they reflect a post-war shortage of paint?

My experience with the RTR manufacturers has been that whilst they will frequently be none too accurate as regards the choice of wagon on which to print a livery scheme, they are usually copying from a photograph. Whether the subject is in a typical condition, or not, is another matter.

 

Jim

[wagonman]

IIRC wagon repair shops were given ranges of numbers to put on these wagons, which implies that they wouldn't have had a number applied until they needed repair and if the shop had the manpower available to do it. But, assuming my recollection is true, how big would a shop be before it was given this responsibility? Would, for example the small 'shop' at Gowholes have done this sort of work?

 

 

Probably not. The Wagon Repairs depot at Radstock, originally Messrs Wheeler & Gregory's works but much enlarged, were allocated a block of 750 numbers. No idea how many of them they used...

[Wickham Green]

True, but I was talking about the paintwork or rather lack of it.

 

I think that the important point here is that the wagons do appear to be properly maintained. Repairs are being carried out but they aren't being painted, or rather their original livery isn't being restored,

 

A question then arising concerns the two weathered salt wagons currently offered by Bachmann. Once again they display raw replacement planking, but both are clearly identified as Non-Pool and presumably have a home to go to. Are these fictitious renderings or do they reflect a post-war shortage of paint?

All those photos are post war so the wagons belong to British Railway who cared nothing about original liveries .......... certainly they're being maintained so that they don't drop bits of themselves or the load as they travel - but their life expectancy was short in view of all the 16 tonners appearing from umpteen builders and returning from le continong so aesthetics were not a priority !

 

The salt wagons, on the other hand, still belonged to their pre-war owners and any repairs away from base would have been a matter for negotiations between them and, perhaps, Wagon Repairs Ltd. Again, if the owners consider the wagon's life to be coming to an end BUT a bodged repair was worthwhile an unpainted plank or two MIGHT have appeared .................. but it's probably unlikely.

[The Johnster]

The RTR approach is inevitably to produce one moulding to use for a variety of PO liveries which may or may not be suitable for it; some will be travesties and some will be near enough.  It would be very difficult to justify making accurate models of all PO wagons even if the information were available, which it often won't be.  The best you can hope for is that a company produces a reasonable representation of, say, a Gloucester C & W Co wagon of around the date you're looking at and restrict themselves to liveries of companies that used Gloucester wagons.

 

Some RTR companies cannot even manage to provide us with mineral wagons on the correct length of chassis, so this is an uphill struggle...

 

I model a 1948-58 period, with the mid point at 1953, so a good many of my wagons are XPO, with some in BR livery, some retaining PO liveries but with BR numbering and branding, and one or two in PO livery, but these are very heavily weathered so that details of the livery are very difficult to make out; this is not only prototypical but hides any inaccuracies in the RTR model.  You can see it's an XPO, but not which one!

 

A personal favourite is my Bachmann weathered 'MOY' with coke rails; I have further weathered it in a darker weathering wash as it did not look to me as if it had been exposed to enough coal dust.  I reckon I've accidentally got this one spot on!

[Wickham Green]

The RTR approach is inevitably to produce one moulding to use for a variety of PO liveries .......

That's a little unfair on Bachmann - they've produced the ( nominally ) standard 1923 12T coal wagon in seven- or eight-plank types and with or without end doors ( standard or Charles Roberts variant ) ................... but then they've put perfectly good liveries on many a wrong combination of details.

[jim.snowdon]

That's a little unfair on Bachmann - they've produced the ( nominally ) standard 1923 12T coal wagon in seven- or eight-plank types and with or without end doors ( standard or Charles Roberts variant ) ................... but then they've put perfectly good liveries on many a wrong combination of details.

In some ways, the biggest problem is modellers themselves, more particularly the ones that put "prettiness" ahead of accuracy in terms of PO wagon liveries. A wagon that might have existed in only small, if not very small, numbers but had a pretty colour and lettering scheme is considered by some (many?) to be more desirable/sellable than, say, a plain black one with white lettering typical of South Wales. Those people are not that interested in whether the correct wagon for the livery is an 1887 or 1907 spec. wagon that is a foot shorter than the 1923 spec. wagon that has been used by the supplier.

 

Jim

[PenrithBeacon]

The biggest problem is finding ‘in service ‘ photos to base a model on. The pretty photos taken by wagon manufacturers are not always typical of a wagon in service.

[Compound2632]

Well, there's always kits and kit-bashing to extend the range beyond the RCH 1923 12 ton wagon...