BR steam era wagons

[MarkSG]

This is possibly a bit of a numptie question, but I'm finding it surprisingly hard to answer by trawling the web. I'm currently building an urban industrial layout set broadly in the early BR steam era, which is a departure for me in more ways than one - I've previously always modelled a rural pre-war setting. It's been relatively easy to build up a stock of suitable locos, since they come conveniently labelled with the appropriate emblem but I'm finding it harder to identify and obtain suitable wagons.

 

So, what I'd like to know is what wagons you would expect to see in the early BR era. I presume that, to begin with, most would be former big 4 wagons from the common pool, but repainted in BR colours. But how long did the repainting take - how long would it have been before you'd stop seeing the original liveries? And what about private owner wagons - did they get absorbed into the common pool as well, and, if so, how long did their previous liveries linger? Would you see private owner wagons at all on a layout set in the 50s? And when did BR's own designs start appearing in any number?

 

On a related note, what RTR wagons are available that would suit this setting? It seems to me that most RTR wagons are either pre-war (Big 4 or the usual kaleidoscope of private owner liveries) or later BR (transition era onwards). Would I be better off building kits rather than buying RTR? Or maybe repaint some suitable pre-war wagons? If I'm going to roll my own, so to speak, where can I find information about colours, lettering, numbering, etc?

 

Any suggestions are warmly welcome!

 

Mark

[Fat Controller]

How early do you mean?

Given the state of the economy in the post-war/early 1950s, wagons would normally have received the bare minimum of attention to paintwork and lettering. Company ownership markings would have been painted out, and wagon data panels amended to receive the appropriate prefix letter for their origin. Some newly-built unfitted wagons with wood bodies only had their metalwork and a patch for the wagon details painted, the rest being bare wood. Private-owner wagons- or at least the majority- had been pooled at the beginning of the war, and were in a decidedly shabby state. Damaged planks would have been replaced but not painted, whilst some wagons were patched with planks from other wagons deemed beyond repair; I have seen photos of some bearing two sets of (different) painted numbers. Steel mineral wagons were beginning to appear in quantity- many of the first ones having been ordered by the Ministry of War Transport for use either at home, or on mainland European railways.

There's quite a lot available from the mainstream manufacturers, but look at having the majority of wagons of pre-nationalisation origin- Bachmann do SR-design vans in a variety of liveries, as well as GW and (soon) LNER ones for a start. Have a look around various Fotopic sites for photos from the period, though it should be said that the majority of photographers paid little attention to wagons.

I was born in 1955, so some way into the period you're looking at, but my memories of the period were that things (not just railways, but road-transport, shops, housing and factories) were generally pretty shabby, and there was relatively little in the way of bright colours.

[asmay2002]

This is possibly a bit of a numptie question, but I'm finding it surprisingly hard to answer by trawling the web. I'm currently building an urban industrial layout set broadly in the early BR steam era, which is a departure for me in more ways than one - I've previously always modelled a rural pre-war setting. It's been relatively easy to build up a stock of suitable locos, since they come conveniently labelled with the appropriate emblem but I'm finding it harder to identify and obtain suitable wagons.

 

So, what I'd like to know is what wagons you would expect to see in the early BR era. I presume that, to begin with, most would be former big 4 wagons from the common pool, but repainted in BR colours. But how long did the repainting take - how long would it have been before you'd stop seeing the original liveries? And what about private owner wagons - did they get absorbed into the common pool as well, and, if so, how long did their previous liveries linger? Would you see private owner wagons at all on a layout set in the 50s? And when did BR's own designs start appearing in any number?

 

First thing to think about is how long a wagon lasts. Typically you might expect 20-40 years but the early BR years were a little unusual in that they followed the Great depression when relatively speaking not much was built and WW2 when the same applied. This meant that in the late 40's and early fifities there were some very old wagons still knocking around - particularly ex POs with the 1923 standard design being outnumbered by the earlier 1907 and 1910 types. The oldest wagon BR inherited dated (at least nominally) from the 1860s! Much of the oldest stuff was never repainted in full (modelling a really tatty ex PO is an art form). Patches with the new numbers were painted in the appropriate places and the rest of the paint left to fade and fall off. Where new planks were added to replace broken ones they were left as bare wood. BR started a vast construction programme to replace old coal wagosn with steel 16 tonners but these didn't really start to dominate until the late 50's. Ordinary goods stock was a bit better treated as far as repaints go but even some of the new stuff came out with unpainted wooden parts in the early years of BR.

 

 

ASM

[MarkSG]

Thanks for the comments so far. On a related note, how quick was the changeover from the early "unicycling lion" emblem to the later "ferret and dartboard" design? What's the earliest and latest that you would reasonably expect to see both side by side?

[jonny777]

The later BR emblem (Ferret & Dartboard) was introduced in 1956, so you should not see any on a layout based up until that date. I have seen it surviving on a BR standard 2-6-2T in video that purports to be 1966, but that is an extreme.

 

Generally speaking, by 1960 there were very few left on main line locomtives and even those on secondary duties had been altered, but as you might expect a number of freight and shunting engines carried them into the early 1960s.

 

Going back to the subject of wagons, the wooden bodied mineral wagons do vanish quite rapidly between 1959 and 1961 as the standard 16t steel version appears in vast quantities, but be careful of weathering your steel minerals too much in this period as many of them were brand new. Their external condition deteriorated quite rapidly, but not to the filthy extent that most of them were seen in by the mid-60s.

 

During the late 50s there were also quite a large number of non standard steel minerals (slope sided, etc) which would appear in twos or threes in a coal train.

[BernardTPM]

For van trains you'll want a mix of all four 'Grouping' designs, late examples of which were built under BR for a number of years. Even in the early 1970s the late designs were still seen, albeit outnumbered by the BR standard type by then. Many post-war vans that were built unfitted would have acquired vacuum brakes after the 1955 Modernisation plan, usually distinguishable by simpler '4-shoe' brake gear. There will usually be a slight bias in wagons designs to the operating region, but it would be rare for 'foreign' region designs to be absent.

There is a growing range of R-T-R wagons available, but it's well worth looking at kits such as Parkside Dundas and Ratio, generally simple to build, to add greater variety.

[pH]

On a related note, how quick was the changeover from the early "unicycling lion" emblem to the later "ferret and dartboard" design? What's the earliest and latest that you would reasonably expect to see both side by side?

The later BR emblem (Ferret & Dartboard) was introduced in 1956, so you should not see any on a layout based up until that date. I have seen it surviving on a BR standard 2-6-2T in video that purports to be 1966, but that is an extreme.

 

Generally speaking, by 1960 there were very few left on main line locomtives and even those on secondary duties had been altered, but as you might expect a number of freight and shunting engines carried them into the early 1960s.

Mark, you ask "What's the earliest and latest that you would reasonably expect to see both side by side?", and jonny777's answered that. But if you want to push dates, you can go further than those he gives for early emblems surviving. I've seen a photo of Jubilee 45635, which I would consider to be a main line engine, still carrying the old emblem in April 1962, though the caption actually remarked on that. And some ex-LMS passenger tanks (at least) carried the old emblems later than that. Stanier tank 42478 had it in May 1965, and the preserved Fairburn 42085 was still carrying it when withdrawn in 1967. The usual advice applies - if you want to be accurate, get a dated photo of the engine you're modelling; if you're using modeller's licence, then there are precedents to mix emblems up to 1967 at least.

[Stevo]

My dad says that he remembers seeing plenty of private owner wagons (including private owner china clay wagons) in the Cockshute sidings (Stoke) in the early 60s

[Fat Controller]

My dad says that he remembers seeing plenty of private owner wagons (including private owner china clay wagons) in the Cockshute sidings (Stoke) in the early 60s

There were certainly private-owner coal wagons in the Potteries into the 1980s- they were door-less 21t tipplers, used for workings from Hem Heath, Florence and Chatterly-Whitfield to Meaford power-station (and possibly elsewhere). They had been built prior to WW2 for the local electricity generating authority, which became part of the CEGB. Here's a link to some photos:-

http://gallery6801.fotopic.net/c1428514.html

There may have been some private-owner clay wagons in the area, operated by English China Clays, Lovering Pochin, or WBB- I can't say that I've ever seen photos of them.

The other possibility for the Stoke area might be private-owner sand wagons from Oakamoor to St Helens, but these would have probably run via the Churnet Valley line towards Macclesfield and not passed via Cockshute.

The one thing all these wagons had in common was that they were types not covered by the wartime pooling arrangements, which specifically covered side-door fitted mineral wagons and tank wagons. The idea was to reduce the amount of empty running of these two types, thus increasing wagon utilisation. This in turn was required by the reduction in coastal shipping once hostilities commenced.

[Pennine MC]

Or they might just have been BR-owned absorbed stock with remnants of their liveries showing

[Fat Controller]

Or they might just have been BR-owned absorbed stock with remnants of their liveries showing

They could also be a product of the Potteries' time-warp, where everything seems to be about thirty years behind- I've just come back from a family funeral in Longton, which was like stepping into the 1980s, so the 1960s could have been like pre-war elsewhere.....

[DerekEm8]

Mark,

 

A good guide to mineral wagons is 'The 4mm Coal Wagon - A step by step Guide' By John Hayes

 

A good number of pre-war P.O. wagons photographs in BR days quite few in the mid to late 50s.

 

One photo (noted as mid to late 50s) shows a large yard(Toton ?) where the split between woden bodied and steel wagons is

 

about 50/50

 

Similarly The 4mm Wagon by Geoff Kent (3 parts) covers P.O wagons, Big 4 and early BR wagons.

 

HTH