Wright writes.....

[Brian Kirby]

Very good. So they were cut using a fret saw?

 

I fear there may be arguments about who opens and closes the doors...!

 

Andy

 

Thank you, and thanks everyone who responded. Removing the doors is easy with this type, since there's no solid upper frame, so just flex the door backwards and forwards, then it will snap off leaving a clean straight break. I've been on strike for three days over this, but the body is now in BR maroon. I'll try luggage van double doors next.     BK

[thegreenhowards]

I think that your model is in fact a D.369 SLST with 12 berths and a toilet at both ends. The D.368 SLSTP had 11 berths and an attendants compartment at one end and 2 toilets at the other end. The photo in Harris is misidentified.

 

There are several Thompson sleeper photos on Robert Carroll's Flickr site including a couple of underframe shots albeit a SLF. There are 3x D.369 photos in the Christmas 2007 issue of Modelrail.

 

Bogie centres according to the diagram are 47ft.

 

Thanks for the tip on the Christmas 2007 issue of Model Rail. I tracked down a copy on eBay and it arrived this morning. The pictures are very useful giving me underframe and some roof detail. As a bonus, there are also photos of the 1957 Mk 1 prototypes for which I have some Southern Pride kits which I've just started.

[jrg1]

This is terrific stuff, Robert. Thanks for posting. 

 

I've just been commissioned by Bachmann Times to produce a series of articles on 'improving' and personalising some of the firm's products. What you're doing is taking the process a considerable amount further, though it's fully in the spirit of the thing. 

 

This is the sort of thing I'll be producing.

 

Bachmann A2 as supplied.jpg

 

A Bachmann A2 as supplied.

 

Bachmann A2 as modified.jpg

 

Turned into something like this. Granted, this is a different starting-point model, but it shows how 'realistic' a basic RTR loco can be made to appear (especially if Tom Foster weathers it). I've yet to change the shed plate. 

 

Bachmann D11 1 as supplied.jpg

 

Or the fine-looking D11 as supplied.

 

Bachmann D11 1 as modified.jpg

 

Turned into something really grotty by me. I just renumbered/renamed it, added wiggly pipes and weathered it. 

 

I think what you're doing is a fair bit more advanced than what I'm contemplating. My remit is to encourage the inexperienced/beginner to tackle something for themselves, personalising what they've got into something unique. They might, then, move on to something more complex, the like of which you're making. 

 

Taking a basically-accurate RTR loco as a starting point has great merit in my opinion. Almost without exception, the chassis is bound to run well and the base-level of detail is quite excellent now. I know there'll be those who'll bleat about the possibility of 'messing it up', and, with today's rising prices I can understand a certain reluctance. However, there are still older and cheaper RTR items to be obtain on the SH market on which to practise skills. 

 

After all, as I've stated on countless occasions, one cannot beat the sense of satisfaction at having created something unique and personal by oneself. Just like you're doing.

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

The weathering is just first class-filthy, but in a prototypical way that I remember, and difficult to reproduce on a model.  Can you point me to a relevant article for these two models, or post a description-I would like to weather Happy Knight similar to Velocity

[New Haven Neil]

As someone having somewhat reduced dexterity nowadays due to a small tremor as well as eyesight past its best that was never very good to begin with, weathering RTR is about as far as I go nowadays.

 

I posted this elsewhere recently, it was a so called weathered one which appeared to consist of the wheels being sprayed with dog muck brown, so I had to cover that up!  I should have renumbered it first of course - d'oh.

 

Edited January 20, 2017 by New Haven Neil

[New Haven Neil]

Must do something about that coal!

[glo41f]

I have just been reading an old Modellers Backtrack which I found amongst an old deceased friend's modelling papers. The article that drew my attention was one about freight trains and the author upbraided modellers generally for having too many vans in their trains and yards saying the bulk of traffic was conveyed in open wagons albeit with some sheeted over. The time span considered was pre war and I suppose he was right in that coal was still the staple traffic for the railways.  Now most of us who lurk here are modelling the 50's and 60's and my own observations at the time was that coal was very much in decline as a source of traffic. In fact in my home town of Ipswich there were very few wooden open wagons around as most of the opens were the all steel variety either BR or LNER built.  The big 21t hoppers were then coming into dominate the domestic coal traffic with special infrastucture to deal with the bottom discharge used.They carried coal and other materials such as foundry sand for the many engineering works in the town. However, by far the largest wagon in use were vans of various types carrying both raw materials and finished products. As modellers vans are a blessing too as we can imagine all many of produce carried in our models without having to remover loads etc.

 

Now we have one here who knows the freight system intimately and I would welcome any views on the right "balance" or mix of wagons for a 1950's era layout.

 

Martin Long

[LNER4479]

For my previous 1950's era layout, having read said MBT article and also the Don Rowlands Wagons book, I adopted the following, rough balance:

40% coal wagons

20% open wagons

20% vans

20% 'the rest', including specials.

 

Taking these in turn:

Rowlands quotes some staggering figures re total numbers of wagons thus: in 1948 BR inherited @ 1.25 million wagons, of which @500k were coal wagons, the vast majority of which were wooden-bodied. From 1953-1958, 253k steel bodied coal wagons were built (the ubiquitous 16tonners) to replace the wooden fleet.

Open wagons are quite different things from coal wagons. The BR standard range came in 1 plank (low), 3 plank (medium) and 5 plank (high) varieties. An almost limitless manner of things were transported in them; if weather sensitive, then sometimes sheeted

Vans I then used in roughly equal numbers to opens

'The rest' includes everyone's favourite tank wagons(!), bogie bolsters, etc, etc

 

Looking at pictures of the location and era I was modelling that felt about right; however, there are many regional variations and it will depend if the route one is modelling has recognised flows of coal (in particular) from nearby collieries.

 

Also bear in mind that, the national grid was only established in relatively recent times and, in the 1950's many factories relied on coal deliveries. Also local gas producing stations prior to piped gas from North sea and other sources.

 

No doubt others can correct me and add their own flavours.

[Izzy]

That's right, it was in the Mid City mall a bit further along Pitt Street before that. Very useful for odds and ends, tools, raw materials and so on but the purely model railway stock has diminished a lot in recent years. For British outline, Woodpecker Models in Pendle Hill is a good place to go (usual disclaimer).

 

That's good to know. Must say the Queen Vic building is nice to visit and look around - especially some of the cake/coffee establishments(!) - and we always try and do so at least once when staying in Sydney, but Hobbyco does rather remind me of the now defunct Modelzone, if perhaps slightly better, but as has been said - the prices - ouch! No wonder so much is ordered direct from the UK.  As our son now lives in Castle Hill the Pendle shop will get a visit next time we are in Aus.

 

Izzy

[Bernard Lamb]

 

 

Now we have one here who knows the freight system intimately and I would welcome any views on the right "balance" or mix of wagons for a 1950's era layout.

 

 

That must to some extent depend on the location.

My local branch station would have been around 90% fitted vans as the outward traffic was mainly paper and board from  John Dickinson and  a much smaller amount of watercress.

Inbound came coal, but during the 1950s this traffic declined rapidly due to the change to domestic heating. By this time most other goods had gone over to road.

Other stations would have been very different.

Bernard

[Tony Wright]

The weathering is just first class-filthy, but in a prototypical way that I remember, and difficult to reproduce on a model.  Can you point me to a relevant article for these two models, or post a description-I would like to weather Happy Knight similar to Velocity

Neither models have appeared in print yet, though they're scheduled to be in publications this year. 

 

Tom Foster weathered VELOCITY for me, and he has an article in the latest RM which could well have some weathering tips. I weathered 62661 entirely by dry-brushing enamels - dark brown/leather/various greys/matt black, etc. I've described my techniques in the past on many occasions (though I cannot remember in which issues of which mags). Most recently the methods have been in BRM - a year or two ago describing modifying 4Fs and last year a piece about a pair of Tangos. My methods have also appeared on a DVD. 

[LNER4479]

That must to some extent depend on the location.

My local branch station would have been around 90% fitted vans as the outward traffic was mainly paper and board from  John Dickinson and  a much smaller amount of watercress.

Inbound came coal, but during the 1950s this traffic declined rapidly due to the change to domestic heating. By this time most other goods had gone over to road.

Other stations would have been very different.

Bernard

Thanks for the prompt, as I meant to add a comment on that.

 

Traffic did decline steadily post war (in fact it had been generally declining pre-war with the slump / depression) but a specific factor was the effect of the 1955 national rail strike (11 consecutive days, I believe). The downward graph has a discontinuous leap down at that point. So traffic in the earlier 1950's was greater than the late 1950's. The end of the 'common carrier' principle in 1962 further eroded traffic HOWEVER the Beeching report in 1963 reports the latest revenue figures at the time as freight (including parcels/mail) still being twice passenger receipts even then. So imagine what it was like a decade earlier.

Edited January 20, 2017 by LNER4479

[Tony Wright]

As someone having somewhat reduced dexterity nowadays due to a small tremor as well as eyesight past its best that was never very good to begin with, weathering RTR is about as far as I go nowadays.

 

I posted this elsewhere recently, it was a so called weathered one which appeared to consist of the wheels being sprayed with dog muck brown, so I had to cover that up!  I should have renumbered it first of course - d'oh.

 

P1060993-2.jpg

What splendid weathering - a total and most realistic transformation of something which originally appeared to have just been squirted with fluid canine faecal matter in the lower regions!

 

I know many who have no reduced dexterity and no eyesight issues who'd be delighted with it. Some wouldn't even try!

[Tony Wright]

Tony, that's a very interesting question. Building the K's body was hard work even without the modifications to make it fit the Bachmann chassis (essentially making the firebox wider). The disaster with the Nitromors caused me to use a few words that are not allowed on RMweb, but that part was probably my own fault. So, as a well-known actor once said, I didn't enjoy the performing but I did enjoy having performed. It's certainly nice to be able to say "I made that", but it's also nice to be able to allocate five different locos to workings on the layout.

 

So yes, the kit gives me satisfaction as a modeller but in a completely different way from the RTR ones (all of which are renumbered and renamed of course, so there is a little bit of me in them), which give me satisfaction as an operator. I can in all honesty say that I would never have built five Granges (any more than I would have built thirteen Halls come to that) so my operating aspirations would have been much more limited.

 

I think that's a roundabout way of saying "I don't know" to your question, as the answer is different in different contexts.

 

Here's another example of my ambivalence. Years ago I detailed, repainted and renamed a Mainline Warship. I also fitted an extra motor bogie to improve its performance. However, when the improved Bachmann model came along I had no qualms about buying one and getting rid of the converted Mainline loco.

 

Does all that make sense?

Just about everything I've seen posted by you, John, makes sense. Perfect sense.

 

I suppose I'm different in that I've gone the other way, mainly; finding new homes for my modified RTR locos because I'm pompous enough to only run those I've made when friends visit. 

[Headstock]

For my previous 1950's era layout, having read said MBT article and also the Don Rowlands Wagons book, I adopted the following, rough balance:

40% coal wagons

20% open wagons

20% vans

20% 'the rest', including specials.

 

Taking these in turn:

Rowlands quotes some staggering figures re total numbers of wagons thus: in 1948 BR inherited @ 1.25 million wagons, of which @500k were coal wagons, the vast majority of which were wooden-bodied. From 1953-1958, 253k steel bodied coal wagons were built (the ubiquitous 16tonners) to replace the wooden fleet.

Open wagons are quite different things from coal wagons. The BR standard range came in 1 plank (low), 3 plank (medium) and 5 plank (high) varieties. An almost limitless manner of things were transported in them; if weather sensitive, then sometimes sheeted

Vans I then used in roughly equal numbers to opens

'The rest' includes everyone's favourite tank wagons(!), bogie bolsters, etc, etc

 

Looking at pictures of the location and era I was modelling that felt about right; however, there are many regional variations and it will depend if the route one is modelling has recognised flows of coal (in particular) from nearby collieries.

 

Also bear in mind that, the national grid was only established in relatively recent times and, in the 1950's many factories relied on coal deliveries. Also local gas producing stations prior to piped gas from North sea and other sources.

 

No doubt others can correct me and add their own flavours.

 

Good afternoon,

 

doesn't the 500K figure exclude the coal wagons built by the big four? The LNER had the biggest fleet and the LMS built around 21,000 in the early 1930's to the basic RCH design. Then there were the steel bodied minerals built by the big four and those built for the MOT during the war. The figures I have at nationalization (excluding mineral wagons) is that half the fleet consisted of open merchandise wagons and the remainder everything else including vans. Indeed, open wagons continued to outnumber vans for most of the fifties but in declining proportions.

 

One of the problems with model railways is that it is desirable to model different types of freight traffic. As an example, the inclusion of a Fish train may be representational, however, it may skew the proportions of fitted vans running on a layout against opens or minerals. Using LSGC as an example, we should be running about twelve coal trains for every single fish train to keep the stock in proportion. The most obvious failings with LSGC from a freight point of view is that there are too many fitted vans, not enough GM opens and far too few runners. That said we have at least not fallen into the trap of the specialized wagons becoming too prominent. There is a fair representation of big four and BR GM opens at least, including representations of the 54,000 dia 1666 built by the LMS . The more esoteric types that dominate the RTR catalogs and many a layout are more of a minority sport.

[The Johnster]

Regarding proportionate numbers of wagons, I do not figure mineral traffic in the equation, nor would I block specialist traffic of any sort, easy for me to say because I model an imaginary South Wales blt and do not have to deal with domestic coal traffic; those people in the village not entitled to concession coal would have picked it up at the colliery in the same way as concessioneers.  So, the only freight is to the goods siding and serviced by the daily pickup, and consists of general merchandise wagons.  As the period is 1948-60 I try to generalise on what things would have been like about half way through that period, 1954.

 

As a very general principle, I ultimately intend to have about 20 general merchandise vehicles, of which 10 should be vans and 10 opens of various sorts, but with a majority of 5-plank sized.  Further breakdowns are that about half of each type should be a big 4 vehicles, with one of each big 4 in it's postwar big 4 livery.  So far there are 9 vehicles, of which only 2 are opens, and of which one 'Parto' van is in GW livery and one open is in LMS, both heavily weathered.  Future purchases therefore need to concentrate on opens, and my immediate shortage is of BR standard opens.  I think this sounds about right if you consider that half of the non-mineral wagon fleet at nationalisation were opens and 'the rest', already mostly vans, were the other half.  The proportion of vans had been rising steadily since the turn of the century and the post-nationalisation cull of pre-grouping vehicles made major inroads into the open fleet; half opens half vans on a small blt in 1954 sounds reasonable!

 

Another breakdown is regarding fitted and unfitted (for the purpose of this discussion we will include piped through vehicles as fitted, and in any case I suspect that only applies to brakevans in my fleet), and the associated division of XP or not.  My feeling is that 75% of the vans should be fitted, and 75% of the opens should be unfitted; it would have made no actual difference to the daily pickup which would have run as a Class K branch goods with the vacuum pipes not connected and instanter couplings in the long position anyway, so there is no need to form trains with fitted heads.

 

Loads are delightfully easy in the case of covered vans, of course, only existing in my imagination backed up by piles of sacks or crates on the loading dock, but opens are another matter!  Some of course can simply be sheeted over, perhaps with a lump in the middle to infer the presence of some wonderful but hidden item, and some just with the sheet, maybe with a puddle of water in the middle.  Of course it is perfectly legitimate to run some empty, but my feeling is that with the geography of a mining village at the top end of a valley the general flow is going to be loaded in empty out, so the trains should reflect this.  This puts a bit of a limit on the number of sheeted vehicles I can reasonably get away with, and ideally they need to be 'unloaded', the sheets taken off and stowed on the floor of the wagon (that's not gonna happen!). I have an imaginary sawmill down the valley which provides a reason for some opens to arrive loaded with planks only to depart with the returning train, but it would never be more than 3 a day I'd have thought!

 

There will be no specialist wagons, although I may stretch a point for 'fruit' or 'fish' vans pressed into general merchandise service.  I cannot justify the likes of lowmacs, bogie bolsters, or tank wagons, and even my coal trains will have no call for hoppers.  The coal train is in fact a separate working, and, with the pit down the valley about a quarter mile or so, only appears to run around.  The train arrives, the loco runs around and a shunt is performed to put the brake van on the right end, and it departs. no coal wagon visits the goods siding or the loading dock.  This may happen twice a day, one load for the coking ovens at Beddau, and one for export from Barry or Cardiff.  

 

I have 2 brakevans, both GW toads, one fitted or piped, in bauxite livery, and one unfitted in grey livery.  There is in fact no need for more, one for the coal working and one for the pickup, but I will be investing in at least one of the new separately handrailed Hornbys when they hit the shops.  I hanker for a BR standard or an LMS one, but it would be pretty unlikely on a remote valleys branch with RU vans dedicated to it, and is beyond my understanding of how far Rule 1 can be stretched.

[LNER4479]

Good afternoon,

 

doesn't the 500K figure exclude the coal wagons built by the big four? The LNER had the biggest fleet and the LMS built around 21,000 in the early 1930's to the basic RCH design. Then there were the steel bodied minerals built by the big four and those built for the MOT during the war. The figures I have at nationalization (excluding mineral wagons) is that half the fleet consisted of open merchandise wagons and the remainder everything else including vans. Indeed, open wagons continued to outnumber vans for most of the fifties but in declining proportions.

Yes, indeed it does. Now that I'm home, I can check the exact wording from the Don Rowland book and I realise I've actually been misreading it all these years. The PO mineral fleet (quoted as 544,694 wagons) was in addition to the 1,279,543 wagons comprising the former 'big four' fleet (I'd previously thought that figure was part of the 1.25mill). Cripes! In the chapter on mineral wagons, he highlights that some 253,500 of the former PO fleet were fitted with grease axleboxes and thus prioritised for early withdrawal. This is what the build of steel bodied minerals was intended to do - the build of the ubiquitous diag. 1/108 16 tonners eventually ran to 206444 examples.

 

I agree with your comments re the esoteric wagon types.

[The Stationmaster]

The proportion of vans in general goods use steadily increased throughout the BR era and this was matched by a decline in the use of Medium (5 plank) open wagons for general goods traffic.  By the mid 1960s in many places Vanfits were by far the preponderant type for other than coal class traffic although it mainline running some were definitely doing duty as fitted head.  More specialised wagons such as Lows and Conflats depended more or less entirely on specialised flows or occasional traffic at the general depots that remained while steel carriers (various) were either very much confined to specialist terminals and areas occasional flows to the more general terminals.

 

In the final few years before it was closed to freight c.1965 the only types of vehicle usually seen in freight working on my local branchline were 16T Mins carrying coal and Vanfits for smalls traffic with occasional movements of continental ferry wagons coming in with loads for a local importer.  In fact the only picture I ever took of freight vehicle at our local station c.1961 shows only foreign ferry vans and 16T Mins.  The next most common type were probably Medium Opens but they were still pretty rare, and Conflats - which were very rare.r

 

The key thing with any freight working, but especially so on branchlines, is to relate vehicle types to traffic and date remembering that some very specific flows could occur which were otherwise completely out of the ordinary leading to the appearance of wagons which wouldn't normally be expected.  The other thing to remember about the 1960s is that it was the decade of ever more freight concentration schemes which meant fewer wagons anyway and the complete disappearance of local collection & delivery road services fro numerous stations which meant they no longer received goods smalls (consignments of less than 1 ton) which in turn meant the variety of wagon types were affected.  This process had started in the 1930s in some places but really got underway in the mid-late 1950s becoming virtually universal by the mid 1960s.  Thus any Vanfits seen at local stations would inevitably be for full loads traffic and equally would be for particular flows some of which were very seasonal in nature.  The most common traffic to reman at stations dealing only with full loads was coal although specific local industries could create specialist flows.

[Headstock]

 

  Future purchases therefore need to concentrate on opens, and my immediate shortage is of BR standard opens.  I think this sounds about right if you consider that half of the non-mineral wagon fleet at nationalisation were opens and 'the rest', already mostly vans, were the other half. 

 

 

 

Good evening The Johnster, I'm sorry I don't know your name.

 

It is worth pointing out that 'The rest' as you mention were not mostly vans. About one-half of the remaining total were vans, for example, the LMS built two GM opens for every van that they had produced up until nationalization.

 

My own thoughts on your stock breakdown in 1954 would be that it would be more bias to ex-GWR designs over individual big four companies, with ex LMS predominating and then a couple of BR designs chucked in for good measure. I think that opens would outnumber vans and unfitted would outnumber fitted. Only a suggestion, others may care to comment.

[The Johnster]

Regarding proportionate numbers of wagons, I do not figure mineral traffic in the equation, nor would I block specialist traffic of any sort, easy for me to say because I model an imaginary South Wales blt and do not have to deal with domestic coal traffic; those people in the village not entitled to concession coal would have picked it up at the colliery in the same way as concessioneers.  So, the only freight is to the goods siding and serviced by the daily pickup, and consists of general merchandise wagons.  As the period is 1948-60 I try to generalise on what things would have been like about half way through that period, 1954.

 

As a very general principle, I ultimately intend to have about 20 general merchandise vehicles, of which 10 should be vans and 10 opens of various sorts, but with a majority of 5-plank sized.  Further breakdowns are that about half of each type should be a big 4 vehicles, with one of each big 4 in it's postwar big 4 livery.  So far there are 9 vehicles, of which only 2 are opens, and of which one 'Parto' van is in GW livery and one open is in LMS, both heavily weathered.  Future purchases therefore need to concentrate on opens, and my immediate shortage is of BR standard opens.  I think this sounds about right if you consider that half of the non-mineral wagon fleet at nationalisation were opens and 'the rest', already mostly vans, were the other half.  The proportion of vans had been rising steadily since the turn of the century and the post-nationalisation cull of pre-grouping vehicles made major inroads into the open fleet; half opens half vans on a small blt in 1954 sounds reasonable!

 

Another breakdown is regarding fitted and unfitted (for the purpose of this discussion we will include piped through vehicles as fitted, and in any case I suspect that only applies to brakevans in my fleet), and the associated division of XP or not.  My feeling is that 75% of the vans should be fitted, and 75% of the opens should be unfitted; it would have made no actual difference to the daily pickup which would have run as a Class K branch goods with the vacuum pipes not connected and instanter couplings in the long position anyway, so there is no need to form trains with fitted heads.

 

Loads are delightfully easy in the case of covered vans, of course, only existing in my imagination backed up by piles of sacks or crates on the loading dock, but opens are another matter!  Some of course can simply be sheeted over, perhaps with a lump in the middle to infer the presence of some wonderful but hidden item, and some just with the sheet, maybe with a puddle of water in the middle.  Of course it is perfectly legitimate to run some empty, but my feeling is that with the geography of a mining village at the top end of a valley the general flow is going to be loaded in empty out, so the trains should reflect this.  This puts a bit of a limit on the number of sheeted vehicles I can reasonably get away with, and ideally they need to be 'unloaded', the sheets taken off and stowed on the floor of the wagon (that's not gonna happen!). I have an imaginary sawmill down the valley which provides a reason for some opens to arrive loaded with planks only to depart with the returning train, but it would never be more than 3 a day I'd have thought!

 

There will be no specialist wagons, although I may stretch a point for 'fruit' or 'fish' vans pressed into general merchandise service.  I cannot justify the likes of lowmacs, bogie bolsters, or tank wagons, and even my coal trains will have no call for hoppers.  The coal train is in fact a separate working, and, with the pit down the valley about a quarter mile or so, only appears to run around.  The train arrives, the loco runs around and a shunt is performed to put the brake van on the right end, and it departs. no coal wagon visits the goods siding or the loading dock.  This may happen twice a day, one load for the coking ovens at Beddau, and one for export from Barry or Cardiff.  

 

I have 2 brakevans, both GW toads, one fitted or piped, in bauxite livery, and one unfitted in grey livery.  There is in fact no need for more, one for the coal working and one for the pickup, but I will be investing in at least one of the new separately handrailed Hornbys when they hit the shops.  I hanker for a BR standard or an LMS one, but it would be pretty unlikely on a remote valleys branch with RU vans dedicated to it, and is beyond my understanding of how far Rule 1 can be stretched.

 

As to the coal train, 10 wagons of which 5 will be steel bodied 16 tonners and the remaining 5 will be wooden 7-plank.  Any fitted will be purely an accident of buying, such as not being able to resist one on offer.  I'm going to try to make all of the steel wagons a little different in terms of doors, buffers and so on.

[The Johnster]

Good evening The Johnster, I'm sorry I don't know your name.

 

It is worth pointing out that 'The rest' as you mention were not mostly vans. About one-half of the remaining total were vans, for example, the LMS built two GM opens for every van that they had produced up until nationalization.

 

My own thoughts on your stock breakdown in 1954 would be that it would be more bias to ex-GWR designs over individual big four companies, with ex LMS predominating and then a couple of BR designs chucked in for good measure. I think that opens would outnumber vans and unfitted would outnumber fitted. Only a suggestion, others may care to comment.

You're probably right, Headstock, a GW bias would still be evident.  I might have to have 25 or 30 wagons before I get the proportions right, as if I really need an excuse to buy more...

 

Name's John, by the way.

Edited January 20, 2017 by The Johnster

[Headstock]

You're probably right, Headstock, a GW bias would still be evident.  I might have to have 25 or 30 wagons before I get the proportions right, as if I really need an excuse to buy more...

 

Name's John, by the way.

 

Evening John,

 

don't forget to buy tarpaulins, an ex-goods yard shunter of my acquaintance would always gripe to me about the lack of tarpaulins on model railways. Your project sounds most interesting by the way.

[Headstock]

Yes, indeed it does. Now that I'm home, I can check the exact wording from the Don Rowland book and I realise I've actually been misreading it all these years. The PO mineral fleet (quoted as 544,694 wagons) was in addition to the 1,279,543 wagons comprising the former 'big four' fleet (I'd previously thought that figure was part of the 1.25mill). Cripes! In the chapter on mineral wagons, he highlights that some 253,500 of the former PO fleet were fitted with grease axleboxes and thus prioritised for early withdrawal. This is what the build of steel bodied minerals was intended to do - the build of the ubiquitous diag. 1/108 16 tonners eventually ran to 206444 examples.

 

I agree with your comments re the esoteric wagon types.

 

Many thanks,

 

I have heard many a tail of smoke and flames belching from those pesky grease axle boxes, and many a wagon being ditched en route.

[Mallard60022]

Evening John,

 

don't forget to buy tarpaulins, an ex-goods yard shunter of my acquaintance would always gripe to me about the lack of tarpaulins on model railways. Your project sounds most interesting by the way.

I hate being an ar$e but I think they were 'sheets'.

P. Illowcase

[Headstock]

I hate being an ar$e but I think they were 'sheets'.

P. Illowcase

 

Sheets are fine with me.

[Theakerr]

I would suggest that if one takes the mid 50's as a benchmark time, it is almost impossible to state what a typical train might consist of.  There are just so many variables, location, time of year, type of train. direction of train and wagon availability.  For example if I take the local Grimsby to Louth pickup going out in the morning in late fall it would be biased towards coal wagons, both steel and wood, and open wagons because the coal merchants would be building up there stock as a run in to winter and the open wagons would be for the sugar beet.  However, in the late winter the same train might be biased towards vans bringing in animal food stocks and soil products for the new planting.