Fat Controller

Coal would have been carried by the merchant's own lorries- those of my acquaintance in late 1960s/early 1970s Llanelli were just phasing out their ex-Army Bedford O series and replacing them with Bedford TKs. Unless you're modelling a Sundries depot, then your BR lorries would have been TK rigid flatbeds or tractors with flatbed trailers, or possibly one of the LAD-cabbed Leyland/Albion. Some of these are to be found in the Oxford or Base Toys ranges. There were a few Seddons and Guys, but these went over to Freightliner. Exceptionally, you might have a van or van trailer, but these were more normally confined to Sundries and Parcels depots For cranes- I'm pretty certain that Hafod yard in Swansea (which was a Full Loads terminal) had an 'Iron Fairey' crane, a representation of which was available from Matchbox. There were also some cable-operated (rather than hydraulic) forklifts, used for containers and for the aluminium slab traffic. Service vehicles were Bedford HA or Escort vans (even Area Managers used these), with assorted TKs, Ford D series and British Leylands for heavier stuff.

Paul Bartlett's latest addition to his site includes some photos of cranes and runners, which has some wagons with very similar underframes:- http://gallery6801.fotopic.net/p63185777.html

That type of document has always fascinated me- as kids, we used to find them lying around the yard at back of my great-aunts. You avoided the ones with black or brown smears on them.... We use a similar format for the Works Trains in the Channel Tunnel even now. Obviously, there's no ballast (at least in the tunnel itself), but on a works night like tonight, there'll be two trains, each hauled by a pair of Krupps, covering what is effectively a thirty-mile possession. Each train would be given a 4-digit identity, starting with 8, and a list is published of the train formation. This will indicate what is in each section of train, where it will be left (each section is powered by a 4-wheel Schoma diesel)and the points between which it will be working. The list includes things like the radio/mobile phone numbers for all the parties involved, details of reliefs provided etc. There are days, however, when it goes horribly wrong- on one occasion, a pair of Krupp drivers went to their loco, did the short brake test and proceeded into the tunnel. Only when they arrived did they realise that their locos had only been stabled in front of the train, and not coupled to it- the Krupps had been used as shunters by the afternoon shift, and just parked up at the end...

From what I recollect of unloading ex-BR parcels vans and trailers at various jobs from the mid-1970s onwards, many of them had translucent areas in their roofs to give some additional light. Some were greyish-white, others were a sort of honey colour.

That sounds like the prototype that Paul Wade modelled.

Very nice, Merfyn- looking at the photo of your model, I can understand the comment in the recent book on Southern Region road vehicles about the handling characteristics when running without a trailer. There's a lot of lorry forward of the front axle. My father used to run a Bantam tipper and a Bedford 'O' in the early 1960s, but was persuaded to replace them with a Standard Atlas pick-up and a BMC FG, which were real dogs.

An odd underfame- looks like a former parcels van or similar to me. There was another one of these on a Grampus underframe, which Paul Wade modelled on Tonbridge West yard.

The first one looks like Burgate in Canterbury, taken from the Sun St end- the cathedral would be behind the buildings on the left. This area surprisingly survived the Baedecker raids, which destroyed a lot of the centre to the west and south of Burgate.

Are these castings, or are they built up in very thin layers as a sort of 3D printing? The complex shapes come out well. The surface finish looks a bit rough, but that should be fairly easy to fettle up with a bit of fine wet and dry paper. I'd certainly be interested to learn more about the process, including practical aspects like costs.

I wonder how much that had to do with the change of owner/lessor, rather that of the freight company hauling them? The rake I saw this week were looking very grimy.

That would be a typical Great Western rebuild, retaining little beyond the number from the original....When was the photo taken- we've got more snow down here than that!

There are Ford and Austin vehicles of similar vintage to your Bedford in the Pocketbond range. Base Toys do a Karrier Bantam, though that may be a bit modern.

Why was the section from Llandeilo Junction through Gowerton singled? In the 1970s, it was plain line in double track- why was this replaced by a single track that required additional points and signals at either end?

The original SR milk tanks used a 12' two-axle underframe with 'shoe' suspension- their butter making qualities were such that the tanks were remounted on the more familiar three-axle underframe, whilst the old underframes were given wooden bodies and used for loco coal.

There are a couple of quite severe speed restrictions, I believe, on the former lifting bridges at Carmarthen and Briton Ferry, whilst there is a restriction on the south > west curve at Landore as well if the train goes via Swansea High St. If the maximum speed is only 60 mph, it wouldn't take much to drop the average to 46 mph. The HST set also has slower acceleration from stops than DMUs, as anyone leaving Paddington will testify- each stop would add about 5 minutes to the time. The timings may also have some slack built in to cope with sailing times. The diagrams in R H Clark's 'A Historical Survey of Selected Great Western Stations- Volume 2' shows a maximum of four platform faces at the peak of development. The associated signalling plan for Fishguard and Goodwick, dated 1910, shows the line towards Clarbeston Road as being single- as this was at the height of the port's activities, I would suggest that this indicates that the line was always single track. A well-operated single track line can carry appreciable levels of traffic, especially if departures are 'flighted' as they would be in a situation like this- a pair, or more, of trains might leave soon after the arrival of a boat, with the interval between them being the time taken to clear the single line. If there was an intermediate block post, or special operating arrangements, then it would be even less- the best I've seen was a single track line in one of the Baltic States which managed 40 daily departures in each direction over a lengthy single track section, whilst I would expect to see 24 or more trains during an overnight shift at work with planned SLW.

I think everything west of Swansea is 60 mph max these days- I remember how scary it used to be when DMU drivers used to try making up time down Cockett Bank, followed by a very hard brake application for Gowerton. The SWML west of Cardiff is largely 90 mph, with a few bits of 100 mph Newport is at 158.50 miles from Paddington (original mileage via Gloucester), whilst Fishguard Harbour is at 288.27, which gives a mileage of just shy of 130. The Fishguard line was single track from Clarbeston Road to Goodwick, though with the formation built to double track standards. Between Letterson and Clynderwen, there was another longer route via Puncheston and Rosebush, which the RAF used to perfect their railway demolition techniques during WW2. Part still survives at the western end, serving the now-defunct Trecwn Naval Stores Depot. The GWR once had great hopes for Fishguard, even planning a 'cut-off' from the Swansea District Line at Llangennech to near Carmarthen- they had hoped that transatlantic liners bound for Liverpool would off-load their mail at Fishguard, thereby saving a day. It proved to be less than practical, as the liners had to unload into tenders (as they did at Plymouth), but the sea was a little rough at times.....

Sounds about right, Phil- modern suspensions are tuned according to the anticipated service speeds. Someone's taken atuning fork to the 395s recently, as they were quite lively at line speed on CTRL when introduced- Colin Boocock, who's done some work on vehicle riding at speed, commented about it in Modern Railways. I wonder if modern passenger stock has an equivalent to the button in some modern cars which alters suspension tuning? Would it have two positions, marked ' Let them read in Comfort' and 'Scare them s***less'?

Churn traffic had largely disappeared from the trunk flows by the mid-1950s, judging by photos I've seen, though road collections from farms were still using them in the late 1960s. Certainly the farm we used to get our potatoes from in the late 1960s (on the Gower)installed a breeze-block and sleeper platform at the end of their track about then to tranship them from farm trailer to MMB lorry. The tank wagon flows were quite large- I remember the one from Whitland would sometimes have twenty wagons, from four different creameries. Photos of West Country ones that I've seen are of similar size. WR ones always seemed to rate an express loco- Castles or Counties in steam days, later Warships or Westerns.

Milk trains were classed as 'parcels' trains, running under Class 3 reporting numbers, I believe. I agree about the external condition- the interiors were washed and steam-cleaned after every trip, but the exteriors got filthier (and smellier) as time passed. I can't say I was hugely impressed when I saw the arrangements at Vauxhall, either, with the pipes trailing across the platform- that would have been post-steam, with either a Warship or a Class 74 when I saw it. A tip here for anyone wanting to weather new brick or stonework to match the existing- paint it with milk that is 'on the turn'. Do this last thing on a Friday afternoon, then go away for the weekend.... We did it to blend in a new gauging station in a National Park.

The van may have started out in one position on the train, but there were several portions added en-route (at Seaton Jct and Templecombe at least) so it would be towards the front by the time it arrived in London. As the train was fully fitted, the position of the van wasn't too important- if it was towards the front, then it just meant the guard would have farther to walk if he had to put down detonators to protect the rear of the train.

I always knew that finish as 'scrumbled'- used to give the effect of wood grain on things like interior doors and staircases. It was probably quite convincing until someone invented the 100W bulb....My Uncle bill used to be a dab hand at it.

The ones you saw between Newport and Cardiff would have been the short ones with the swinging roofs, I suspect. There have been NACCO ones working from various locations in S E France to Dow-Corning at Cadoxton for a couple of decades. Like Jon, I've done these using Jouef grain wagon bodies, cut in half and a new section spliced in the middle. The difficult bits are the swinging cover and the hopper assemblies below the wagon. For the longer 'Grainflow' and Scottish Malt Distillers wagons, I used the bogie cereal hopper from Electrotren (which seems to have disappeared), with the swinging hood replaced by individual hatch covers and new hopper bottoms. The 'plastic surgery' involved here is much less involved. I wouldn't know about the possibilities of using US prototypes as donors- I used the Jouef ones because I found a stack of bodies on a stall at an exhibition.

It seemed to be general practice, at least in South Wales, that the smaller depots (STJ/EJ/MG) only had shunters allocated to them, with main-line types allocated to the principal depot of the Division (Canton or Landore). Despite this, each of the smaller depots, and the various stabling points, seemed to have a core of main-line locos unofficially 'allocated' to them, which only returned to the main depot for major exams.

Rich, If you go back to the main blog, look on the second page- you'll find an entry on wagons which has about ten comments posted. There's a list of wagon numbers and some other comments there. Brian

The conversions ranged from the type you've modelled, through ones with sides removed, to ones with sides and floor missing (though retaining the ends). All the ones we looked at at Tees Yard were on cast bogies, as these were capable of 60 mph rather than 50. In latter years, many received air-pipes, as there was a regular flow to Avonmouth or Severn Beach from Boulby.