wagonman

3 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Free orthochromatic spectacles with every purchase...

Joking aside, they wouldn't actually work. Assuming they were intended to render a scene in orthochromatic monochrome, looking at the model you would see bands that were light-dark-light whereas the Gloucester photo is dark-light-dark. QED!

Another observation: the S Skinner, Melksham, wagon dates from 1932 when it was acquired secondhand from Gloucester. In its previous life it was probably used in south Wales as it has the two commode handles on the end door, a feature of wagons in that area. The official photo lacks an information board, but in my book I came to the conclusion the livery was an inversion of that used by James Skinner and depicted on the model. My reasoning was that in 1932 a lot of photographers were still using orthochromatic plates which would record red as a dark tone and green as a light one – the photo shows the middle two planks noticeably paler than the top and bottom ones, ergo the livery was red with a green band. I doubt there's anybody around who can remember the original, and unless there's some definitive notice buried deep in the Gloucester records, who cares?

Richard

It's probably worth pointing out that the 1907 RCH specs weren't exactly new – more a consolidation of existing best practice so there would have been quite a few wagons built to near enough the 1907 standard from the early 1900s.

Apropos Renwick, Wilton & Co 521, it is a Gloucester built wagon, according to their records one of two 12-tonners supplied in January 1909 and paid for in cash. This is a puzzle because there is what looks suspiciously like a Gloucester owners' plate on the solebar!

On 19/03/2023 at 12:45, Dungrange said:

 

It is possibly unrealistic to expect Rapido to produce versions with both 5 and 9 leaf springs and if 5 leaf springs were more common in their later life, I can see why they made that choice.

 

 

The artwork does say that it is 'pre-production and subject to change', so this is perhaps something that @rapidoandy or @RapidoLinny have already picked up on and it may be correct in the final production models.

 

 

This is perhaps why Rapido haven't given details of when the livery was current.  We know that there was a wagon that carried this livery (from that photograph), but we don't know with certainty when it carried that livery and possibly Rapido don't either.  It's maybe as well to give us no information, than incorrect information.

 

 

I suppose that this also highlights the problem that manufacturer's face when modelling the distant past.  Were all of Annesley's wagon fleet built by Eastwood & Co of Chesterfield?  It appears that it they had a fairly large fleet, so it's conceivable that some were built by other builders and it is therefore possible that some may have been built by Charles Roberts.  If that were the case, then it is possible that the general livery is correct, but the number is not correct for a Charles Roberts wagon.  That could be solved by renumbering, but to what?  I'm guessing that there is little details on the Annesley wagon fleet beyond a couple of photographs.

I suspect most/many of the Annesley wagons would have been registered by the Midland in which case the answer is lying in wait for anyone who cares to spend a few days at Kew.

6 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

But remember that this is not a GW-built wagon, or one built to GW order, but a wagon on hire to the GW from Ince. In the 19th century it was not unusual for the railway companies to hire mineral wagons from the trade - the Midland was doing so into the mid-1880s - these GW and GC hires were late examples of the practice. The GW had very few mineral wagons of its own, excepting loco coal wagons, as a matter of policy; in the GC case, I imagine as a matter of necessity - lack of capital to build its own. There have been some articles on GW hired wagons in Pannier, but I don't have them. I think @wagonman can give chapter and verse.

My records are far from complete...

Richard

On 15/03/2023 at 09:14, Morello Cherry said:

 

 

 

Further on there are references to cattle (that need to be milked) being milked. But... I am wondering how many journeys in the UK would be long enough for that.

 

 

 

 

The GWR General Appendix (and presumably all the other railways' GAs too ) have detailed instructions for the care of animals in transit – feeding, watering, and milking where necessary, so they obviously assume that some journeys would be long enough.

They don't seem to say anything about loading head to tail, or any other way, but where you have a full load of horned cattle it does seem to make sense – especially as they may not know from which side of the vehicle the animals would be detrained.

5 hours ago, corneliuslundie said:

No, there definitely were wagons delivered during the Second World War, and not just non-pool ones. I'll have to go through my Turton volumes and see if I can find any.

Jonathan

Indeed there were wagons ordered and built during the war, and as Jonathan said they went straight into the pool. I have a notion that the owners were still responsible for repairs, etc.. They would often have acknowledged their ownership by having the name written in small letters in the bottom left hand corner – presumably the RCH number takers still needed an identity. The pool effectively carried on after the war (how do you sort out half a million wagons?) until nationalisation and compensation by the BTC. Pooled wagons weren't taken over until the early '50s.

Richard

20 hours ago, Schooner said:

 

It's sickening to tick off each technique from the mainstream politics playbook. Despicable Bingo. My faith in our institutions pulling through, as they have many times before, remains...but 'k me it's going to be a close-run thing.

 

 

 

I think much of the damage inflicted since 1980 is now pretty much irreversible. Take housing for instance – it's going to take time, a lot of money, and even more nerve to restore a functioning housing market/social housing supply. And that's just one of the problems...

I don't see the Prussian army coming to our aid this time.

On 08/03/2023 at 07:44, Hroth said:

 

Oi Bert! Stick her in reverse!  They've given us the wrong tablet again!!!

 

Ok, I realise that with a properly operated Tablet machine, it's highly unlikely for it to happen. But still...

 

Reminds me of a tale my father (RAF Bomber Command 1941-3) told me of a Bomb Aimer: "left, left, steady, oops back a bit"

7 hours ago, jamie92208 said:

Makes a change from packets of three from the barbers.

 

Jamie

"Something for the weekend, Sir?" That takes me back...to when I had enough hair to bother with barbers.

3 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

I'm just back from an interesting afternoon at the Basingstoke show where I hardly looked at any layouts since most of my time was spent chewing over Great Western 4-plank wagons and related matters with @Western Star and @Chrisbr. I did get some 0.35 mm drill bits from Squires, so am, finally, equipped to tackle the Brassmasters / @Andy Vincent Gloucester wagon... 

Time spent chewing over things with Graham is rarely wasted.

On 10/03/2023 at 12:57, WFPettigrew said:

 

My first reading of this was to wonder how you knew the presumably fox victim of the aforementioned hounds was called Hilary....

I should have edited out the first line of Stephen's post...

13 hours ago, Caley Jim said:

I thought it was the lefty lawyers that were stopping government policies working, not the wokerati? 🤔

 

Jim 

I think you'll find that the Lefty Lawyers are an integral part of the Wokerati, whether they eat tofu or not. #Snowflakes

14 hours ago, Ian Simpson said:

I'm afraid the Australian customs have now added a new question to the test:

    "Do you have a criminal record?"

This is a trick question. You really don't need one to get into the country any more.

Ah, the old ones are still the best ones...

2 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

There's that well-known photo of a pack of hounds pouring out of a Great Western hound van.

 

No. 2 Son returns from uni tomorrow so today's task is to remove all evidence of modelling and research activities from his room.

Ah yes, the end of Hilary...

It has what look like GWR oil axleboxes, though this could be incidental.

I read somewhere that cattle were usually loaded head to tail. Quite how they managed that I have no idea! Something to investigate perhaps...

Richard

The outboard Stephenson's gear should be fun!

1 hour ago, Annie said:

 

Hello Richard,  the R.B.Pullin wagon was made by a member of the creator group I belong to back in 2016 and as with other PO wagons he made they were based on photographic artwork of a GWR open wagon and a fairly basic wagon body mesh so they are essentially representational only and aren't accurate models.  I'm fairly sure he was getting his information from one of the readily available series of PO wagon books as the description notes for the wagon are fairly sparse and only mention that the prototype was built to 1907 RCH specs.  So i'm afraid I can't really help you with any more information than that.

 

Ah yes, that is from the Glos official photo of the last one built and is accurate, except that the '12 tons' should be on the right hand side. 

Why the f**k has it come out with a red screen?

On 04/03/2023 at 08:42, Annie said:

This is a follow up to me mentioning canals for Trainz earlier in the thread. the original 'Middleton for laptops' (TANE) was specially developed so that it would run on a low end laptop.  All the models used were made to have a minimal memory footprint and were simplified in order to achieve this.

A further development of this layout was 'Middleton with Canal' which with its simple approach to the subject makes a better job of it than some very busy and complex canal layouts for Trainz that I've seen.

For some strange reason I had a lot of difficulty with getting enough of a reasonable video clip to show you as the screen capture software kept on pausing and juddering.

 

 

 Annie, where did you get the R B Pullin wagons from? Ralph Bertrand Pullin was a Torquay based coal merchant active from around 1924 using a fleet of ten Gloucester built 12-ton wagons numbered 50-68 (even numbers only). They were built to 1907 design/dimensions. If you have other information about them I would love to hear it!

Richard

On 07/02/2023 at 19:53, stevel said:

that looks useful, thanks.

I'm not sure where I got this one it maybe from RM. It's of a K3 brake.

I think it's a Mike Morton Lloyd drawing published in, I think, the MRC.

19 minutes ago, Caley Jim said:

That seems to have been common practice in S Wales.

 

Jim

Except that in South Wales the sprung buffers were always at the door end...

Somebody who has consulted the Wagon Registers could probably tell us their condemnation dates – that person is not me – but I would assume they had all gone by the end of 1913.

The GWR was busy building replacements at that time.

On 04/03/2023 at 12:53, Compound2632 said:

 

On 04/03/2023 at 12:53, Compound2632 said:

But now it's the wagon on the right that has caught my notice - much shorter wheelbase, around 7 ft, and sides going straight up from the solebar, possibly sloping outwards - certainly the end does. Is this an iron-bodied hopper wagon? Is it a hang-over from the CMR? And what is the flap thing projecting below the solebar?

 

I have found a couple of photos with exCMR mineral wagons in them. You can see that the sides and ends are vertical. Unusually they have dumb buffers at the door end and sprung at the other.

Here's a couple at the foot of the Newquay Harbour tunnel

A few more in a familiar view of Fowey station this time loaded with barrels of clay.

Richard

On 04/03/2023 at 12:53, Compound2632 said:

 

Not in Joe Greaves' index nor HMRS photos. Setting aside the monstrosity that is that Dapol wagon qua wagon, 10 ft wheelbase steel underframe an' all, the signwriting shows such a lack of prototype literacy that i'm inclined to think the whole thing is a poor guess based on this very photo:

 

 

I'm not entirely convinced by the white outline to the black lettering, which could just be down to contrast between the darker and lighter areas, though I admit the lettering does look a bit skinny. The sides look about 3 ft deep from floor level, or maybe a bit less, and the layout of the lettering suggests four 8 in or 9 in planks; the end, though, might be three 11 in or 12 in planks, going by the position of the owner's plate and a hint of horizontal shadow lines. 

 

Cambrian kit C53 could be a good starting-point for a model in 4 mm scale. This wagon and the wagon next to it look to conform to the 1887 RCH specification. The thing that makes me suspect that there is another photo after all is that the Dapol model has Load 8 Tons on its side-rail; the wagon if anything might pass for and RCH 1923 specification 12-tonner. The tare given is more applicable to that, as is the commuted charge sign, which is way out of order for "before 1910".

 

But now it's the wagon on the right that has caught my notice - much shorter wheelbase, around 7 ft, and sides going straight up from the solebar, possibly sloping outwards - certainly the end does. Is this an iron-bodied hopper wagon? Is it a hang-over from the CMR? And what is the flap thing projecting below the solebar?

 

What is the load? It looks too diffuse to be coal - is it culm, which was local?

 

Paging @wagonman!

 

Sorry. Had my hearing aid turned off.

Sharp wagon no.43 was a 10-tonner registered by the GWR in August 1900 (their 846). I don't know the builder. The wagon on the far right is indeed an exCMR wagon. These had iron bodies on wooden frames and an end door for tipping. They had been built by the Swansea Wagon Co in 1875, and often turn up in pre-WW1 photos of mid Cornwall.

The photo is a detail from a commercial postcard of, I think, Bugle station in the Edwardian era. I'm pretty sure I have a copy somewhere but it's not been scanned. At the moment I'm up to my eyeballs in Devon coal merchants and have rather neglected the Cornwall end. Mañana.

As for the cargo, whatever they used to fire the kilns at he dries...

Richard