Cwmtwrch

I lived in various parts of London for several decades, and avoided the tube lines if reasonably possible [particularly Stratford on the Central line - I know too much history], especially if I wasn't in a hurry. Some of the routes I used to use are apparently no longer possible, although alternatives exist. That has happened in thirty years or so; I wonder whether naming the overground routes will "freeze" the current pattern and make it more difficult to change the system to meet evolving needs in the future?

I don't have the magazine in question, but: SR and BR wagon sheets were black. Special purpose sheets sometimes came in other colours. "Wartime" didn't end in 1945; the war was over, but the consequent shortages of materials lasted significantly longer, and the the black used for wagon sheets was probably one of them. I would be a bit surprised that an LNWR van was still around in the mid-1950s [not saying it's impossible, though]. The early BR emblem was applied from quite early in 1949, I think. Wagon sheets could last for up to five years before return to sheet works. There are photos of pre-nationalisation sheets in use in the very early 1950s. No idea what the colouring material was, if indeed there was any, but the boiled linseed oil used for waterproofing can be yellow-brown, reddish-brown or a red; the exact colour is variable and depends on its intended use. I don't know how it changes over time. The material to which it was applied was flax, hemp or Jute, often combined. I suspect, based on the above, that your dating is probably too late, and should possibly be 1949-50 at the latest, and the photo shows wartime, or immediately post-war, sheets still fit to use.

PIKO are a [formerly East] German firm, and the track gauge indicates that the stock is HO, which is 1:87 scale, so slightly smaller than OO [1:76] but uses the same track gauge. The problem here is that PIKO make both DC and AC motored locos. They do have a website [in English] at https://www.piko-shop.de/en/warengruppe/h0-scale-20.html, and Gaugemaster https://www.gaugemasterretail.com/model-railways/piko-brand5.html sell their trains in the UK [there may be others , I don't know], either of which will give you an indication of their power supply equipment. As for finding out whether the locos are AC or DC, I don't know. If you aren't sure, and you have a local model railway club they may be willing to help.

The stock is all German, mostly in 1950s/1960s liveries at a guess, although the electric loco may be earlier and the brown wagon seems to be in pre-WW2 markings. Definitely not Hornby. Track gauge would be helpful as there is no indication of scale.

I believe that the general storage of banana empties for Southampton was at Eastleigh, but temporary storage at Salisbury if Eastleigh was full is a possibility. Another is that these vans are an arrival off the WR via Westbury and just parked, waiting for the SR loco to take them onwards. https://www.bluebell-railway.co.uk/bluebell/pics/570027.html The liveries are not to be taken seriously. The article is interesting, some info I have never seen elsewhere, but consistent with other info, and some which is at best half-truths, despite the credit to "Fyffes and the Banana" (which I have a copy of). The page states the van was withdrawn in 1965, and a photo caption states that the Bluebell rebuilt it, so it doesn't help much. A photo when it was delivered to the Bluebell would hopefully be more informative😀.

It's possible someone did. I've found five shots in the Rail-Online set at Salisbury, including the one in your link, one of which includes B880763. Colour-Rail 25095 is accompaned by a second shot, 25096, probably taken at the same time, I think, which also includes B880763. There doesn't seem to be quite enough evidence to definitely link all these different shots to the same train, nor to link partials in one shot to complete views in another, but it's an interesting collection.

Between the periscopes and the Guard's door in the upper photo?

I've now found another at https://www.rail-online.co.uk/p783278790/h9567f169#h9567f169. LMS underframe, so LMS 2111 or BR 1/240, but cover plate rather than external steam pipe casing, which should mean it's been converted. Shame that the running number is not visible! So, two conversions in error or an indication that all BR ordered vans were converted [or all post-war vans]?

Only the B prefix was new, the numbers didn't change. The MoWT/MoT wagons inherited by BR amounted to approximately 55,200, those built for BR to just under 240,000, to which can be added about 9,100 built for the MoS to be used by the SNCF, which were purchased by BR in 1950, a total of a little over 300,000.

The body metalwork of wooden BR merchandise wagons was painted in whatever the relevant body colour was, grey or bauxite, confirmed by photographs. LNER 16T minerals and 21T hoppers seem to have been grey inside and out, also judging from photographs. The LMS carried out some experiments with batches of loco coal wagons with bodies in beryl steel, copper bearing steel [which might have been corten], and wrought iron, none of which were apparently pursued, although the wagons lasted well into BR days. Why paint the internal steelwork on wooden 13T but not on steel 16T? So far as I know, corten steel was not normally used at any time for railway wagons in the UK. It was used, I think for passenger cars(?) in the USA and found to be ineffective. It depends on the formation of an oxide surface layer which adheres, preventing further rusting, which works quite well on the outside of buildings. However, this rust layer is not impact resistant, so it would be destroyed by 16 tons of coal being dropped into the wagon, and is rendered ineffective by paint. It is also more expensive than mild steel, and would have been available in very limited quantities, if at all, during and immediately after WW2, when steel was rationed, with railway use definitely not the highest priority. While it is only slightly more difficult to weld than mild steel, using modern techniques, these may not have been available earlier, as the wide-spread use of welding in the UK only developed during the 1940s. As Becasse points out, photographs consistently show a very dark interior, which colour photos suggest was black originally. There is a black and white photograph of a brand new 16T mineral at the Battersea Wharf exhibition in 1952, built by BRCW, which has a matt interior finish, which could be dark grey, black, or dark brown. It has white wheel rims, which would have been for the exhibition, but there is no reason to suppose that the internal finish was anything but standard. Given the acid nature of wet coal, bituminised paint would seem to be strong possibility.

I have a copy of BR 87209 dated December 1958, which gives "Colours for Freight Rolling Stock". Briefly the colours given are: Unfitted Opens, Merchandise, mineral and steel-carrying: Timber body - woodwork unpainted, steelwork grey, Steel body - grey, Timber underframe - woodwork unpainted, steelwork black, Steel underframe - black. Fitted ditto: Timber and Steel bodies - bauxite red, underframes as above. Photos from the 1950s and early 1960s show that some wooden minerals, and unfitted traffic opens, were painted despite the instructions, and that some wooden underframe fitted vehicles may have had the wood solebars painted. Covered vans, incidentally, both fitted and unfitted, are shown as fully painted, no mention of unpainted areas at all. Painting body steel work in open wagons appears, again from photographs, to have extended to all internal steelwork, down to the nuts and bolts. Presumably the different instructions reflected the relative importance of different wagons, and the need for staff to have the means to quickly and reliably identify fitted and unfitted vehicles in all conditions of weather. Some wagons would have been repainted by private wagon repairers, who were stll active well into the 1960s, who may, or may not, have followed official instructions...

There is a B&W photograph of an earlier GW container, B1600W, in David Larkin's "Pre-Nationalisation Freight Wagons of BR", Bradford Barton, page 40. The photograph is dated 1960, and the container is condemned. There is the usual problem of interpretation; it doesn't seem to be maroon to me, and the lettering looks white rather than yellow [it seems to match the 'Cond'], but I acknowledge that this is subjective. There is another, dated to 1953, in "The 4mm Wagon", page 19, which also looks to be the same colour as the conflat it's on. If you have a copy of "Steam Days" magazine for January 2005, on page 14 there is a colour photo* of a trainload of containers, dated 15/5/56, two of which are clearly very recently ex-works. They are definitely not maroon... *Note that the caption has been swapped with that of the photo on page 17.

The grouped railways and BR left interior woodwork of open wagons unpainted, but internal steelwork was painted, from channels in place of the lower panks in the ends to nuts and bolts; photographs show that the steel body framing of open wagons was completed as far as possible and painted before any woodwork was added and steel bodies were painted before the wood floor was fitted. What happened to PO wagons would depend on the policies of the owners, which varied, but I would not be altogether surprised to find painted internal steelwork there as well.

No; https://www.thelocoshedmcr.co.uk/product/airfix-gmr-conflat-br-b-container-54332-1/. It also came in GWR livery.

The store were on legs to keep rodents out as their contents were usually all too attractive to rats and mice...

I had one of those HD ones, paper round a wood block if I remember correctly, but in the 1960s. I can offer you the Airfix GWR BK in bauxite, albeit with a wrong number...

And the modified BD containers were light grey with a yellow horizontal band and black lettering...

I don't think he is saying that, just that the instructions issued in 1959 state maroon; it doesn't mean that there weren't earlier instructions to the same effect. I have a BR booklet dated 12/1958 showing the colour as crimson, but BR were prone to doing this when they meant crimson lake, i.e. maroon [which is what photographs show].

So far as I know, the BR fresh meat van, although goods rated, was painted originally in unlined coach livery, as were others of its type. When it was built in 1952 this would have been crimson rather than maroon, with yellow lettering. The increasing use of containers made them redundant as meat vans, so they were reclassified as ordinary Vanfits at some point in the late 1950s/early 1960s [sorry, I can't be more specific than that], after which they were painted bauxite. Whether any got an intermediate repaint into maroon after March 1956 I don't know.

There was, used until the mid-1950s as I commented before, so visible until the later 1950s. See https://www.flickr.com/photos/36844288@N00/8078166153/in/photostream/; the source details are at the bottom of the page. For the container liveries click the right arrow and look in the bottom RH corner of the left hand page. Brian Haresnape provides the same info on page 34 of "Railway Liveries: BR Steam 1948-1968", as revised by Colin Boocock. The same book , page 48, gives the change to maroon "as around the same time" in the chapter about the 1956 revisions.

The original BR VB wagon and covered container colour was described as orange brown; the later colour was described by 12/1958 as bauxite red. Whether this represents an actual change of colour is debatable. Colour photos also suggest that there may have been some slight variations in contemporary colour [different works having different suppliers, perhaps?] and that 'bauxite red' may have become more orange in the 1960s [or perhaps those are just variations in colour film rendition]. Given that most paints, and colour films, of that era were quite unstable over time, and bauxite in particular degraded fairly rapidly, it probably not worth worrying too much about exact shades, especially bearing weathering in mind. Initially general use covered containers painted by BR were orange brown with unboxed white lettering. This changed to maroon [officially crimson, but actually crimson lake, i.e. maroon] with unboxed yellow lettering circa 1955/6. In the early 1960s it changed back to bauxite, but with boxed white lettering and the black and white "flying crate" logo. As usual, repainting the complete stock would take several years.

I have now got a high-res scan, and the wagon is 1/241 B880309, built Faverdale 1951/2. The visible body is all narrow plank, except for the RH door and adjacent area, so I think that this is a repair to a van built with narrow planks. No date or location is given, but the 1/246 is B882536, which is from the final Lot [3290] of 400 completed by Wolverton* in 1960, which appears to have been in use for a while, so early 1960s seems reasonable... * According to Rowland, Darlington, i.e. Faverdale, according to Larkin. It has the top central corrugation in the end, so I think that Rowland is probably right.

An Ulster one works well, too...

Yes, but my point was that the loading on the front of the loco is higher than the loading on the rear of the loco [that cast iron cylinder block], which is higher than the loading on the tender, all of which means that the CoG is nearer the front than the back, so putting the tender on the extenders moves the CoG nearer the pivot; the other way moves it away from the pivot.

I have only seen one photo of a loco being turned with extenders involved [5325 at Minehead] and that was also under the tender. I think it's because of the axle loadings involved and where the centre of gravity of the lcoco + tender is; for a Manor the bogie carries 18T 10cwt, and the driving axles 17T 5cwt, 17T 1cwt and 16T 2cwt front to back, with the tender axles carrying 13T 10cwt, 13T 4cwt and 13T 6cwt front to back. Even on a bigger turntable the loco will probably be unbalanced, depending on where it is stopped. With the front end on extenders that CoG will be futher from the pivot than with the tender on them. There may also be issues with lifting wheels off the rails as the loco wb is longer.