Compound2632

These old Triang wagons usually sit 2 mm too high at the buffers (driven by the need to make locos and other stock with bogies go round curves and up hills). Would it be possible to lower the wagon body on the bogies to gain your extra clearance? Or you could do what Derby did with the aforementioned NCC 4-4-0 - pack the chimney, dome cover and upper part of the cab separately - but that would defeat your object of displaying your finished model!

The 12-wheeler looks OTT for the likely weight of narrow-gauge stock. The L&B 2-6-2Ts were quite big for British NG but weighed in at 27 1/4 tons - trolleys like your 8-wheeler seem to have been rated at 30 tons plus (looking at Midland and LNWR examples) so more than adequate. Some examples of NG stock loaded on low-loaders in Midland Wagons show a couple of rails held to gauge with wooden blocks and wedges. You could just strip the rail out of the sleepers and glue it directly to the deck of the wagon with some odd bits of plasticard or whatever to represent the wooden blocks - saving major surgery on the wagon. Midland Wagons also has photos of similar wagons loaded up with parts of a NCC 4-4-0 (Irish gauge so it couldn't be towed) - wheels/axles packed separately to keep things within the loading gauge! There were also some wagons specifically for tramcar traffic - that would make an interesting load! Presumably for double-deckers, the top half travelled separately too?

There's too clear a distinction between the ironwork and the woodwork for the latter to be red - red appears as black in photographs of this period as the emulsion was only photosensitive at shorter wavelengths. So I would have thought a dark lead grey the most likely - though in the absence of any other information, Marc's more esoteric colours are possible. If you painted it dark yellow, it would be very hard to prove you wrong!

Why?

I agree with Guy about the ironwork being black out of necessity. My understanding is that interior woodwork wasn't painted. If the purpose of paint is to protect the timber from the elements, this is a bit surprising for open wagons. I can understand that a paint finish wouldn't last long on the inside of a coal wagon; perhaps a merchandise wagon would spend much of its time sheeted over; but what about, for example, the floorboards of a timber truck? What about cattle wagon interiors? I suppose the danger to cattle of licking the lead-based paint wasn't a recognised problem... I'd not really thought about this before - had taken "unpainted" for granted..

I wouldn't describe either Bournville or Burton-on-Trent as remote...

Where, then, did Gorton photograph its new engines?

I've looked at those but not bought because I couldn't work out how big they are - can you give dimensions? I suppose I ought to be able to work it out for myself from the density of lead: 11.34 g/cm3... The ones that pop up first on ebay are steel (about 8 g/cm3) - so 60 g => 7.5 cm3; if 5 mm thick, that could be 5 cm x 3 cm which is quite big - depending on the aspect ratio could be tricky to fit in a 4 mm wagon.

Can you date the photo too? My gut feeling is post-war, even 1950s.

It's a masterpiece, isn't it?

Have you considered using those small plated steel embossed tokens shops insist on giving you? They come in two convenient sizes providing multiples of 3.5g - not as dense as lead but good for a loaded wagon or van and certainly cheaper per gram.

An illusion, I think, arising from (i) the fact that the traverser track is about a rail height below the rails on the traverser and (ii) the traverser is further from the track behind than you first think. For a while I thought the traverser track sloped away from the camera but I think that's another illusion. That's a very distinctive maker's plate, but whose?

The top one has the feel of an F Moore painting - he was I think basically overpainting photos too - so you've certainly captured period flavour for me! (Is that a Midland signalbox just above the buffer beam? Gorton was alongside Belle Vue shed I think.)

I had an interesting chat with the guy at ExpoEM in Bracknell who was demonstrating bashing Ratio sides into assorted diagrams - checking the EM Gauge Society website I think his name must be Peter Sutherland - I asked whether there was scope for mixing and matching Ratio and Triang sides; he said no, because the slight differences in panel width and depth become too apparent. He had a splendid range of non-clerestory carriages, though. He reckoned there are only three diagrams one can make out of the Triang bodies, all using the brake third - the compartment sizes on the non-brake carriage being unhelpful.

So in principle, the last number given to a batch of new (capital additions to stock) wagons should be the upper limit on the total number of wagons in stock at that time - the true number would be slightly lower due to old wagons withdrawn but their replacements not yet taken into stock. The Midland worked on a similar principle though the large-scale (60,000-odd) purchase and replacement of PO wagons in the 1880s and 1890s skewed things a bit.

I expect I am one of many for whom the late Chris Crofts' articles in early numbers of the Model Railway Journal were our education in how wooden railway wagons were actually constructed, as opposed to what appears important in a model. Understanding this does make all the difference to one's approach - even if one doesn't include interior detail (why bother if you are going to have a full coal load or a sheet?) it helps to know what should be there. Yes, the side knees are a key structural component - as Guy says, the 'strapping' on the outside is usually no more than a glorified washer-plate, to stop the nuts digging into the planks of wood (which we know to call sheeting).

I'll shortly have some time to get cracking on my stockpile of these - I had a bit of an ebay binge earlier in the year - one of those periods of high stress when a bit of therapeutic gambling helps ease the tension and wallet (though I was cautious and lost quite a few). Race you to the longest train, Nile! I must post the "tutorial" I started writing. I don't bother with packing, just stick ends to solebars such that the bottom of the headstock is lined up with the bottom of the solebars. But beware the solebars can need a bit of trimming to get everything square.

It's getting very close to you-know-who time again...

Missed your reminder of this, which strengthens the dating to c. 1900 - wagon repainted (or at least re-lettered) after 1894 but evidently in traffic for quite a while. To sum up what I've learnt about the wagon which was the subject of my original enquiry, it's almost certainly a conversion from broad gauge, re-using the original self-contained buffers, but there's little else that can be said since it's from the depths of the Great Western's dark ages (1860s through to early 1890s), whither only a few heroic souls dare venture... The mid-Victorian dark age was fairly universal as far as rolling stock is concerned - for many companies it took the establishment of a new works for a continuous written record to begin - rather like the arrival of the monasteries. The Great Western was like pagan Lithuania - the last to see the light of conversion...

Which is to be found here - there's some good-looking stuff.

As far as the H&P photos go, the ones I've linked to are stated to be c. 1900 by the Huntley & Palmer collection website which I think is reasonable: they only feature the Black Hawthorne 0-4-0STs A and B, not the Peckett C and D; and all the SER wagons are as far as one can tell in SER livery not SE&CR - though it would doubtless have taken a good few years from 1899 for the Joint Management Committee's livery to be applied. I don't know much about LSWR wagons but I suspect the LSWR van may be the newest item of rolling stock visible, if they were a new design in 1899 (as suggested by the Cambrian Kits website) - but there could be a preceding similar design. I await correction... So, if still in traffic in 1900, reasonable to suppose 1905 possible in the absence of any other information?

I'm looking forward to Nile backdating his to original condition with sloping smokebox front etc...

Fascinating. The wagon on the far right looks as if it might have the same axleguards as the H&P photo wagon; also self-contained buffers which suggests conversion from dumb buffers but full-width headstocks - otherwise it's very like the H&P wagon. The five plank side-and-end door wagon is a real dog's breakfast. One pair of self-contained buffers - I've seen photos of wagons economically converted from dumb buffers this way before but can't recall if there's a preference or reason for sprung buffers at the end door end. At first I thought the wheelbase was asymmetric but I think that's just due to the image being distorted - I presume this is the edge of the glass plate. The length of solebar protruding to make the dumb buffer adds to the illusion. Not the cross-diagonal bracing inside, as signposted by the X-shaped bolt pattern on the side sheets. Wooden brakeblocks of course. Any date for this photo? The crane is presumably a hand-operated one, looking far too weedy to be one of the Cowans Sheldon 15T steam cranes of 1900.

Best use for it... All the best for tomorrow.

Thanks - the construction of the solebars of the iron tilt wagon do look the same as the wagon in the H&P photo though the axleguards are of quite different shape. I think one can read G.W.R quite clearly on the RH end of the H&P photo wagon, along with To Carry... in typical GW cursive signwriter's script above the running number. The iron tilt wagon has conventional full-width solebars and tapered buffer housings - though I note that the wagons to either side of it have what look like self-contained buffers. Is this photo cropped? Is there any more of these other wagons to be seen? My identification of the other wagons in the H&P photo: On the left, behind the mystery GWR wagon, an iron or steel framed four-plank wagon with centre door. This might also be a more modern (for 1900) GW wagon? I think it is unlikely to be one of H&P's Birmingham Wagon Co wagons as I believe these would have been exclusively for bringing coal from colliery to factory and this is clearly a line of sheeted merchandise wagons. Behind this, a SER wagon of the type that became SR Diagram 1327. (My knowledge of SER wagons s entirely from the SERKits catalogue!) The sheeted wagon behind that defies identification, except that it has curved raised ends. The next line of wagons is a pair of push-along iron coal tubs, one full, one empty, on the factory's narrow gage tramway. I think these have double-flanged wheels so they can run off the tram tracks, for instance to cross the traverser tracks in the foreground. (The traverser itself has the same type of wheels.) On the next standard-gauge line, a wooden-framed four-plank open wagon with high rounded ends, and a GW iron mink behind. I doubt that the wagon is a coal wagon, on the grounds of the three rings across the second end-plank up - these I take to be for securing sheet ties, suggesting a merchandise wagon. If that's correct, it's likely to be a railway-owned wagon not a private-owner, but which line? In the distance behind these, a pair of iron minks - the LH one looks to have G.W.R in the bottom of the RH panel. Behind these, a LSWER 10T van - possibly the newest wagon in the picture? To the right of these, end on, a Midland Railway van. From its slightly squat end profile, I think it is probably one of the D353 14'11" long wagons built in the 1880s, which were just under 10' from rail to top of roof; all the D362 16'6" long vans were 13" higher and the D357 14'11" vans of the same height didn't start being built until 1903. Finally, the horse-drawn wagon is a SER coal wagon, later SR Diagram 1328, as I discussed in a previous post. The majority of the wagons in this photo are red - undoubtedly all the SER ones and, I think we can now be confident, the GWR ones. The LSWR van is presumably chocolate brown, leaving the Midland van as the only definitely grey wagon in the picture.