magmouse

Thanks, Miss P - what an interesting picture. Several things caught my eye: the three curious short-wheelbase wagons with wooden solebars and iron bodies, lettered GW. Presumably inherited by the GWR from a railway they took over, but I haven’t seem anything like them before. the GW 5-plank wagons are presumably the ones made specifically for china clay traffic, as they have end doors. I haven’t noticed before that they have tie rods between the axle guards - a feature I normally associate with 4-shoe vacuum brakes. the coaches in either brown or lake livery - at least the nearest one is. The ones behind that have a hint of a lighter tone on the upper body which might be grubby cream. none of the barrels seem to be roped, even when loaded quite high relative to the top of the wagon sides. above the right hand end of the nearest GW five-plank open we can just see the corner of a mineral wagon with individual L strapping, rather than corner plates. a few wagons behind that one, we see the top of the end of a diagram N6 Loco coal wagon, with its distinctively extended sides. The “Federated Coal & [something] Co Ltd” is from Cardiff, suggesting a flow of coal from South Wales - subject of discussion in another thread recently. Nick.

Thanks for the extra pictures. It seems like the visualisations were designed to make the casual observer (me!) think the old building would be retained, when actually they are just keeping the sign. It will be interesting to see if that actually happens. Nick.

Well, lots of the architects' visualisations of the new development you can find Online;ine show the building is to be retained as part of the development, including the wonderful "I. Baker & Son" sign in your photo. If it has actually been demolished, @MrWolf's cynicism seems well justified. Thanks for posting the photo - I am collecting ideas for characterful buildings for my one-day project, Netherport. Nick.

Just answered my own question with this example of end lettering and 16" side lettering: GWR Cattle Wagons by nick B, on Flickr If the caption is correct, the wagon was built between 1923 and 1925, and is somewhat grubby, so mid-1920s at the earliest. Nick.

It's something of a rabbit hole... Best bet would be to work from a picture of a suitable prototype of the period you want, but of course, finding such a picture can be an issue. Nick.

Sorry - I wasn't clear. Is end lettering seen in conjunction with 16" side lettering? That would show end lettering was still being applied after 1921 (if I am remembering the year of the change from 25" to 16" correctly). If not, we know end lettering ceased at or before that date. Nick.

Is end lettering ever seen with 16" lettering, or only the earlier 25"? that would help date the end of end lettering. Nick.

Thanks for reposting - what a great reminder of your superb work. As @goldngreen says, the sense of colour is especially impressive. Having worked for a time in Deptford, all that yellow London brick is very familiar. I love too the little cameo scenes, building up a picture of life at the time - a delight! Nick.

And that's the mental shift one has to make in imaging how things worked then - these days there is a cultural presumption of 'self service', where passengers must glean the information they need from signs, announcements and (more recently) an app on your phone. Nick.

Good find! The two wagons either side (seen in full if you go to the Flickr image) look like GWR 4-plank wagons, with the sides extended by a rather crudely added extra plank and associated ironwork. The nearer wagon still has singled-sided brakes and no door spring - just the banger plate to contact with the end of the brake cross-shaft. It seems somehow to have missed out on the upgrades these wagons seem generally to have had in the 1920s and 30s. That suggests it was sold out of service to the docks (or via an intermediary owner) relatively early. Nick.

Well, that's burst my bubble, but saved me £216 🙂 Except I don't have the brake composite either. Nick

For those modelling an earlier period, CRT Kits do a kit for a Dean-era slip coach: https://www.crtkits.co.uk/product.php/7059891/ I am very tempted - can my imagined 1908 branch line justify a slip service? Netherport is both a thriving resort (the upper town) and a small but busy harbour and marine engineering centre (the lower town). Surely there are enough London bourgeoisie and industrialists demanding rapid and convenient travel to Netherport to persuade the GWR to lay on a daily coach, slipped at the junction and attached to the branch train? Daydreams aside - how were slip services shown in the timetable? And how did passengers know which coach to get into at the departure station? Nick PS Autocorrect wanted to turn Dean-era into Deaf-ear. Hmmm...

Good point - do you know if the MR had a patent on the dirt-resistant paint? Otherwise one would have thought it would be more widely adopted. Nick.

I would agree this is a posed shot. It’s also interesting to see the condition of the private owner wagons in the background - quite grubby lettering compared to some of the MR wagons, especially the foreground one. I am thinking about this in relation to the discussion I read in a thread recently about how PO wagons were repainted more often than railway company wagons, and so were on average cleaner. Nick.

Well, yes, but - trains don’t usually go through muddy, wet conditions, to the extent the wheels spray mud up onto adjacent vehicles. I wonder if there had been flooding in the area, or some such unusual event to cause this effect. Nick.

Sure is! But I am curious about the dirt marks on the end of the nearest wagon - almost like it had gone dirt-track biking. Looking closely at the other wagons, several of them have the same, though less pronounced. Any thoughts as to what might cause it? I’ve never noticed the effect before. Nick.

I'm interested in your question as I need to similarly work out the appropriate PO wagons for my 1908 Dorset coast setting, but I don't have any answers for you, unfortunately. You mention the coastal coal trade, and if you want a deep dive into that, you might find this of interest: A Study in the Economic Geography of the Pre-War Coastwise Coal Trade: https://www.jstor.org/stable/621229 Nick

The nineteenth century equivalent of “the computer says ‘no’”…

I suspect the white brake handles on the wagons done up for the official photographer was all part of the 'bling' - along with picking out in white the cast lettering on axle box covers, horse hooks, and anything else the painter could think of... Later, it became a practical feature to aid visibility - definitely after 1908 for the GWR as I checked photos around that date to see if I should be doing white handles or not. I don't have a definitive date, though, and I don't know if it was adopted by all railway companies at the same time. Nick.

Stephen - thank you, that's just the info I need. Much appreciated. Nick.

Thanks for calculations. Sizes of slates can be found here: http://www.penmorfa.com/Slate/sizes.htm The larger slates are well over 17in tall, so you couldn't fill a 10 ton wagon with them - hence presumably the centre gap in the load. A full wagon of the smaller sizes - such as used on ordinary houses - would be possible. A good, close-up photo of a loaded wagon would be so useful! Nick.

Good tip about using black paper, shellac’ed - I might try that for 7mm scale. Regarding stillages (I had to look that up), I haven’t seen anything like that used in the photos I have found of slates being loaded. Where the narrow gauge lines met the standard gauge, transshipment seemed to be by hand, either directly from slate trucks to standard gauge wagon, or with the slates first being stacked on the ground. As to quantities in a wagon, I guess weight would be the main limitation - not too hard to work out given slates come in standard sizes and the density of slate is known. I did work out with the narrow gauge trucks you can overload a 2 ton truck by filling it with the largest slates. Nick.

I've made slate loads for 16mm slate wagons, as follows. 1. Mark out the slates on black 10 thou plastic sheet: Use some sand paper or wet-and-dry to roughen the surface, giving texture and creating a grey finish (no painting!): Snap off strips: Then into individual slates: I make some full-size slates to go round the outside, then half-height for the ones in the middle, where you only see the tops. This saves material and weight. A box from plastic sheet supports the half-height slates, and has full size ones glued round the outside. The box of course is sized to the the particular wagon. Start fillin gin rows of slates. They are put in loose, then solvent run in along the bottom edge to hold in place. Keep going... And the finished result: I think this method would be fine for 7mm, but probably too fiddly in 4mm. Nick.

Thanks Jim - although specific to the CR and therefore not ultimately useful for answering my specific question, this does point to the kind of documentation that could give an answer. Nick.

Ah, rule 1 - the thing is, it's my railway and what I want is for it to be both historically accurate, but also looking the way I like it to look. And actually, from an aesthetic point of view, I would rather not have white rims - too much bling. If I did want them, I could easily justify white rims by saying my wagon happens to be the one prepared for photography - then it doesn't matter if other wagons, not photographed, had them or not. My difficulty is I don't know if it is correct to have a wagon in recently repainted, clean condition without white rims, but that is my aesthetic preference - there's the rub, and hence my original post. Nick.