More Pre-Grouping Wagons in 4mm - the D299 appreciation thread.

[Compound2632]

15 hours ago, MarcD said:

There is a picture of a late M&C cattle van along with a drawing in the HMRS archive. But as for the early vans no a lot of info out there I have a drawing for a brake van, backed up with a photo and the same with a box van. 

 

I had a quick look at those - photo of a large one and drawing of a medium; very similar in framing to LNWR cattle trucks. The drawings of M&C goods wagons appear to be "modeller's drawings" rather than originals, though the M&C drawing number is noted - is there any information on who did these drawings and when?

[billbedford]

Did MR D663A have bottom doors?  I can see the chains holding the door catch bolt in Plate 104 of Midland Wagons vol1, but not in any of the other photos. 

[Compound2632]

6 hours ago, billbedford said:

Did MR D663A have bottom doors?  I can see the chains holding the door catch bolt in Plate 104 of Midland Wagons vol1, but not in any of the other photos. 

 

Drg. 3843, Lot 825 through to Lot 954, shows bottom doors, but Drg. 5279, for Lots 956, 957, etc., does not. Drg. 3843 is described as "10 Ton Highside Wagon"; Drg. 5279 is described as "10 & 12 Ton Merchandise Wagon". From the minutes, these wagons were intended as direct renewals of 8 ton highside wagons, D299 (but at £17 more per wagon, charged to capital); D299 was explicitly a "goods and coal goods wagon", hence its bottom doors, and in some places these later wagons are also described as "goods and coal wagon", despite the move to building 12 ton mineral wagons - D352, D607, D673.

[billbedford]

So... as practical model builders can we say that D663A wagons built with wooden end pillars had bottom doors and those made with steel stanchions did not? apart from the 100 built without bottom doors in lot 953. 

[Compound2632]

2 hours ago, billbedford said:

So... as practical model builders can we say that D663A wagons built with wooden end pillars had bottom doors and those made with steel stanchions did not? apart from the 100 built without bottom doors in lot 953. 

 

Yes, or at the very least, that covers most of them!

[Chas Levin]

On 11/07/2023 at 22:24, airnimal said:

I built a couple of GNR wagons some years ago and lettered them using some old methfix tranfers. 

I don't have them now but I still have this photograph of one of them.

 

Very nice model - I particularly like the chains! What scale's it in?

 

With apologies for criticising - it's meant constructively - I would have to say that I think there would only have been one lettering style, either 'GNR' or 'G NORTHERN R'.

 

Is it in fact an Implement wagon or an Open Carriage Truck? If the former and you went with the earlier 'G NORTHERN R' style then plain white would be right; if the latter, it would have been smaller versions of the shaded gold style carriage lettering, because OCTs were treated as express stock - like this:

 

 

(D&S etched brass & white-metal kit, transfers from Steam and Things in Australia, Bently by Oxford Diecast).

Edited July 17, 2023 by Chas Levin

[Compound2632]

27 minutes ago, Chas Levin said:

I would have to say that there would only have been one lettering style, either 'GNR' or 'G NORTHERN R'.

 

Is it in fact an Implement wagon or an Open Carriage Truck?

 

It is an implement wagon, though not a type that makes it into Tatlow's LNER Wagons Vol. 1, as far as I can make out. It's got small wheels, three-link couplings, and no vacuum brake pipe, all things that indicate it's not passenger-rated. 

 

From my very limited recently-acquired knowledge of Great Northern wagon livery, I would say that it seems to be not unusual for GNR and the number to be painted on the solebar, along with the tare weight, irrespective of whether the body was lettered GNR, G NORTHERN R or large G N. The alternative is a rectangular cast plate, with GNR above and the number below.

 

I would bet my bottom dollar that Mike has worked from a photo.

[Chas Levin]

17 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

It is an implement wagon, though not a type that makes it into Tatlow's LNER Wagons Vol. 1, as far as I can make out. It's got small wheels, three-link couplings, and no vacuum brake pipe, all things that indicate it's not passenger-rated. 

 

From my very limited recently-acquired knowledge of Great Northern wagon livery, I would say that it seems to be not unusual for GNR and the number to be painted on the solebar, along with the tare weight, irrespective of whether the body was lettered GNR, G NORTHERN R or large G N. The alternative is a rectangular cast plate, with GNR above and the number below.

 

I would bet my bottom dollar that Mike has worked from a photo.

Thanks Stephen - you may well be right: I must admit to posting from memory, not from the book: I have the five part GNRS Wagons Pictorial which has quite a lot of photos of this period of livery so I'll check tonight: apologies Mike @airnimal if I've fired from the hip here!

Edited July 17, 2023 by Chas Levin

[airnimal]

I worked from a illustration in a pamphlet produced by the GNR society. I built it over 20 years ago and it is 7mm finescale.  I sold it 2005/6 when I had a bad accident and gave up modelling for a few years. 

I don't know how accurate it is but my friend who had from me was quite happy to have it.

[Chas Levin]

6 minutes ago, airnimal said:

I worked from a illustration in a pamphlet produced by the GNR society. I built it over 20 years ago and it is 7mm finescale.  I sold it 2005/6 when I had a bad accident and gave up modelling for a few years. 

I don't know how accurate it is but my friend who had from me was quite happy to have it.

In which case my apologies Mike for doubting your research and for my poor memory!! And sorry to hear you had to give up modelling for a time - hope you've been able to resume it since?

Edited July 17, 2023 by Chas Levin

[Chas Levin]

16 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

It is an implement wagon, though not a type that makes it into Tatlow's LNER Wagons Vol. 1, as far as I can make out. It's got small wheels, three-link couplings, and no vacuum brake pipe, all things that indicate it's not passenger-rated. 

 

From my very limited recently-acquired knowledge of Great Northern wagon livery, I would say that it seems to be not unusual for GNR and the number to be painted on the solebar, along with the tare weight, irrespective of whether the body was lettered GNR, G NORTHERN R or large G N. The alternative is a rectangular cast plate, with GNR above and the number below.

 

I would bet my bottom dollar that Mike has worked from a photo.

 

Ok, more fulsome apologies are herewith tendered Mike @airnimal and Stephen!

 

Looking in the GNRS's wagon pictorial, I see exactly what you meant Stephen, where a small 'GNR' was used instead of the cast numberplate - I'd quite forgotten that stage of lettering evolution. If I may still make so bold though as to defend my orignal post a little, I was thrown by the large size of the lower 'GNR' on Mike's wagon - the lettering on the prototypes, when it was used rather than cast plates, was considerably smaller than the main 'G NORTHERN R' markings. I think the 'GNR' solebar lettering preceded the use of cast plates, but I'll have to check that too...

 

In the meantime, here are crops of pictures of both styles, on Implement Wagons. Although the second one is a six-wheeler, they illustrate the two styles well:

 

 

 

They also illustrate the slight variations of hand-painted lettering of those times (late nineteenth century), soon to disappear as things became much more standardised: in the first picture - the four-wheeler - the letters 'ORTHERN' are slightly shorter than the initials G, N and R; in the second picture - the six-wheeler - all the letters are the same height. Although the height of the deck side on which those letters are painted looks a little higher on that first picture, I don't think that's the reason for the variation...

Edited July 18, 2023 by Chas Levin
(Typo - again!)

[airnimal]

Chas, You don't need to apologise because I appear to have used the wrong size lettering on the solebar's.  But thank you for providing the illustrations.

My memory of why I used them is long gone but perhaps I didn't have any smaller ones to hand. 

I am going to visit the gentleman who has the wagon next week and I will ask him if he would like me to correct the lettering. 

 

And yes I did return to modelling after my accident with a few false starts ( brief excursion in gauge 1 ) 

settling on S7 where I sometimes make the odd things but I do scrap rather a lot.

Mike

[Rowsley17D]

Is this a D299 lurking behind 1299?

 

[Chas Levin]

5 hours ago, airnimal said:

Chas, You don't need to apologise because I appear to have used the wrong size lettering on the solebar's.  But thank you for providing the illustrations.

My memory of why I used them is long gone but perhaps I didn't have any smaller ones to hand. 

I am going to visit the gentleman who has the wagon next week and I will ask him if he would like me to correct the lettering. 

 

And yes I did return to modelling after my accident with a few false starts ( brief excursion in gauge 1 ) 

settling on S7 where I sometimes make the odd things but I do scrap rather a lot.

Mike

Thanks Mike, and glad to hear you returned to the (half-etched line) fold of modelling 🙂

[Compound2632]

46 minutes ago, Rowsley17D said:

Is this a D299 lurking behind 1299?

 

Yes, probably, though it could be the end-door version, D351, with the end door at the end obscured by the engine. Evidently the photo dates from no earlier than 1917 but where is it?

[Grahams]

On 16/07/2023 at 12:06, Compound2632 said:

 

Yes, or at the very least, that covers most of them!

Whilst I hesitate to disagree with you Stephen, I don't believe we know with much certainty on which wagons the steel end stanchions were used. Drg 5279 is drawn without bottom doors and with wooden end stanchions. The steel stanchions are an option on the end view only, marked "Shewing T stanchions".

Lots 956 and 957 to Drg 5279 dated 18.1.1921 was ordered on 20.1.1920, a year before the Drg 5279 we have was dated (possibly there could have been an earlier version, now lost, although it seems unlikely). Lot 956 was ordered the day after Lot 943 was ordered (19.1.1920)  to the old Drg 3843 and Lots 948, 953 and 954 were all ordered to Drg 3843 during 1920 and after Lots 956/957.

We know that the larger 9 x 4 1/4 journals were used on 12T wagons because this is clearly stated on the Drg5279. The wagon in Midland Wagons V1 (MW V1) Plate 105 appears to have those larger journals although the text on the axlebox covers is not 100% clear. That wagon has steel end stanchions. In that picture, there seems to be no bottom door lever.

So in 1920, we have two drawings being used to build Lots of the same wagon, some 10T, some 12T (with correspondingly different axles and journals) going through the works more or less at the same time or one after the other. Some had bottom doors and some did not. I have run some big factories and that would be an interesting production control challenge...

We are now sure (after a lot of work by you) that the wagons in MW V1 identified as D302 were all D663A (the significance of the "A" is not yet clear). Therefore, Bob Essery's statement in the caption for Plate 105 that the "principle difference between the D302 and D663A is the T end stanchions" appears to be incorrect.

The statement on MW V1 p74 about the journal and dimensional differences between "D302" (as defined in MW V1) and the D663A is demonstrably incorrect because the wagon in Plate 100 built to the then new Drg 3843 in 1913 (paint date is clear on my copy of the picture) to the first Lot, 825, and it has 9 x 3 3/4 journals.

I include some of the above for the general reader rather than for you, Stephen, as I am well aware that you know more about much of this than I do!

Maybe Drg5279 was drawn to record the changes implemented under some other instruction to the works such as larger journals on the 12T wagons and to record some wagons with steel end stanchions? Maybe there is another copy of Drg 3843 with the larger journals noted? It is clear that many wagons were built to that drawing but with the larger journals.

I don't believe we can say with any certainty that there were no Drg3483 wagons built with steel end stanchions. If they were changing journal sizes without a drawing known to us, why not mix the end stanchions too?

Looking through the pictures in MW V1 and in Midland Record Supplement No 2, ignoring the captions of "D302" and assuming they are all D663A, I can see only wooden stanchions on the wagons marked 10T and only steel stanchions on the wagons marked 12T. Absence is no proof, and I know you disagreed with me when I advanced this theory before, but I do wonder if the switch to steel end stanchions was made for the 12T wagons. If someone can show a 12T wagon with wooden stanchions, it will make the theory less likely to be correct. Certainly the later wagons seem to have steel stanchions so it could even be that earlier 12T wagons were built with wooden stanchions and then an improvement was made due to the availability of steel after the war and the extra strength they brought. Of course, I may be wrong on this and there may be other logical explanations for the steel end stanchions and where they were used.

If I were building 100 wagons to these drawings for the 1920 to 1930 period, I would build 72 10T with wooden stanchions, 64 with bottom doors, 8 without. There would be 28 12T with steel stanchions, 8 with bottom doors and 20 without. For later periods, it is likely that the proportion of 12T would increase because they were up to 10 years newer. If anyone wants the spreadsheet where I have entered and analysed this data, taken from MW V1, I'm happy to share it.

It is all jolly fascinating if you like this sort of thing.

[Rowsley17D]

5 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Yes, probably, though it could be the end-door version, D351, with the end door at the end obscured by the engine. Evidently the photo dates from no earlier than 1917 but where is it?

 

Looking at the photo on the Rail Photoprints website the caption reads:

 

"GWR 2-4-0 Crane Tank 1299 at Swindon circa 1928. Initially purchased by the South Devon Railway in 'kit' form the loco was completed at Swindon and adopted as works shunter in 1881"

[Chas Levin]

57 minutes ago, Rowsley17D said:

Is this a D299 lurking behind 1299?

 

 

Almost a railway version of "Where's Wally?" - you could produce a whole series of them to suit the afficionados of various regions:

"Where's Woodcock?" (for Gresley A4 fans)

"Where's Wylam Dilly?" (for early railway enthusiasts)

"Where's West Point?" (for our transatlantic neighbours)

"Where's Warwick Castle?" (for those of a Western inclination)

 

etc...

 

(Sorry, a tad light-hearted perhaps!)

Edited July 18, 2023 by Chas Levin
Possibly inappropriate levity

[Compound2632]

5 minutes ago, Grahams said:

Whilst I hesitate to disagree with you Stephen, I don't believe we know with much certainty on which wagons the steel end stanchions were used.

 

Agree, but if I were a kit manufacturer, I would feel comfortable that a 10-ton wagon with bottom doors and wooden end pillars, and a 12-ton wagon without bottom doors and with steel end stanchions, would cover a good proportion of these wagons.

 

Begging your pardon, but according to the copy of the lot list I'm working from - that reproduced in Midland Wagons Vol. 2 - lots 956 and 957 were entered in the list on 20 Jan 1921, two days after Drg. 5276 was entered in the drawing register. But as @billbedford reminded me, bottom doors had already been omitted from 100 of lot 953, entered on 26 Aug 1920. I get the impression that at this period, both with these wagons and the 12 ton minerals to D607, exactly what got built depended on the materials to hand or obtainable.

[corneliuslundie]

And the presence of a works drawing does not mean that anything was built which matched it.

I have evidence from the Cambrian drawings I have, and I am sure that other companies were the same.

So if it was not photographed we have no proof that a wagon existed. But that is no proof that it didn't.

I think Heisenberg would have enjoyed wagon research! Certainly not a subject for someone for whom everything must be yes or no.

Perhaps I should be glad that the wagons under discussion are too modern for me.

And I am afraid yet another example of an error in print by a normally reliable author which it is going to be very hard to get rid of.

Jonathan

 

[Compound2632]

13 minutes ago, corneliuslundie said:

So if it was not photographed we have no proof that a wagon existed.

 

Would not a a wagon label, number-taker's book, or goods ledger recording the wagon be adequate proof of its existence? 

 

I agree it wouldn't tell you whether the wagon had wood or steel stanchions!

Edited July 18, 2023 by Compound2632

[corneliuslundie]

Not if the errors in the GWR withdrawn wagon registers are anything to go by - and the handwriting in some of the registers which is almost impossible to read. I'll believe a wagon plate.

Sorry, that is rather cynical,  Within the WRRC we spent several weeks trying to sort out the truth about a photograph of a loco shed. Even then we got it wrong because we believed a "hitherto reliable source".

Of course photos can be doctored!!! Photoshop is merely the modern method.

So we just do our best.

Jonathan

[Grahams]

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Agree, but if I were a kit manufacturer, I would feel comfortable that a 10-ton wagon with bottom doors and wooden end pillars, and a 12-ton wagon without bottom doors and with steel end stanchions, would cover a good proportion of these wagons.

 

Begging your pardon, but according to the copy of the lot list I'm working from - that reproduced in Midland Wagons Vol. 2 - lots 956 and 957 were entered in the list on 20 Jan 1921, two days after Drg. 5276 was entered in the drawing register. But as @billbedford reminded me, bottom doors had already been omitted from 100 of lot 953, entered on 26 Aug 1920. I get the impression that at this period, both with these wagons and the 12 ton minerals to D607, exactly what got built depended on the materials to hand or obtainable.

I am a kit manufacturerr and I let my customers tell me what they want in regards to bottom doors and end stanchions. Indeed, most of them are not really that bothered. I offer kits of specific wagons of which I have a photo so it's not a big issue. 

Interesting about the date in the Lot list, because I was using the list in Midland Record Supplement No 2 and Bob Essery points out the odd discrepancy of dates, so although it could be a typo, he questioned it as he wrote it. If the date was 1921, it makes much more sense. 

In any case, it doesn't affect the numbers made. 

[Grahams]

2 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

Begging your pardon, but according to the copy of the lot list I'm working from - that reproduced in Midland Wagons Vol. 2 - lots 956 and 957 were entered in the list on 20 Jan 1921, two days after Drg. 5276 was entered in the drawing register.

It is an odd error because MW V2 was published in 1980 and the Midland Record Supplement No2 in 1998. Bob specifically says that the lot list is in his possession in both publications. He must have made a transcription error for the Supplement article and not checked back to his source. Anyway, it does clarify the order of things and fits much better.

 

2 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

I get the impression that at this period, both with these wagons and the 12 ton minerals to D607, exactly what got built depended on the materials to hand or obtainable.

Yes, absolutely, which makes it more difficult to be certain that the steel end stanchions were only used on 12T wagons. I shall now check more diligently if I see a D663a as to the end stanchions and carrying capacity.

I wonder if the HMRS have scanned Bob's lot list. It would be great to have a copy.

[Compound2632]

3 hours ago, Grahams said:

It is an odd error because MW V2 was published in 1980 and the Midland Record Supplement No2 in 1998. Bob specifically says that the lot list is in his possession in both publications. He must have made a transcription error for the Supplement article and not checked back to his source. Anyway, it does clarify the order of things and fits much better.

 

Yes, having looked at the Supplement, I think it's clear it's a simple error. In the list in Midland Wagons, lots 956 and 957 of 20 Jan 1921 are preceded by lot 955 of 18 Dec 1920 for 50 12 ton covered goods wagons and followed by lots 958-961 of 24 Jan 1921 for Tilbury line carriages.

Edited July 18, 2023 by Compound2632