SE&CR 5 and 7 plank open wagons.

[Michael Hodgson]

18 hours ago, gwrrob said:

I'm planning on sheeting mine using the Smith's ST2 product. It will hide all the weathering.😮

 

Unless you remember to weather the sheeting - the sheets were there because of our British weather!

[The Stationmaster]

55 minutes ago, Michael Hodgson said:

Unless you remember to weather the sheeting - the sheets were there because of our British weather!

Yes, although they were a nice solid black colour when they came fresh from the sheet works they quickly went into umpteen shades of grey. depended on how they were folded when out of use or being forwarded in open wagons plus the fold marks weathered at a different rate because of wear.

[Sweet pea]

My two SECR 5 Plank wagons in BR grey with running numbers S192220 and S19228 arrived today and I'm so happy. Well done Rapido. 😎

 

Edited April 22, 2022 by Kevin Johnson

[gwrrob]

On 20/04/2022 at 16:12, gwrrob said:

I'm planning on sheeting mine using the Smith's ST2 product. It will hide all the weathering.😮

 

 

The seven plank has had a tarpaulin fitted.

 

[Wickham Green too]

I think you should tell your shunter that the SECR provided cleats for roping sheets on their wagons ...... those funny little buttony things along the bottom plank.

[gwrrob]

23 minutes ago, Wickham Green too said:

I think you should tell your shunter that the SECR provided cleats for roping sheets on their wagons ...... those funny little buttony things along the bottom plank.

 

That’ll help someone not make the same mistake then.

[Garethp8873]

Finally got to bring the OO model of preserved example 12522 together with it's MUCH larger sister at Arley Station at the SVR on the Thursday just gone! Always wanted to do a shot like this. People do it with it locos, I do it with wagons!!

 

 

[Graham_Muz]

I did note in my review here, that the Rapido open wagons SR Goods Wagon Brown appeared to me to be slightly light. I also thought at the time of writing that the finish of the model may have also affected the perception of the colour as it was a satin nearly glossy finish rather than matt.
To demonstrate this, I have now given one of the Rapido Trains UK wagons a simple single spray coat of Testers Dullcoat matt varnish and when pictured alongside the KMRC Road Van and one of the original Rapido Trains UK factory finished wagons the effect of the type finish and its perception of the same base colour can be clearly seen.

 

I have written a blog post here "The hues and lows of colour perception" to look at some of the issues and reasons that can influence getting model colours correct.

 

[JSpencer]

I wonder if there will be a further run of opens. Between the Rapido and Rails vans, my SECR collection is starting to become a little van heavy (say over a 1/3rd of the fleet) when it should be open heavy. (vans were only 11% of SECR stock at grouping).

 

Of course I still have various Bachmann and Dapol opens (10 in number) but hardly SECR prototypes.

 

 

[Dunsignalling]

15 minutes ago, JSpencer said:

I wonder if there will be a further run of opens. Between the Rapido and Rails vans, my SECR collection is starting to become a little van heavy (say over a 1/3rd of the fleet) when it should be open heavy. (vans were only 11% of SECR stock at grouping).

 

Of course I still have various Bachmann and Dapol opens (10 in number) but hardly SECR prototypes.

 

 

And don't forget that to represent a typical goods train of the era, for every one of those you should also probably have a Midland Railway 5-plank, a design which got everywhere and outnumbered the SECR's entire wagon fleet! 😇

 

John

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, Dunsignalling said:

And don't forget that to represent a typical goods train of the era, for every one of those you should also probably have a Midland Railway 5-plank, a design which got everywhere and outnumbered the SECR's entire wagon fleet! 😇

 

... five times over, and accounting at their peak for one in ten or so of railway company-owned wagons and one in twenty of all wagons, including private owners.

 

But a word of caution: for the post-Great war period, for which Rapido's SECR wagons are appropriate, although with wagon pooling Midland wagons really would get everywhere, the number of the classic Midland 8-ton open, diagram D299, as represented by the Slater's kit, was steadily falling, being replaced from c. 1911 by 10 ton 5-plank merchandise wagons, D302 &c., and 12 ton 7 plank mineral wagons, D607 &c., and post-grouping by the LMS standard 12 to 5 plank merchandise wagons to D1666 and D1667, built in the tens of thousands.

 

But the point still stands: the number of Midland 10 ton merchandise opens built to the end of 1922 exceeded  by several thousand the entire SECR wagon fleet at that date, as did the number of 12 ton mineral wagons. The total Midland wagon fleet accounted for just under one tenth of all wagons, including private owners, at the grouping.

 

Similar arguments, though on a smaller scale, hold good for the principal wagon designs of the other northern companies.

 

But we all know that in the RTR world, it's the obscure and rare prototype that sells better than the common and widespread.

Edited May 31, 2022 by Compound2632

[64F]

Another run of hybars would be nice - but with the sheet rail down next time please!

[Wickham Green too]

5 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

..... 10 ton merchandise opens built to the end of 1922 exceeded  by several thousand the entire SECR wagon fleet at that date, as did the number of 12 ton mineral wagons. ....

Er  -  at the end of 1922 the number of 12 to mineral wagons was pretty small : eventually they did greatly outnumbered virtually (?) everything else, largely because of the RCH 1923 standards.

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, Wickham Green too said:

Er  -  at the end of 1922 the number of 12 to mineral wagons was pretty small : eventually they did greatly outnumbered virtually (?) everything else, largely because of the RCH 1923 standards.

 

Midland 12 ton mineral wagons:

 

D352, 4,006 built 1904-10

D204, 1,000 built 1909-10

D607, 5,250 built 1911-14 plus 400 built 1921-22

D673, 8,200 built 1913-21, discounting 950 ordered in 1922 probably not complete until after the grouping.

 

Total: 18,456

 

SECR wagon stock at 31 Dec 1922: 12,125.

 

Hence my statement:

 

7 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

But the point still stands: the number of Midland 10 ton merchandise opens built to the end of 1922 exceeded  by several thousand the entire SECR wagon fleet at that date, as did the number of 12 ton mineral wagons.

 

I'm sorry if it wasn't sufficiently explicit that I was referring to Midland 12 ton mineral wagons, as well as Midland 10 ton merchandise wagons.

 

[Wickham Green too]

22 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

Midland 12 ton mineral wagons: .... Total: 18,456         SECR wagon stock at 31 Dec 1922: 12,125.

Apologies, I stand corrected ........................ in fact I'll stand up and get myself some supper !

[Compound2632]

8 hours ago, Wickham Green too said:

Er  -  at the end of 1922 the number of 12 to mineral wagons was pretty small : eventually they did greatly outnumbered virtually (?) everything else, largely because of the RCH 1923 standards.

 

I've been directed to article N715B, p.88 in Len Tavender's Coal Trade Wagons. This tabulates the numbers of PO wagons by capacity, for various dates. This gives the following totals for 12 ton wagons; I've also converted these to percentages of the total number of PO wagons:

 

1897: nil

1907: 20,586, 5%

1918: 108,667, 20%

1928: 191,937, 34%

1938: 269,782, 46%

 

So even by 1907, there were more 12 ton PO wagons than SECR wagons. What is striking, though, is that even by 1938, not only were 12 ton wagons not a majority of PO wagons but there were outnumbered by 10 ton PO wagons.

 

[Dunsignalling]

8 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

I've been directed to article N715B, p.88 in Len Tavender's Coal Trade Wagons. This tabulates the numbers of PO wagons by capacity, for various dates. This gives the following totals for 12 ton wagons; I've also converted these to percentages of the total number of PO wagons:

 

1897: nil

1907: 20,586, 5%

1918: 108,667, 20%

1928: 191,937, 34%

1938: 269,782, 46%

 

So even by 1907, there were more 12 ton PO wagons than SECR wagons. What is striking, though, is that even by 1938, not only were 12 ton wagons not a majority of PO wagons but there were outnumbered by 10 ton PO wagons.

 

The 1907 percentage gives the clue to why 10-tonners still dominated in 1938 but that would have changed markedly in the ensuing decade.

 

10-tonners had, in absolutely vast numbers, become almost the universal size pre-WW1 and a fair proportion would have still been serviceable 30+ years later.

 

Timber-bodied mineral wagons generally had an economically repairable lifespan of around 40 years, though some owners didn't spend any more on them than was absolutely necessary. Others would have been planning to replace theirs with new, bigger wagons or switch to using railway company stock. Many older 10-tonners would therefore have been pretty ropey by the late 1930s.

 

Once under government control, I'd expect the worst of them to have been weeded out to prevent traffic disruption caused by failures. The ravages inflicted by high mileages and probable overloading would have seen off many more during the conflict.

 

12/13 tonners (generally newer) will have been prioritised for repair using the limited materials and manpower available. Their smaller brethren would thus be early candidates for replacement with steel-bodied MoWT (and later BR) mineral wagons. Not only through their age/condition, but also the need to move greater tonnages of coal while minimising extra movements and keeping train lengths within operational parameters.

 

John 

Edited June 1, 2022 by Dunsignalling

[Wickham Green too]

1 hour ago, Dunsignalling said:

.... Once under government control, I'd expect the worst of them to have been weeded out .....

Anything that couldn't be made fit to run would have been weeded out but the Government couldn't afford to reduce its coal wagon fleet significantly during the conflict while coastal shipping was in peril ..... once the war was over and 16 tonners arrived in huge numbers the the 10T coal wagon disappeared rapidly ( and any smaller stragglers ). 

[Dunsignalling]

31 minutes ago, Wickham Green too said:

Anything that couldn't be made fit to run would have been weeded out but the Government couldn't afford to reduce its coal wagon fleet significantly during the conflict while coastal shipping was in peril ..... once the war was over and 16 tonners arrived in huge numbers the the 10T coal wagon disappeared rapidly ( and any smaller stragglers ). 

Bear in mind, though, that 16-tonners were in production for the MoWT well before the war's end and, for the reasons I outlined earlier, larger wooden-bodied coal wagons would have been given priority.

 

A 10-tonner that was repairable in 1939, might well have deteriorated beyond main line use before war's end. It would be interesting to know what percentage of the coal fleet was still made up of 10-tonners in 1945/6, by which time most would have been over 30 years old.

 

Surprisingly large numbers of 1907 RCH specification wagons were supplied with a rating of 10-tons. Were any efforts made to uprate these during WW2? Presumably only the springs were different. 

 

I'd be surprised if anything smaller than 10-tons remained in traffic even by 1939/40 though there should have been plenty surviving as internal user wagons within collieries, dockyards, etc.

 

John

[Wickham Green too]

Uprating to 12T would have involved larger journals too* ....... and the frames of a ten tonner might not have taken the extra load - not to mention the volumetric difference.

 

* many 10 tonners were grease lubricated, of course - 12 tonners rarely if ever.

[Compound2632]

7 hours ago, Dunsignalling said:

Timber-bodied mineral wagons generally had an economically repairable lifespan of around 40 years, though some owners didn't spend any more on them than was absolutely necessary. Others would have been planning to replace theirs with new, bigger wagons or switch to using railway company stock. Many older 10-tonners would therefore have been pretty ropey by the late 1930s.

 

Once under government control, I'd expect the worst of them to have been weeded out to prevent traffic disruption caused by failures. The ravages inflicted by high mileages and probable overloading would have seen off many more during the conflict.

 

12/13 tonners (generally newer) will have been prioritised for repair using the limited materials and manpower available. Their smaller brethren would thus be early candidates for replacement with steel-bodied MoWT (and later BR) mineral wagons. Not only through their age/condition, but also the need to move greater tonnages of coal while minimising extra movements and keeping train lengths within operational parameters.

 

I've taken the liberty of highlighting phrases that flag to me that what you are saying is speculative. I'm not really at all well-up on post-grouping and especially post-nationalisation wagonry, so can't produce statistics to compare with your statements. I understand, though - and would be glad to have evidence cited to support this - that at nationalisation, wagons to the 1923 RCH specification were still a minority, just. That doesn't mean that 12 ton wagons (uprated to 13 tons) weren't a majority, given the number built before 1923.

 

7 hours ago, Dunsignalling said:

10-tonners had, in absolutely vast numbers, become almost the universal size pre-WW1 and a fair proportion would have still been serviceable 30+ years later.

 

Turning again to the data collated in Tavender, op. cit., it is true that at all five dates he gives, 12 ton wagons formed the largest fraction of the PO wagon fleet; what one sees is the decline of the 8 ton wagon and rise of the 12 ton wagon.

 

For 10-ton wagons:

 

1897: 37,815 (55%)

1907: 292,444 (70%)

1918: 339,220 (62%)

1928: 297,275 (53%)

1938: 272,901 (47%)

 

The 1918 and 1928 figures are from a 1929 report by the Standing Committee on Mineral Transport of the MoT and Mines Dept of the BoT; the 1938 figure Tavender takes from a 1974 magazine article by Don Rowland, so not a primary source, but I think we can have confidence in Rowland's research (even if one has to treat his conclusions with care).

 

The 1897 and 1907 figures are for new wagon registrations since 1887, so excludes wagons built before 1887. There were still such wagons running in 1907, the newest being only 20 years old, and dumb buffered wagons were not prohibited from working on main lines until 1913. I don't know what proportion of pre-1887 wagons were reconstructed (according to the RCH's definition of the term) and thus remained in traffic beyond 1913 to be included in the 1918 census. It is the 1897 numbers that significantly under-report the total number of PO wagons by not including wagons over ten years old. From my own observation, and in particular analysis of a minerals inwards ledger for Skipton covering a few years around 1897, the impression I have is that surviving pre-1887 wagons at that date were probably roughly half-and'half 8 ton and 10 ton capacity.

 

One might interpret the 12% decrease in the number of 10 ton wagons between 1918 and 1928 as indicating the final demise of reconstructed pre-1887 wagons, as they reached the age of around 40 years - but that is speculation on my part.

 

4 hours ago, Dunsignalling said:

I'd be surprised if anything smaller than 10-tons remained in traffic even by 1939/40 though there should have been plenty surviving as internal user wagons within collieries, dockyards, etc.

 

Tavender shows 28,114 8 ton wagons at the 1938 census, 5% of all PO wagons. Now, without further investigation, one does not know what the census included but my expectation is that it includes only wagons registered to run on railway company lines, i.e. excluded internal user wagons - but again, confirmation from someone with more knowledge of the post-grouping period would be welcome. Anecdotally, one is told by the PO wagon experts that smaller coal merchants (in terms of tonnage of coal handled, not personal stature) hung onto their 8 ton wagons for as long as they could, as being better suited for their business than wagons of larger capacity.

 

4 hours ago, Dunsignalling said:

Surprisingly large numbers of 1907 RCH specification wagons were supplied with a rating of 10-tons. Were any efforts made to uprate these during WW2? Presumably only the springs were different. 

 

The weight capacity of a wagon was determined by the size of the journals. Up-rating a 10 ton wagon to 12 tons would require new axles and axleboxes, I believe, as well as springs. There's then the question of whether the capacity by volume was enough for an extra two tons of coal. (All as @Wickham Green has said while I was typing - though if one looks at builder's photos, 12 ton wagons built before 1923 were generally built with grease axleboxes, the requirement for oil axleboxes being one of the distinctive features of the 1923 RCH specification.) My understanding is that the up-rating of 12 ton wagons to 13 tons was a paper exercise. 

 

All this is somewhat OT, other than to provide some context for the wagon ecosystem into which the really very small numbers of SE&CR D1347 (550), D1349 (150), and D1355 (2,121) wagons were released in the post-Great War years.

Edited June 1, 2022 by Compound2632

[Dunsignalling]

Thanks, an interesting insight into the thinking of wagon owners, and possibly a reiteration of the dislike the railway companies evidently had for their vehicles!

 

I hadn't considered the journal issue, but did wagons receive oil axle boxes if/when fully overhauled? Grease boxes seem to have been regarded as troublesome (at least by the Big Four). 

 

Presumably the large operators had formal regimes for upkeep. Would a wagon belonging to a smaller business just be patched up as required or replaced by a hired one whilst being dealt with more comprehensively? 

 

John

[Compound2632]

3 hours ago, Dunsignalling said:

Thanks, an interesting insight into the thinking of wagon owners, and possibly a reiteration of the dislike the railway companies evidently had for their vehicles!

 

On reflection, I was harsh in my treatment of your post, so I have gone through my post highlighting all the statements I made that are my interpretation or understanding but aren't fully evidenced; I will be glad of evidence either supporting or controverting them. It was you who started this interesting digression with your comment about the prevalence of Midland Wagons!

 

3 hours ago, Dunsignalling said:

I hadn't considered the journal issue, but did wagons receive oil axle boxes if/when fully overhauled? Grease boxes seem to have been regarded as troublesome (at least by the Big Four). 

 

I think, in general, not. I don't think one sees many photos of pre-1923-built PO wagons retrospectively given oil axleboxes. Wagons with grease axleboxes would inevitably have only worked in loose-coupled trains whose rate of progress was limited by other factors as well as lubrication - chiefly the ability (or otherwise) to stop - and continued to have scheduled stops for examination.

 

3 hours ago, Dunsignalling said:

Presumably the large operators had formal regimes for upkeep. Would a wagon belonging to a smaller business just be patched up as required or replaced by a hired one whilst being dealt with more comprehensively? 

 

Some of the larger operators - big colliery combines, the large coal factors such as Stephenson Clarke - owned their wagons and in many cases had their own wagon repair facilities; Thomas Moy, for example, was in the wagon building business at Peterborough as well as being a major coal factor in East Anglia.

 

Most operators were hirers rather than owners; this included the smaller coal merchants with a handful of wagons, by and large. In such cases it was usual to have a repair contract with the wagon firm from whom the wagon was hired; the bigger wagon building and financing firms had a large network of repair depots around the country. Also, private owner wagons could be repaired in a railway company's wagon repair shops - I recently came across the following in the minutes of the MR Carriage & Wagon Committee:

 

November 5th 1886

2053      Repairs to Private Owners’ Wagons

               Read the following letter from Mr Noble dated October 16th 1886 on this subject:-

Dear Sir,

               Will you be good enough to ask the Carriage and Wagon Committee kindly to consider whether it is not desirable in the interests of the Company that the minimum charge of 2s/6d which is now made for repairs to private wagons should be abandoned, and the actual cost only charged? We find that the Great Northern Company do not make any minimum charge and our Mr Briddon has seen several cases in which the charges are as low as 9d. One result of this difference of practice is that owners of wagons prefer to run them on the Great Northern Railway rather than upon our own lines whenever they can.

                                                            Yours truly

TG Clayton Esq                                 (sgd) John Noble

Derby

 

Resolved

               That the minimum charge … which has been in operation for many years, be for the future substituted by a charge of the actual cost only.

 

John Noble was the General Manager. I don't know whether such arrangements continued in the grouping period.

[lochlongside]

Bit of a seeker after knowledge here as to what I am looking at .....

I have a a query on colour (livery??) I know it is subjective but the 3 wagons described as being in in BR brown do look very dark to me - the ref nos are 5-pls  906007, 906017 and 7pl 907008 - and to me they look identical to the 7pl 907007 described as SR brown (pre-'36) but BR numbered.

In my ignorance from the differing description I expected the BR browns to be different to ex-SR brown (guessing here but horribly worn or even possibly more like the Bauxite of the BR livery gunpowder vans even though they are not vacuum braked). I realise BR did not necessarily repaint all non vac-braked wagons into grey immediately on  nationalisation (if ever !!) but are these wagons all actually depicting the same condition upon nationalisation. i.e. Are they all actually intended to represent BR style numbered wagons with number applied straight over their previous SR numbers but retaining the same old SR brown livery  - in which case why is 907007 described differently ?? I don't have an issue if this is so but would appreciate if anyone (Rapido ??) can clarify.

[Dunsignalling]

2 minutes ago, lochlongside said:

Bit of a seeker after knowledge here as to what I am looking at .....

I have a a query on colour (livery??) I know it is subjective but the 3 wagons described as being in in BR brown do look very dark to me - the ref nos are 5-pls  906007, 906017 and 7pl 907008 - and to me they look identical to the 7pl 907007 described as SR brown (pre-'36) but BR numbered.

In my ignorance from the differing description I expected the BR browns to be different to ex-SR brown (guessing here but horribly worn or even possibly more like the Bauxite of the BR livery gunpowder vans even though they are not vacuum braked). I realise BR did not necessarily repaint all non vac-braked wagons into grey immediately on  nationalisation (if ever !!) but are these wagons all actually depicting the same condition upon nationalisation. i.e. Are they all actually intended to represent BR style numbered wagons with number applied straight over their previous SR numbers but retaining the same old SR brown livery  - in which case why is 907007 described differently ?? I don't have an issue if this is so but would appreciate if anyone (Rapido ??) can clarify.

All SR brown with BR markings AFAIK, which would remain quite common through the first half of the 1950s. These wagons started disappearing soon after that, and some probably went for scrap still like it

 

In early BR days unfitted wagons didn't get repainted and any replacement planks were left as bare wood, as were new-build wagons, though the metal parts were painted.

 

Grey was used on steel-bodied mineral wagons but didn't begin to be widely applied overall to anything else for a few years after nationalisation.  

 

Being unfitted, these wagons would only have received BR bauxite in error. Unlikely, but not entirely unknown elsewhere.

 

John