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

[Lochgorm]

Can anyone explain the 3 spherical (?) objects on the tank top just in front of the cab of 2255?

 

 Charlie 

[Compound2632]

17 minutes ago, Lochgorm said:

Can anyone explain the 3 spherical (?) objects on the tank top just in front of the cab of 2255?

 

What you are seeing are the lenses of three headlamps neatly line up there. It seems to have been common practice to store lamps not in use with the lens facing sideways - I've seen the same in photos of Great Western engines of the period. I suppose this prevented any reflection off the glass being accidentally mistaken for an engine or signal lamp. Or perhaps it just meant they could be lined up neatly!

[magmouse]

59 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

The leading two-plank wagon looks very Great Western-ish.

Yes, indeed - the loop at the bottom of the brake lever guard is pretty distinctive, as is the curved brake lever and chunky rectangular grease axle boxes.

 

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

The second covered goods wagon is, I think, Cambrian

I probably know rather less about Cambrian vans than most people, but the letter at the right hand end looks more like an M than anything.

 

I think you underestimate your dog-spotting skills - I also think it’s a red setter.

 

Nick.

 

[Lochgorm]

5 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

What you are seeing are the lenses of three headlamps neatly line up there. It seems to have been common practice to store lamps not in use with the lens facing sideways - I've seen the same in photos of Great Western engines of the period. I suppose this prevented any reflection off the glass being accidentally mistaken for an engine or signal lamp. Or perhaps it just meant they could be lined up neatly!

Thanks.  Alles klar!

[magmouse]

5 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

I suppose this prevented any reflection off the glass being accidentally mistaken for an engine or signal lamp. Or perhaps it just meant they could be lined up neatly!

It probably also reduced the likelihood of the lenses getting chipped, banging against the adjacent lamps, or the spectacle plate.

 

Were the lamps held in position in any way?

 

Nick.

[Compound2632]

21 minutes ago, Mikkel said:

Discrete but stylish. Very nice.

 

Just to be clear, I've not doctored the picture. It's a postcard published by Valentines, of which the Study Centre has several copies but only this one issued as a Christmas card. See here for the ultimate guide to Midland postcards.

[Compound2632]

7 hours ago, Lochgorm said:

Thanks.  Alles klar!

 

BR locomotive headlamp, virtually unchanged from the Midland design:

 

 

[Embedded link to catalogue photo of MRSC item 16795]

 

The other example I've found in the collection is painted white. What colour were they in Midland days?

[drduncan]

10 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

The leading two-plank wagon looks very Great Western-ish.

 

I’m not so sure. There doesn’t appear to be any lettering at either the left or right hand ends of the bottom plank, which one would expect. Also no number between the end stanchions. The basic outline does look GW, two wide planks, outside V, curved brake lever, but I suspect a good few 2 planks of various ancestry would look similar to this at a similar angle. 
Duncan

[magmouse]

12 minutes ago, drduncan said:

I’m not so sure. There doesn’t appear to be any lettering at either the left or right hand ends of the bottom plank, which one would expect. Also no number between the end stanchions. The basic outline does look GW, two wide planks, outside V, curved brake lever, but I suspect a good few 2 planks of various ancestry would look similar to this at a similar angle. 
Duncan

The lack of visible lettering is certainly odd, but the shape of the brake lever guard - especially the loop at the bottom - is very distinctively GW. Curious….

 

Nick.

[Compound2632]

16 minutes ago, drduncan said:

I’m not so sure. There doesn’t appear to be any lettering at either the left or right hand ends of the bottom plank, which one would expect. Also no number between the end stanchions. The basic outline does look GW, two wide planks, outside V, curved brake lever, but I suspect a good few 2 planks of various ancestry would look similar to this at a similar angle. 

 

Also the axleboxes, ribbed buffers, and bolt pattern on the corner plates are consistent with it being Great Western. I don't believe the invisibility of the lettering is particularly significant, given the angle the wagon is being viewed at. It's grubby.

 

One also has to consider context. It's not a Midland wagon. Can it be ruled out as Cambrian? What else might one find in the vicinity? What did Neath & Brecon and Brecon & Merthyr wagons of the last quarter of the 19th century look like?

 

I'd say that if it looks like a Great Western wagon, the most probable inference is that it is a Great Western wagon!

[Rail-Online]

39 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Also the axleboxes, ribbed buffers, and bolt pattern on the corner plates are consistent with it being Great Western. I don't believe the invisibility of the lettering is particularly significant, given the angle the wagon is being viewed at. It's grubby.

 

One also has to consider context. It's not a Midland wagon. Can it be ruled out as Cambrian? What else might one find in the vicinity? What did Neath & Brecon and Brecon & Merthyr wagons of the last quarter of the 19th century look like?

 

I'd say that if it looks like a Great Western wagon, the most probable inference is that it is a Great Western wagon!

My best guess is a B&M wagon, I have a vague recolection of a photo of one of their low sided wagons, but I cannot recall where!

 

Tony

[Rail-Online]

Here is a nice 'edge of neg' photo of some Stephenson Clarke wagons at Battersea in 1920.

The interesting thing is they all appear to be loaded with bricks - the hard blue type with curved tops for 'edging'

 

The return loacation is Aberdare and someone has written 'Please' above the Empty to instruction!

 

Tony

[drduncan]

42 minutes ago, Rail-Online said:

My best guess is a B&M wagon, I have a vague recolection of a photo of one of their low sided wagons, but I cannot recall where!

 

Tony

I confess I was thinking along those lines, or any company that went in for ownership/number plates on the solebars.

[Nick Lawson]

On 18/12/2022 at 22:57, magmouse said:

Were Norway poles of uniform diameter?

Dredging back more than half a century a long unused neuron has fired and remembered that in one of the Swallows and Amazons stories written in the 1930s, the dinghy Swallow suffers a broken mast and a Norway Pole is supplied to make a new one; so no it was just a generic term for this sort of timber.

[MarcD]

I don't think it's a Cambrian wagon as the bolts are in the wrong position. It could be an early GWR 2 plank there is one in the big white book of wagons that is pretty close. Very little is known about them apart from the build date of 1875-80. 

I'm not a GWR wagon expert so I wait to be corrected. 

As for some of the smaller Welsh companies they did have a tendency to copy GWR designs so it could be one of them.

Marc

[jamie92208]

11 hours ago, Nick Lawson said:

Dredging back more than half a century a long unused neuron has fired and remembered that in one of the Swallows and Amazons stories written in the 1930s, the dinghy Swallow suffers a broken mast and a Norway Pole is supplied to make a new one; so no it was just a generic term for this sort of timber.

Norway Poles were also the term used by the Midland Railway for the poles used to hold up the Overhead Line Equipment on the Lancaster Morecambe  Heysham Electrification.  Marc's post above caused one of my neuron's to fire and I remembered  the above.  The poles were 21' long and I think 12" diameter at the base. Tapering to 8".

Jamie

Edited December 24, 2022 by jamie92208

[Dave Hunt]

6 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

BR locomotive headlamp, virtually unchanged from the Midland design:

 

 

[Embedded link to catalogue photo of MRSC item 16795]

 

The other example I've found in the collection is painted white. What colour were they in Midland days?

 

I don't think that all were the same. Certainly express passenger engines had them painted crimson lake with the engine number on them in yellow but whether that was the case right up to 1923 I can't say. Apart from photographic evidence that at least some of them on guard's vans were white I'm afraid that I can't add more. Regarding the orientation of lamps not in use, it is notable that guard's vans, brake coaches, tariff brakes etc. had lamp holders on the sides, suggesting that it was indeed a rule that out of use lamps had to face sideways to avoid possible confusion.

 

Dave

[corneliuslundie]

I know little about the wagons of the N&B though at the Grouping it seems to have had fewer than 200 wagons of which perhaps two dozen may have been vans. But the location of the photo makes this company a possible contender.

I don't know much about B&M wagons eithir though its fleet in 1922 was much bigger at around 750, but here is one I made earlier:

from a kit or course.

Probably not a lot of help.

I didn't comment on the likelihood of Cambrian provenance as there is so little visible, though of course there would be no identification on the sides if it were.

Jonathan 

[Penlan]

5 minutes ago, corneliuslundie said:

I know little about the wagons of the N&B though at the Grouping it seems to have had fewer than 200 wagons of which perhaps two dozen may have been vans.

In 1917 the Railway Year book gives the total goods stock as 97 vehicles.

I don't think there were that many (<24) Vans either, I think I've only ever seen one photo with a N&B Van in it, but that has had doubt cast on it by somebody better versed in the N&B than I.  
The main stock seems to have been 2 / 3 plank wagons and single bolster wagons.
I'm sure Mr. Miles will be along soon to add something to this.
Re. Baltic poles etc., I'm sure I've mentioned it in this topic before, but I use to have a 100ft long hedge which needed regular trimming, especially on the height, and I would leave the arisings on top for a couple of weeks to dry out (Summer time?) and then clean off the stems etc., leaving the bark on, trim to length, no preservatives, and after 40+ years they are still looking good with their bark on - Pit Props in my wagons.
 
 

[John-Miles]

1 hour ago, Penlan said:

In 1917 the Railway Year book gives the total goods stock as 97 vehicles.

I don't think there were that many (<24) Vans either, I think I've only ever seen one photo with a N&B Van in it, but that has had doubt cast on it by somebody better versed in the N&B than I.  
The main stock seems to have been 2 / 3 plank wagons and single bolster wagons.
I'm sure Mr. Miles will be along soon to add something to this.
Re. Baltic poles etc., I'm sure I've mentioned it in this topic before, but I use to have a 100ft long hedge which needed regular trimming, especially on the height, and I would leave the arisings on top for a couple of weeks to dry out (Summer time?) and then clean off the stems etc., leaving the bark on, trim to length, no preservatives, and after 40+ years they are still looking good with their bark on - Pit Props in my wagons.
 
 

Very nice of you Sandy to quote me as being an expert on N&B wagons but you seem to know  more than I do.

[John-Miles]

I have now looked through my collection of N&B stock photos. I can't find any vans, that's not to say they didn't have any. Images of N&B stock are like hen's teeth. I few pictures below, hopefully they will be of use. The first image I think is taken at Cadoxton yard, the second GR&CW.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 24, 2022 by John-Miles
error

[MarcD]

The look like midland 3planks!

Marc

[John-Miles]

59 minutes ago, MarcD said:

The look like midland 3planks!

Marc

Wait for the expert!! I have no record of the N&B buying Midland second hand (the B&M did).

Edited December 24, 2022 by John-Miles
typo, been to the pub

[Compound2632]

8 hours ago, MarcD said:

I don't think it's a Cambrian wagon as the bolts are in the wrong position. It could be an early GWR 2 plank there is one in the big white book of wagons that is pretty close. Very little is known about them apart from the build date of 1875-80. 

I'm not a GWR wagon expert so I wait to be corrected. 

As for some of the smaller Welsh companies they did have a tendency to copy GWR designs so it could be one of them.

 

I'm sticking with Great Western. The "Bible" is thin on 19th century wagons; my source is Tony Wood, Saltney Carriage and Wagon Works (GWSG / The Wider View, 2007) which gives full details of wagons built there up to 1874. It was upon dimensions and photos therein that I based my 1870s wagons:

 

 

I see no reason to suppose that the wagon in the Devynock photo is not one of this sort and am beginning to regret the hare started by my use of a question mark!

 

1 hour ago, MarcD said:

The look like midland 3planks!

 

57 minutes ago, John-Miles said:

Wait for the expert!!

 

There is a series of articles on Midland lowside wagons recent numbers of the Midland Railway Society Journal. These N&B dropside wagons have the hinges bolted towards the bottom of the siderail; on Midland wagons they are fixed near the top:

 

 

[MRSC item 88-G5/8 cropped]

 

Another feature of the N&B wagons that is distinctively different is the bolt pattern of the end knees. I would say that these N&B wagons look like the Midland ones to the extent that all 3-plank dropside wagons are similar. The fun is in the differences!

 

1 hour ago, John-Miles said:

I have no record of the N&B buying Midland second had (the B&M did).

 

Neither is there any record of direct sales to the N&B or B&M in the Midland C&W Committee minutes but there were large quantities of second-hand stock - mostly 8-ton highside wagons, D299 or possibly D351 - sold to dealers. The principal of these was J.F. Wake of Darlington. The Midland carriages that the B&M bought were obtained through him; their sale to him was minuted on 18 December 1918: eight thirds at £200 each, three composites at £220 each, and three passenger brake vans at £160 each, total £2,740. It would be interesting to know how much the B&M paid for them!

[Compound2632]

6 hours ago, Dave Hunt said:

I don't think that all were the same. Certainly express passenger engines had them painted crimson lake with the engine number on them in yellow but whether that was the case right up to 1923 I can't say. Apart from photographic evidence that at least some of them on guard's vans were white I'm afraid that I can't add more. Regarding the orientation of lamps not in use, it is notable that guard's vans, brake coaches, tariff brakes etc. had lamp holders on the sides, suggesting that it was indeed a rule that out of use lamps had to face sideways to avoid possible confusion.

 

Looking through the selection of lamps in the MRSC collection, I get the impression that locomotive headlamps and guard's brake lamps were of different design:

 

 

[Embedded link to catalogue image of MRSC item 10703, described as:

Restored brake van side lamp with reservoir and BR/LMR burner. Body painted black. Plate "Midland Railway Petroleum Lamp 3192 Mortons Patent"]

 

This and similar lamps have brackets on the sides so they could use the side-facing brackets, which were the usual ones used, as the engine crew had to be able to see the forward-facing aspect to know their train was intact. Good photos of the rear end of Midland goods trains are like hens' teeth; the best exist thanks to the Lickey Banker:

 

 

[Embedded link to catalogue image of MRSC 81528.]