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

[WFPettigrew]

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

"before sending to L.C.&D. or S.E. Co.'s consult Goods Manager".

 

Were they known wagon pinchers?!  I presume this is not just an issue with the Snow Hill etc tunnels - or was it?

 

 

On a possibly more serious note, with the armour plate wagons, mention of Barrow has rather predictably made me sit up and pay more attention.  The photos you've been able to post are for these wagons carrying other heavy items, but how would armour plate have been carried?  I am presuming in plate sections, but would they have used trestles or was it laid flat, and therefore limited to the possibilities of the various applicable loading gauges? Those numerous shipyards would have had demands for steel that surely would have been more regular than something that could be moved as an Out Of Gauge load?

 

All the best

 

Neil 

[Compound2632]

2 hours ago, jamie92208 said:

Interesting about armour plate.  Much of it was produced in Sheffield next to Midland metals. The main big shipyards were at Barrow in Furness, Midland and Then Furness railway,  Tyneside, Midkand the NER, Portsmouth, Midland thevprobably LSWR, The Clyde, Midland then probably GSWR, and London. Thus the Midland would probably get most of the traffic.  

 

1 hour ago, WFPettigrew said:

On a possibly more serious note, with the armour plate wagons, mention of Barrow has rather predictably made me sit up and pay more attention.  The photos you've been able to post are for these wagons carrying other heavy items, but how would armour plate have been carried?  I am presuming in plate sections, but would they have used trestles or was it laid flat, and therefore limited to the possibilities of the various applicable loading gauges? Those numerous shipyards would have had demands for steel that surely would have been more regular than something that could be moved as an Out Of Gauge load?

 

In the 1880s, when these armour plate wagons were first being ordered, and earlier, back to the 1860s, I think the demand was for iron plate for ironclads; by the 20th century, as the photos bear witness, there was also the need to move heavy naval guns, made at Sheffield and Coventry. I suspect that the armour plate to Barrow only really started to take off after the 1880s, as the Furness iron ore deposits got worked out. 

 

The photographs tend to concentrate on the more unusual (and out of gauge) loads; I'm not sure I've seen any showing the transport of ordinary armour plate. The 40 ton trucks had six substantial shackles per side, so perhaps laid flat, maybe with timber separating the plates, and chains run over the top to secure the lot?

 

On the subject of naval guns, the Diagram of various Trucks of special construction also features No. 117106, truck to carry 50-ton guns, built to Drg. 1357 as lot 466, entered on 15 May 1899:

 

 

This had been ordered by Traffic Committee minute No. 30935 of 16 March 1899 as an addition to stock and was approved the following month. P. Ellis had prepared a drawing, Drg. 1331, in January 1899; this does not survive. He made a second drawing, Drg. 1357, in July; following which other members of the drawing office team made a series of detail drawings. Drg. 1357 is in the Study Centre collection [MRSC 88-D0054]; I have not seen this but I suppose it depicts the truck as seen in the above diagram. Midland Wagons plate 347 illustrates this original condition.

 

The diagram D331 reproduced in Midland Wagons fig. 175 shows a rebuilt No. 110706, uprated to 60 tons:

 

 

[Embedded link to catalogue thumbnail of MRSC 64069].

 

Looking through the drawing register, this seems to have been done in two stages. Drg. 2709 of December 1906 is entitled "Alteration of Gun Truck to Carry Guns up to 60 Tons" [MRSC 88-D2083]; again I've not seen this but squinting at a low-res image of MRSC 12300, which is the next iteration of the Diagram of various Trucks of special construction, I think this involved replacement of the 8-wheel bogie by the articulated pair of 4-wheel bogies seen in the photo, but retaining the full-length platform. Then in July 1907 came Drg. 2850, "Alteration to 60 Ton Gun truck to work around 1 Chain Curve" [MRSC 88-D1041]; I've not seen this on either but I suppose it covers the transfer of the buffer beam to the outermost bogie. (A one chain curve is about half Hornby third radius...) This is all rather circumstantial, I'm afraid, until I have seen those drawings.

 

Then there's that behemoth the 100-ton gun truck No. 9696, ordered as an addition to stock at an estimated cost of £1,000 by Traffic Committee minute No. 36085 of 3 November 1911, described as a "set of three wagons"and built as lot 779 to Drg. 3554. There must have been a good deal of trouble with this, as detail drawings were being made in mid-1912. The Study Centre copy of Drg. 3554 [88-D1288] is dated November 1915 and catalogued as "Arrangement of Gun Set No. 9696 to Carry 108 Tons Evenly Distributed Scale 1' [Believed to be a redrawn version of 3544 which was originally a 100 Ton Gun truck of 1911]"

 

There was also the arrangement of three 40-ton armour plate wagons to carry 65-ton guns, mentioned above. Looking through my notes, I am reminded of Traffic Committee minute No. 35186 of August 1908:

 

              The General Manager reported an arrangement come to by the principal Railway Companies with the Admiralty Authorities under which six sets of trucks and fittings suitable for the conveyance of 65-ton guns will, on three days’ notice, be available for use by the Department in case of emergency for the conveyance of such guns by the Companies’ railways subject to certain conditions including the obligation to pay a retaining fee of £20 per set of vehicles and fittings per annum.

               Under the arrangement the Midland company are to find two sets of vehicles. One of these sets is already supplied with suitable fittings, but the other is not. It was, therefore, resolved that fittings be provide for the latter in accordance with the plan produced, at an estimated cost of £85, and the matter was referred to the Carriage & Wagon Committee.

 

So this may account for the set photographed being made up of Nos. 41626, 41624, and 116068, while the special wagon list gives 116070/1/4.

[jamie92208]

I suspect that Armour plate would normally be in fairly flat sections.  Actual armour was added to the ship after the hull had bern launched and was bolted onto the hull, which had been built with stepped recesses to take it. The plates were not rolled or shaped once the initial casting was done.  I suspect that they were designed to fit within the loading gauge.  

 

The 1 chain curve specification is probably to ensure that the gun wagons can be taken dockside to the fitting out berths in the shipyard so that the guns could be lifted straight off the wagon onto the ship. Again that was done after the hull was launched.

 

Jamie

Edited February 12, 2023 by jamie92208

[billbedford]

2 hours ago, jamie92208 said:

The 1 chain curve soecification is probably to ensure that the gun wagons can be taken dockside to the fitti g out berths in the shipyard so that the guns could be lifted straight off the wagon onto the ship. Again that was done after the hull was launched.

 

Gun barrels had a limited life, so they were swopped out throughout the life of the ship. 

[jamie92208]

2 minutes ago, billbedford said:

 

Gun barrels had a limited life, so they were swopped out throughout the life of the ship. 

Yes I hadn't mentioned that but the fairly regular replacements  would also have had to traverse dockside sidings.  

 

Jamie

[WFPettigrew]

11 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

I suspect that the armour plate to Barrow only really started to take off after the 1880s, as the Furness iron ore deposits got worked out. 

 

Thanks Stephen. 

 

I suspect there may also be issues around the metallurgical quality of the finished product - certainly by some point in the 20th century the shipyards would have realised that buying bog standard steel from the local works (Barrow had its steelworks til the 1980s) wouldn't cut the mustard for a specialist application like a submarine hull, armour plating, whatever.   I don't know when such expertise first came to the fore, but I would observe that Barrow steelworks became famous even in FR days for making railway rails which were exported around the world, rather than making steel for the hungry shipyard one mile to the south.  

 

So, I suspect that there may have been more to this than simply the ore fields being worked out.  The biggest deposits were still being mined up uptil circa the Second World War other than Hodbarrow at Millom (the biggest ore sop of them all) which finally closed in 1969. 

 

All the best

 

Neil 

 

[jamie92208]

Armour plate and gun barrel production were both long and laborious tasks. Both were long lead items. IIRC about 18 months.  The majority of a ship was made from standard mild steel plate which could be produced at Barrow.  Thus Sheffield and I think one of the Clydeside works became the centres for the production of armour plate.  They were even classed at national strategic assets during the interwar depressions and certain works got subsidies to survive.  Thus most armour plate need rail transport to the shipyards.  

 

Jamie

[Compound2632]

I did some time ago read up on warship production in the two or three decades before the Great War - I think it was chiefly Barrow and Tyneside. As I recall, a good number of battleships of the Japanese Navy at the time of the 1905 war were British-built, so it wasn't only Royal Navy procurement driving the armour plate and naval gun industries.

[jamie92208]

16 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

I did some time ago read up on warship production in the two or three decades before the Great War - I think it was chiefly Barrow and Tyneside. As I recall, a good number of battleships of the Japanese Navy at the time of the 1905 war were British-built, so it wasn't only Royal Navy procurement driving the armour plate and naval gun industries.

Plus, Chile, Brazil Argentina and Turkey.  The latter's crew on Tyneside were evicted at baynet point by the Royal Navy at the outbreak of WW1.

 

Most of the others were completed and commissioned into the RN then given back to their owners after the war.

 

Jamie

[jamie92208]

Some time ago I posted a photo of some D299's and other wagons at Glasson Dock near Lancaster.  There was some speculation as to how they ended up there. Amongst them was a New Ingleton Collieries wagon.  I've jyst been doing some research for a tal and in the history of the Ingleton coalfield there is mention of Slack Cial from the New Ingleton mine being sent to France in 1921.  This could well be part of this traffic.  No doubt the Frebch were grateful  for some slack.

 

Jamie

[Andy Hayter]

Slack coal was probably converted to briquettes - oblong compressed lumps.  Widely used on the railways of the time and indeed still* available at my DIY merchant for home use.

 

*at least it was a couple of years ago but with ever demanding eco-regs, perhaps no longer.

[WFPettigrew]

4 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

As I recall, a good number of battleships of the Japanese Navy at the time of the 1905 war were British-built

Correct, and certainly some of those were built in Barrow.  A number of the residential streets on Walney Island which were built at the same time were named after said ships - including Mikasa Street, named after the surviving battleship.

 

https://www.kinenkan-mikasa.or.jp/en/

[WFPettigrew]

4 hours ago, jamie92208 said:

Argentina

 

Including relatively recently - which then presented a bit of an issue when there was a little local difficulty in the Falkland Islands.. 

[jamie92208]

36 minutes ago, WFPettigrew said:

 

Including relatively recently - which then presented a bit of an issue when there was a little local difficulty in the Falkland Islands.. 

Yes, Vickets had a nice little line in salesmanship.  Each South American one had 2 more guns than the one sold to their neighbour, thus, IIRC the Argentinian one, had 14, fourteen inch guns, all of which could fire to either side.  Apparently,  when it became HMS Erin, I think, not only were the officers impressed by the luxury in their quarters, but the captain got teased that the ship would turn turtle if they fired all the guns at the same time. However at Jutland there was no problem and she fired several 14 gun broadsides at Scheer's fleet.

 

Jamie

[Compound2632]

The economics of wagon kit building differs little from that of real wagon building in the 19th century. I mentioned a while back how the finalising of the 1887 RCH wagon specification got bogged down in an argument about tyre profile and back-to-back between Mr. Emmet and Mr. Clayton. Now I've just taken delivery of a batch of wheels - 36 axles - from Alan Gibson. Most of our wagon kits come without wheels; just so, when the Midland was ordering wagons from the trade (up to c. 1875), what was quoted for was the price of wagons without wheels, axles, and bearing and buffing springs, these items being tendered for separately. The typical total price of a wagon was about £60, of which something around £40 was the price from the builder and £20 the cost of the specialist ironwork. That's not far off the proportion for our kits!

[41516]

I'm prototypical in re-using wheelsets from old/scrapped wagons to go under new-builds and keep the costs lower...

[sharris]

21 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 just so, when the Midland was ordering wagons from the trade (up to c. 1875), what was quoted for was the price of wagons without wheels, axles, and bearing and buffing springs…

But I bet when the Midland received their wagon ‘kits’, they didn’t come with rudimentary tension lock couplings that were instantly thrown away.

[Compound2632]

18 minutes ago, 41516 said:

I'm prototypical in re-using wheelsets from old/scrapped wagons to go under new-builds and keep the costs lower...

 

That's prototypical so long as you're not wanting to use wheels off 8-ton wagons under your 12-ton wagons. 

[Compound2632]

On 11/02/2023 at 18:26, Compound2632 said:

No. 11019 is therefore the single renewal of lot 416. It would have replaced a wagon built in the second half of 1864. It's possible that that was the 30 ton wagon discussed in October 1893, and not 10018.

 

I now have a high-res scan of the 1889 version of the Diagrams of various Trucks of special construction, courtesy of Dave Harris at the Midland Railway Study Centre. This confirms that 40-ton armour plate wagon No. 11019, the single renewal vehicle of lot 419 of July 1897, replaced the 30-ton wagon of 1864 (which had a some point been up-rated to 40 tons):

 

 

[Compressed crop from scan of MRSC 28524-009].

 

The construction of this vehicle evidently has something in common with the locomotive tender frames of the time. 

 

It also featured in S.W. Johnson's Presidential Address to the I. Mech. E in 1898:

 

 

[Crop from Plate 6 of the Presidential Address, DY4355, MRSC 88-4538-0001].

 

The antecedent of the one-off trolley No. 10018 of 1884 remains unidentified. As noted above, the wagon diagram book gives this as a 40 ton trolley, D308, but in Johnson's Address it is described as a 50-ton truck and on the 1889 Diagrams of various Trucks of special construction as a "long armour plate truck" without indication of capacity. The c. 1907 version, which I also now have high-res, states "Will not take curve 2 chains radius";* for the long 30-ton trolleys, D309, it says "Takes curve 3 chains radius" - the fruit of practical experience?

 

*Hornby 3rd radius, approx. But I bet it would in 00, with under-scale width over the wheels!  

[Compound2632]

@WFPettigrew, the c. 1907 version of the diagram sheet has, for the D328 40-ton armour plate wagons, the instruction "Not to be loaded with greater weight than 26 tons to the Furness Line".

[Compound2632]

More specially-constructed truck delights.

 

The LNWR evidently dominated the transport of plate glass, thanks to being first in at St Helens - glass wagons get a whole chapter to themselves in LNWR Wagons Vol. 1, although it's not obvious from that how many there were at any time.

 

In Midland Wagons, we find but four: three 6-ton vehicles to D323 and one 10-ton to D723; the constructional diferences being, apparently, confined to larger journals running in oil axleboxes, and self-contained buffers. Rather than the metal frame with screw clamps to hold the packing case in place, as used on the LNWR wagons, there is a timber frame:

 

 

[Embedded link to catalogue thumbnail of MRSC 64085].

 

The 10-ton wagon, No. 546, was built as lot 819, one of a group of 22 assorted special wagons authorised as additions to stock in December 1912. One of the 6-ton wagons, No. 117107, was also an addition to stock, lot 482 authorised in November 1899. The first two of this design had been built as renewals, lot 270 of February 1891. They appear on the 1898 and subsequent versions of the Diagrams of various Trucks of special construction:

 

 

[Compressed crop from scan of MRSC 28314].

 

Their numbers were 16706 and 16707, which would first have been given to wagons built in the second half of 1869. Locomotive Committee minute No. 5,936 of 6 April 1869 records:

 

Two Additional Wagons for Glass Crates

               Read minute of the Traffic Committee requesting the Locomotive Committee to provide two additional wagons for carrying Glass Crates.

               Mr Kirtley submitted plans of the same and explained that each wagon would cost about £85.

               Resolved

                              That the same be constructed in the Company’s Workshops.

 

(I'm confident that "additional" means, wagons to be built as additions to the total wagon stock, not as additions to an existing stock of glass wagons, which I think must have been nil.)

 

According to Kirtley's monthly returns (to the Locomotive Committee) of wagons built, these were constructed one in August and the other in September 1869.

 

As they weren't renewed until 1891, they appear on the 1889 version of the Diagrams of various Trucks of special construction:

 

 

[Compressed crop from scan of MRSC 28524-009].

 

Now that is something completely different. It appears to me to have a framework either side of the central well, 3' 10" wide by about 9' deep - not so very different in concept from the later wagons - but with high sides with three panels of X-bracing, forming screens, it would seem. Drawings, or even dimensions, of rolling stock from Kirtley's time are pretty rare, about the only sources being Johnson's Presidential Address to the I. Mech. E., a handful of Metropolitan RC&W Co. drawings (tracings of Derby originals) for stock built by that firm, and these special wagon diagram sheets. 

 

Even more intriguingly, this style of construction has some similarity to that of the earliest LNWR glass wagons, D40 of 1877 and D41 of 1883, these also having high sides and an arc profile to the ends. Unfortunately the diagrams reproduced in LNWR Wagons Vol. 1 don't show any details of any interior framework, though it is noted that the long D41 wagons had double doors at each end, and the shorter D40 type, at one end only. The D40 wagons were of similar dimensions to the Midland wagons, about 18' long, with 10' wheelbase and well 17' 3" long by 3' 8" wide. In LNWR Wagons, it is noted that the height of the sides were such that "an 8 ft high case could be packed out with wood, chained down and sheeted over" and of the end doors "so that the case could be lifted in or out by a standard yard crane, which usually had a height limit of about 15 ft above rail level and could not lift the load over the sides". 

 

What is odd is that these LNWR glass wagons appeared some eight years after the Midland pair - usually it seems to have been the case that the Midland followed the LNWR's lead when it came to wagons for specific traffics. No photos of either the Midland pair or the early LNWR type are known to me.

[Schooner]

1 minute ago, Compound2632 said:

Glass Crates.

Not every Vicotrian innovation was genius, eh? Glad we moved on to the use of softwood pretty sharpish.

[Compound2632]

5 minutes ago, Schooner said:

Not every Vicotrian innovation was genius, eh? Glad we moved on to the use of softwood pretty sharpish.

 

Crates, glass for the conveyance of, in.

[jamie92208]

Funnily enough in research for a certain talk that I have to give there is mention of traffic from the Eden Valley mines to St Helens and somewhere in Glasgow. Soft white stone, Gypsum IIRC for polishing plate glass. Loads for D299's perhaps.

 

Jamie

Edited February 13, 2023 by jamie92208

[Dave John]

There was early glassmaking at Finneston in Glasgow and some at Dumbarton, though I don't think it was plate glass.

 

Plenty of interesting wagons to keep you scratch building there Compound.