A question of wagons, when and where were they found?

[br-nse-fan]

32 minutes ago, Dungrange said:

I think the proportions are roughly LMS - 8, LNER - 7, GWR - 2, SR - 1.

 

Truthfully, those are some staggering numbers in my mind.. lol.. I had no idea it was as skewed as that.  But, I guess it makes sense why BR adopted so many LNER and LMS designs.

 

So I guess for every twenty wagons, as was previously mentioned... you'd have 10 private owner and then the company wagons as noted here.  The smaller the number of wagons, the less likely that there would even be GW or SR?

[Il Grifone]

11 hours ago, Steamport Southport said:

Also if GWR then only the dark ones are correct with some slight fading to a medium grey after a few years. The GWR never had light grey wagons and any models (or even preserved ones) painted as such are wrong!

 

I'm afraid some older models and Dapol can fall into that trap. This is far too light IMHO.

 

https://railsofsheffield.com/products/Dapol-4f-071-178-7-plank-gwr-06545

 

Brief rundown on GWR wagon livery.

 

http://www.gwr.org.uk/liverieswagongrey.html

 

 

Jason

 

The shade of grey is the least of the objections to that effort! (Yes it is wrong!)

These things almost invariably had a 9 foot wheelbase wooden underframe and I don't think the GWR ever owned any! The cross shaft between the two sets of brake gear is missing (there would only be one set on these wagons, unless the wagon had bottom doors, which this one hasn't).

(I could be wrong and would welcome correction from anyone who knows better.)

 

Distribution of wagons depended very much on area. I used to live near Clifton Down Station in Bristol (1950s - before the goods yard became a supermarket!), Looking at the wagon distribution there one would think that the railway only owned coal wagons. Passing trains had a high proportion of banana vans going to and from Avonmouth Docks.

Small lettering came in in the mid 30s - see the Hornby Dublo range released in 1938. The 0 gauge range from the twenties had the larger lettering (don't follow this too slavishly the real thing did not have gold lettering!).

BR thought the LNER idea of different colours for fitted and non-fitted wagons was a 'good idea' and copied it, though the shades chosen were different. Rumour has it that they were large stocks of warship grey left over that needed to be used up....

From what I remember, milk tanks wore a livery of brown muck with no evidence of ownership.

Edited Tuesday at 08:58 by Il Grifone

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

8 hours ago, br-nse-fan said:

Truthfully, those are some staggering numbers in my mind.. lol.. I had no idea it was as skewed as that...

You can escape the oft observed GWR layout tweeness of every company wagon branded GW with this knowledge. Applies even more strongly to SR of which it was written by C. Hamilton Ellis early in the grouping period 'the SR freight train, in which the only wagon belonging to that company was the guard's brake van'.

8 hours ago, br-nse-fan said:

But, I guess it makes sense why BR adopted so many LNER and LMS designs.

Not least of the influence in this was that the LMS and LNER recognised by about 1929 that their (majority) interest in UK wagon provision made it sensible to construct common designs.

 

The one major BR misfire was standardising on cupboard door vans, which were not suitable for a significant proportion of traffic in the North due to very small clearances typical of rail served premises from Yorkshire and Lancashire and further North. The sliding door van was well established in the pre-group period in these locations.

[Cwmtwrch]

40 minutes ago, Il Grifone said:

The shade of grey is the least of the objections to that effort! (Yes it is wrong!)

These things almost invariably had a 9 foot wheelbase wooden underframe and I don't think the GWR ever owned any! The cross shaft between the two sets of brake gear is missing (there would only be one set on these wagons, unless the wagon had bottom doors, which this one hasn't).

(I could be wrong and would welcome correction from anyone who knows better.)

Yes, the Dapol wagon should have a cross shaft, as it is a 4-shoe Morton underframe, but the normal type for RCH 13T mineral opens was two independent sets of brake shoes, both with plain levers and the same way round, so that a cross shaft was mechanically impossible. The presence [usual] or absence [less common] of bottom doors didn't affect that [I've never seen a photo of an RCH 13T mineral with 2-shoe or 4-shoe Morton, but I would not want say it never happened]. Steel underframes were an option, and became more common from the 1920s onwards.

 

The GWR did have just over 100 wood bodied loco coal wagons, obtained second hand, possibly as part of a wider deal; given their age they probably didn't last very long. They were given diagram N33. Also, if I remember correctly, a number starting with a zero means an internal user only wagon, which, post-grouping, could have originated with any of the constituent companies.

[melmerby]

If you look in "Great Western Way" It states that the only GWR paint colour that wasn't specified was goods wagon grey, as it was mixed locally.

Normally it was 7/8 black & 1/8 white but there was plenty of variation in actual colour.

In WW2 shortages meant light battleship grey was also used, which was observed by J.N. Maskelyne, as well as LMS Bauxite and GWR coach brown.

[Steven B]

Take a look at images (online and in books) and videos (YouTube & DVD) for the era and locations you're interested in modelling. Wagon types will change depending on both.

 

In the early periods you'll find opens dominating with vans becoming more common.

 

Down in Cornwall china clay traffic would dominate; Move across the Bristol Channel to South Wales and you'd be looking at coal and steel trains. Move across to Kent and you'd see more internationally wagons congregating around the train ferries and tunnel.

 

Steven B

[Mark Forrest]

On 24/06/2024 at 19:04, br-nse-fan said:

 

When were the non-TOPS data panels introduced, I assume that's what this is?

 

 

These have always made me curious, as earlier stock does not have them, and they are not TOPS.

 

1964 is the date usually given for the start of the boxed style numbering on wagons, as you say it predates the use of TOPS by some years.

While this style was used for new builds and repaints, it was common to see wagons with the pre-'64 style of livery for many years after that date, including some where the TOPS code was simply added above the number rather than in the boxed style.

For your late '60s era you'd want a mixture of boxed and unboxed numbering, but no TOPS codes (or metric tare weights).

 

(By the way, the wagon used to illustrate this is a scale 1' too long, having been stretching to fit a 17'6"  underframe.  Yes, there were a relatively small number of 16 tonners built on the longer underframe but those were far from typical.)

[Steamport Southport]

3 hours ago, Il Grifone said:

 

The shade of grey is the least of the objections to that effort! (Yes it is wrong!)

These things almost invariably had a 9 foot wheelbase wooden underframe and I don't think the GWR ever owned any! The cross shaft between the two sets of brake gear is missing (there would only be one set on these wagons, unless the wagon had bottom doors, which this one hasn't).

(I could be wrong and would welcome correction from anyone who knows better.)

 

Distribution of wagons depended very much on area. I used to live near Clifton Down Station in Bristol (1950s - before the goods yard became a supermarket!), Looking at the wagon distribution there one would think that the railway only owned coal wagons. Passing trains had a high proportion of banana vans going to and from Avonmouth Docks.

Small lettering came in in the mid 30s - see the Hornby Dublo range released in 1938. The 0 gauge range from the twenties had the larger lettering (don't follow this too slavishly the real thing did not have gold lettering!).

BR thought the LNER idea of different colours for fitted and non-fitted wagons was a 'good idea' and copied it, though the shades chosen were different. Rumour has it that they were large stocks of warship grey left over that needed to be used up....

From what I remember, milk tanks wore a livery of brown muck with no evidence of ownership.

 

They did!

 

Look at the cover of Gloucester Wagons book. Batch of brand new wagons built for the GWR so they could eradicate old PO wagons. Can't remember the date but ISTR it predated the Felix Pole 20T steel minerals.

 

 

 

 

Jason

[Nick Holliday]

9 hours ago, Steamport Southport said:

 

They did!

 

Look at the cover of Gloucester Wagons book. Batch of brand new wagons built for the GWR so they could eradicate old PO wagons. Can't remember the date but ISTR it predated the Felix Pole 20T steel minerals.

 

 

 

 

Jason

The GWR didn’t actually own that wagon, or other batches of similar wagons from Gloucester and Charles Roberts. They were on hire, as indicated by the 0 prefix to the numbers. Some of the Gloucester wagons were also painted black.

[21D]

On the vexed question of which and what proportions of goods wagons should populate a model railway can I refer you to the late Don Rowland’s ‘Keeping the Balance’ series from 1974 in ‘Model Railways’ magazine. As others have said this was an important ground-breaking series in terms of explaining how many locomotives, coaches, NPCS, and wagons each model railway layout should have, has yet to be bettered and is not likely to be.

[21D]

A brief flavour of Don Rowland’s ‘Keeping the Balance’ series is here:

https://forums.auran.com/threads/keeping-the-balance-1974-articles-by-d-rowland.146240/

 

I did have the entire articles scanned in, and on a USB stick which has 'seized up'. If Mr Computer Medic of Croydon and his colleagues can rescue the contents of the stick I may be able to answer questions on, publish excerpts in the future.

Martin

[kevinlms]

25 minutes ago, 21D said:

A brief flavour of Don Rowland’s ‘Keeping the Balance’ series is here:

https://forums.auran.com/threads/keeping-the-balance-1974-articles-by-d-rowland.146240/

 

I did have the entire articles scanned in, and on a USB stick which has 'seized up'. If Mr Computer Medic of Croydon and his colleagues can rescue the contents of the stick I may be able to answer questions on, publish excerpts in the future.

Martin

Here's some notes I made based on the the 5th article appearing in the 1974 November issue.

"Part 5 looks at Goods wagons, the LMS had 285,611 Operating Stock in 1938, with an additional 14,488 Service Vehicles. This was 43% of the total railway company fleet of 663,589. In addition there was 605,099 P.O. wagons. To go with your 10 LMS locos, you should have 393 LMS wagons! Assuming 43% of P.O. wagons were on the LMS, you should also have 340 P.O. wagons, giving a total of 733 wagons! Due to the wagon pooling system (Common User Agreement) any of the railways could & did use the other 3 wagons as there own, as long as the total numbers of each type remained approx. the same. This means that the 393 wagons could in fact have a percentage of other company vehicles. Certain vehicles (generally special ones) were exempt from the scheme & usually marked with an N (Non Common User) on the corners. Article gives many details on the TYPE of wagon & numbers of each, along with the number of each you should have to match your 10 locos."

 

The '10 locos' referred to assumed that you had 10 model locos, to represent the total fleet of LMS locos of 1938. This was discussed in the 2nd part in 1974 August.

 

As can be seen the LMS had LOTS of wagons, so a model CANNOT have too many wagons. However as was made clear in the series of articles, the vast majority, should be multiples, of a relatively small number of types.

[br-nse-fan]

Hello All

 

Once again, such an amazing amount of information!  Kudos to you all!

 

Two things I could not find any clarification on..  when reading through the Keeping Balance articles, there was no direct mention of Bogie Bolsters, Well Wagons (GWR Macaw & Crocodile) or Conflats.  If I am not mistaken, the bogied wagons would be under special, and I'm pretty sure this was a zero when taking comparative quantities into account.  But I'm pretty positive I did not see any direct mention of conflats... unless these would be considered as special as well?

 

Speaking of special.. what exactly would be considered special?  Would this be anything that did not fit into the specified examples and categories?

[Il Grifone]

On 25/06/2024 at 22:09, Nick Holliday said:

The GWR didn’t actually own that wagon, or other batches of similar wagons from Gloucester and Charles Roberts. They were on hire, as indicated by the 0 prefix to the numbers. Some of the Gloucester wagons were also painted black.

 

It's obviously what the Dapol wagon is supposed to be.

The white tyres are b/s for the official 'mug shot' and would have only been on that particular wagon and probably only on that side. They would have lasted perhaps one or two trips?

Bogie bolsters etc. were special wagons and only used as and when needed, whereas the mineral wagons would have been back to the colliery, china clay pit or whatever ASAP.

Edited Thursday at 19:27 by Il Grifone

[The Johnster]

Special wagons for special loads, i.e. items that one would not class under 'general mechandise'.  The pre-Beeching railway had an obligation enshrined in it's various authorising Acts of Parliament to act as a Common Carrier, and to carry any item that the public turned up with at a rate per mile set by Government, not dissimilar to the penny-per-mile all-stops once a day in each direction Parliamentary Train.  The railways put up with this because they had to, but did not make much on it.  The mileage service involved the customer or his staff/agents/employees carrying the items to the goods depot in their own road vehicle and loading them on to the wagon/into the van themselves, then unloading and carrying them away at the destination, agin in their own road vehicle.  This took place on the 'mileage' siding.

 

The railways, with an eye on profit, were from the very early days keen to promote enhanced services such as 'To Be Called For', 'Door-to-Door' &c, combinations of collecting and delivering the goods from/to addresses in railway-owned road vehicles or, if the customer used his own vehicle, loaded/unloaded and stored under lock and key if needed by railway staff.  Of course, these services attracted a premium rate.  On top of this sort thing, there were specialised vehicles for such as fruit, perishables, livestock &c, again attracting premium rates.  Then there were special loads, too heavy or bulky to be carried in normal wagons or vans, requiring bolsters, bogie bolsters, Lowmacs, Weltrols, bogie wells.  Then there were dropside or flat wagons for containers or road vehicles, and Carriage Trucks, originally open. 

 

We are getting into areas where the border between goods and NPCCS carriage stock is becoming blurred; Horseboxes, Beetles for prize cattle, pigeon vans and such.  A fascinating and complex world now gone forever.  As an example, let us assume a middle-class household moving house from Caerphilly to Leicester in pre-grouping days.  They book a door-to-door container service in the Rhymney Railway goods depot at Caerphilly, and the day before moving day, a couple of lads from the Rhymney turn up with a RR horse-drawn wagon stacked with crates for the furniture & belongings, which they then pack.  On moving day, they return first thing and load the crates into an RR container on the wagon, which is then taken to the goods depot.

 

Once there, it is loaded on to a Rhymney conflat (unless there happens to be a Midland one on hand, we'll come back to this shortly), and taken down to Salisbury Road depot in Cardiff on the next available service.  Salisbury Road have daily transfer clearances to the GW depot a mile away at Davis Street, where our Rhymney conflat is shunted on to the quickest express goods service going in the Leicester direction.  This varies according to the time of day, but let's assume that the best dispatch is via Birmingham Snow Hill, which it gets to mid-evening.  It clears to Saltley for xfer to the Midland in the small wee hours and turns up at Leicester London Rd goods about 5am.  Loaded on to a Midland horse-drawn wagon or possibly an early Scammel, it is then delivered to the new address by about 9 am and the boys start unloading.  When the Lady Of The House arrives, having put up in nice hotel overnight, they can start unloading the crates under her direction being careful not to break anything of course...

 

If the job goes well they will be back at London Rd by late afternoon with the crates and the Rhymney container.  As this and it's Conflat are required back on the Rhymney first available dispatch, a quick search is conducted for a return load, and if this fails it returns empty.  The same would happen if an empty Midland container and/or conflat was in the vicinity at Caerphilly the day before. 

 

The conflat might have been routed differently, perhaps Brecon & Merthyr to Newport, GW to Banbury, and GC to Leicester, but as far as the customer is concerned, the men turn up and do the work, and then other men deliver at the destination end.  The Rhymney invoices the customer and collects the fee, which is premium rate door-to-door and the surcharge for the container, but it is divided appropriately among the other railways by the Railway Clearing House, the same people who devise the specifations for mineral wagons and many other things as well.  If stuff turns up damaged and a claim is generated, there is usually a bit of to-and-fro between the companies to establish blame, but again it is sorted out by the RCH.

 

 

[Michael Hodgson]

There's a BTF film about a farmer moving his home, family, farm equipment, livestock and all from (IIRC) Yorkshire to another farm by special train.

[Compound2632]

On 25/06/2024 at 00:52, Dungrange said:

I think the proportions are roughly LMS - 8, LNER - 7, GWR - 2, SR - 1. 

 

You can take that as a rough starting point, along with your nine or ten PO wagons.

 

But then start digging a little deeper. Consider those eight LMS wagons.

 

The LMS wagon stock hovered around the 300,000 mark throughout the 25 years of the grouping. In those 25 years, the LMS built a bit over 200,000 wagons, mostly replacing wagons dating from before 1923. Therefore, at nationalisation, something around 30% of LMS wagon stock was over 25 years old and had been built by the pre-grouping LMS constituents. So, your eight LMS wagons ought to include, say, one ex-LNWR wagon, one ex-Midland wagons, and maybe one other pre-grouping wagon. I dare say the same was true of the LNER, so you might want an ex-NER wagon and one from either the NBR, GNR, or GER - in order of size of their wagon fleets.

 

Then again, consider opens vs. vans. At the beginning of the grouping period, vans were still very much in the minority - say 15% (of railway company wagons, excluding POs here) - but by nationalisation they made up a rather greater proportion of the fleet, though still rather less than half. So, on average, your vans should be newer types than your opens.

[Cwmtwrch]

3 hours ago, br-nse-fan said:

Speaking of special.. what exactly would be considered special?

Essentially it was any wagon which a railway company decided should be so described, usually because they controlled those wagons individually from the centre, rather than just looking at the numbers available as with 'standard' wagons. BR ordinary wagons had diagrams in the 1/xxx series, special wagons in the 2/xxx series and containers in the 3/xxx series.

2 hours ago, The Johnster said:

On moving day, they return first thing and load the crates into an RR container on the wagon, which is then taken to the goods depot.

Pre-grouping there was a sort of container, called a lift van, used by furniture removal companies, but AFAIK they were uncommon. Containers as we know them didn't appear until the 1920s.

2 hours ago, The Johnster said:

Once there, it is loaded on to a Rhymney conflat

AFAIK Conflats as such didn't appear until after the containers appeared, so post-grouping. The GWR and the LNER built some new and converted other wagons, the LMS built special chassis to carry some of their containers [or they would have fouled the loading gauge] and the SR used flats intended for cars. Otherwise containers travelled in whatever open wagon came to hand. BR were the major builders of conflats, but even so they still carried containers in open wagons from time to time.

2 hours ago, The Johnster said:

and taken down to Salisbury Road depot in Cardiff on the next available service.  Salisbury Road have daily transfer clearances to the GW depot a mile away at Davis Street,

The Rhymney had a much closer operating connection to the LNWR than the GWR [it nearly went into the LMS at the grouping], so I suspect that it might have travelled to Birmingham via the LNWR to Abergavenny Junction, as the LNWR operated a daily goods over the Rhymney. Alternatively, of course, the men may have come from the LNWR's Tyndall Street goods station, and not the Rhymney at all 😀.

[Compound2632]

13 hours ago, br-nse-fan said:

Speaking of special.. what exactly would be considered special?  Would this be anything that did not fit into the specified examples and categories?

 

the thing to remember about special wagons is that they were immensely rare - a fraction of 1% of the total wagon stock. Their appearance at all is highly dependent on location - if you're modelling a major industrial centre, perhaps one might see some, but a west country branch line, not at all, except maybe one day in a decade.

 

But railway modellers are strangely drawn to the unusual and so far to many otherwise realistic representations of the historic railway that one sees at exhibitions misrepresent this aspect of railway working by representing it at all.

 

Photographers are just as bad. No doubt someone will turn up a photo of a Crocodile at Little Piddling. Why was the photograph taken? Because the event was unusual. Beware of data bias.

Edited Friday at 06:23 by Compound2632

[KingEdwardII]

34 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

but a west country branch line, not at all, except maybe one day in a decade.

Well, as always this is a case of "it depends".

 

I have the book on the Cheddar Valley / East Somerset branch of the GWR via Wells, which has photos from the Victorian era through to the 1960s. Even in the early years, not everything is mineral wagons and open wagons (which is what the statistics imply). That branch had a significant summer strawberry trade and so there were whole rakes of Siphons (typically 4 or 6 wheel) present at times, often attached to passenger services due to the perishable nature of the load.

 

Meanwhile, pre-WWII, there were a lot of PO wagons - both for incoming coal and also for the substantial outgoing limestone loads. The remaining stump of the East Somerset serving Merehead quarry had rakes of "Foster Yeoman" wagons even in the modern era (now "Mendip Rail") - a tradition going back to the 1930s.

 

Yours, Mike.

[Dungrange]

35 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

the thing to remember about special wagons is that they were immensely rare - a fraction of 1% of the total wagon stock.

 

I think it's also fair to say that whilst they made up a very small proportion of the total wagons stock, they would have made up an even smaller proportion of total wagon miles travelled, because being 'special' means that they spent a greater proportion of their lives sat around in a siding unused.  That probably explains why, I think, a higher proportion pre-grouping era wagons that survived into BR days were special types.  The regularly used wagons had a much shorter working life because they were always in use.

 

On 24/06/2024 at 19:04, br-nse-fan said:

Is there anything that would have been around for the early BR era, hence in a BR livery, that would not have survived to the late BR era?  While I realize this likely a complicated question and there are always exceptions, I'm more just looking for blanket examples such as "no 3, 4, 5 plank wagons would be around"

 

Going back to the initial question, it's probably worthwhile highlighting that most stock of pre-grouping origin had gone by the late 1950s.  There was an instruction from around 1956 that all such wagons were to be withdrawn as soon as any repairs (no matter how minor) were necessary, so by the 1960s you'd just be left with the newer grouping era stock and all the BR built wagons.

 

With regards wagon planks, there was a tendency for the number of planks to increase over time, so whilst I understand that 1 and 2 plank wagons were common in Victorian times, they would have been rare by all of your periods.  However, I think you can justify running 3, 4 and 5 plank wagons in both your earlier periods, but the five plank versions would have been much more common.

[Compound2632]

8 minutes ago, KingEdwardII said:

Well, as always this is a case of "it depends".

 

Like I said:

 

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

Their appearance at all is highly dependent on location

 

There will always be exceptions - but that's what they are: exceptional, untypical, out of the ordinary. Not representative of the day-to-day working of the railway.

 

Anyway, Siphons were not goods wagons but coaching stock so strictly out of scope for the OP's question.

 

But yes, if modelling a fruitful area in the fruiting season, one will need lots of appropriate stock. Not just Somerset but also south Lincolnshire, Sussex, etc.

 

But if modelling the same area outside the fruit season, it's back to the ordinary opens and occasional van.

Edited Friday at 07:29 by Compound2632

[kevinlms]

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Anyway, Siphons were not goods wagons but coaching stock so strictly out of scope for the OP's question.

 

But yes, if modelling a fruitful area in the fruiting season, one will need lots of appropriate stock. Not just Somerset but also south Lincolnshire, Sussex, etc.

 

But if modelling the same area outside the fruit season, it's back to the ordinary opens and occasional van.

Exactly so, even though Siphons and other companies equivalents, often looked like goods wagons, they most certainly were not. Usually these vehicles were painted in a similar colour to passenger carrying stock, but a simplified version. Rarely did companies paint them the same as wagons (grey usually).

 

Fruit vans etc, were often passenger rated, so they could get to markets quicker, while the contents were still at their prime, preferably just before full ripeness. I say that not as a grower, but as a modern day customer.

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

On 26/06/2024 at 11:27, kevinlms said:

Here's some notes I made based on the the 5th article appearing in the 1974 November issue.

"Part 5 looks at Goods wagons, the LMS had 285,611 Operating Stock in 1938, with an additional 14,488 Service Vehicles. This was 43% of the total railway company fleet of 663,589.

 

As can be seen the LMS had LOTS of wagons, so a model CANNOT have too many wagons. However as was made clear in the series of articles, the vast majority, should be multiples, of a relatively small number of types.

I have based my accumulation of goods vehicles on these principles, nudged forward in time to the mid fifties on ER. 

 

The LNER operating stock in 1938 was 258,236 (and 11,711 Service Vehicles) 39% of the total 'Big Four' wagon fleet. Substitution of the BR build company wagon replacements - mainly general merchandise vans and opens - follows these percentages; while the 16T minerals dominate the replacement of both the company and  formerly privately owned mineral wagon fleet. 

 

Basically of the 800 wagons it's those three types mentioned above dominant. Surviving company wagons are mainly LMS and LNER design - the van fleet especially due to the need to retain sliding door types for the Northern trade - and just a dozen of GWR and SR origin: roughly equal numbers because of the wartime SR type van build to make use of timber at Ashford. And even with 800 wagons, I can only justify 0.04% of a special wagon; except that there's a steel stockholder and fabricator at my chosen location, so have a gross over representation of 1% of these vehicles for this traffic. But they only appear occasionally, though I haven't gone as far as restricting them to 0.04% 'air time' on scene...

 

As for the '10 loco' thing, my interpretation of this idea is never more than eight 'on scene' at any time, and half of these will be N2 and N7 0-6-2T, because they were genuinely omnipresent.

 

 

 

 

[KingEdwardII]

4 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

it's back to the ordinary opens and occasional van.

Hmm, this may be a bit of a misrepresentation of a typical country branch station.

 

Yes, overall, open wagons and specifically mineral-oriented wagons dominated. However, their domination was itself somewhat specific.

 

So on the Wells branch, there were many many mineral wagons, but these tended to concentrate where the quarries adjoined the line - whole trains carrying limestone off to distant customers, just as they do today. A similar story applied in coalfield areas like the one I grew up in South Wales - whole fans of sidings filled with nothing other than coal wagons, full & empty.

 

For places like Wells, Axminster, Shepton Mallet, open wagons and mineral wagons were present, often carrying coal, but they were not hugely dominant at those locations and plenty of covered vans can be seen in the photos of those places.

 

Yours, Mike.