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

[Compound2632]

2 minutes ago, KingEdwardII said:

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.

 

At what date? The "when" in the topic title is critically important.

[bbishop]

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

 

No.  The pooling of the most common types of wagons stated in 1915 when the GN, GC and GE started sharing unfitted open wagons with three or more planks.  Pooling was gradually expanded until by 1917 it included unfitted open wagons from every company in Great Britain and by 1919 it included unfitted covered goods wagons as well.  Further wagon types were added over time.  What it meant in practise was that any depot could use any wagon as though it were their own, so the Southern could use a LMS wagon for goods sent to the GWR.  The need to return wagons back to their home territory had largely ceased by Grouping in 1923, so by your post WW2 time period the fleet of wagons would have been well and truly mixed up across the network, with the largest number of wagons on the Southern being marked LMS.  I think the proportions are roughly LMS - 8, LNER - 7, GWR - 2, SR - 1.  However, if you are building a real backwater, then I suspect there were still a few extra home company wagons in the mix that just shuttled up and down the branch.

 

The proportions of Common User wagons during the grouping years averaged at LMS - 44%; LNER - 33%; GWR - 17%; SR - 6%.  From 1923 to 1947, there was a slight adjustment away from the northern companies to the SR.  Then there was the small proportion of Non Common User wagons that would be returned to their owner.

[The Johnster]

15 hours ago, Cwmtwrch said:

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 😀.

 

Perfectly plausible routing.  The LNWR had acquired a controlling interest in the Rhymney when the company floated shares to raise capital to complete the Caerphilly Tunnel in order to establish their own route to Cardiff Docks independent of the Taff Vale, which they had running powers over from Walnut Tree Jc.  The company was left to work it's own railway, but as you say the end-on connection to the LNWR at Rhymney and the M,T,& A line at Nantybwch was a natural outlet for traffic heading that way.  Priority traffic like this was sent via the quickest route depending on the time of day*,

 

The LNWR kept a loco and a crew to work her at the Rhymney's East Dock shed on Cardiff Docks, and had it's own sidings including the Tyndall St warehouse, happily still extant.  A Ramsbottom saddle tank was outstationed and suitably named Marchioness of Bute (the Marquis owned the docks), and there can't have been all that many locomotive names with all the vowels of the alphabet in them!

 

 

*In a similar way, passengers travelling on inter-railway company journeys were routed by the fastest journey time, which varied according to the time of booking.  In pre-Great War days, one could book through from Cardiff (General) GW station to Paris, so the ferry sailings were a factor in this as well.  There was apparently, on some tides, a routing via Barry Pier, Burnham-on-Sea, Poole (change at Evercreech Jc. & Bournemouth), St.Malo, and Montparnasse.  I doubt if anyone who realised what they were in for ever undertook this ordeal by branch line and paddle steamer, but it was feasible.  You could be routed via Newhaven/Dieppe as well, and some punters apparently preferred this in order to avoid London.

 

The LNWR, with their connections to Canadian Pacific at Liverpool and P & O at Tilbury, could book you around the world, Euston/Liverpool/Montreal/Vancouver/Hong Kong/Tilbury.  Or the other way around, with the Trans-Siberian, Shanghai, and Tokyo as an alternative.  Those were the days!

[Compound2632]

54 minutes ago, bbishop said:

The proportions of Common User wagons during the grouping years averaged at LMS - 44%; LNER - 33%; GWR - 17%; SR - 6%.  From 1923 to 1947, there was a slight adjustment away from the northern companies to the SR.  Then there was the small proportion of Non Common User wagons that would be returned to their owner.

 

To be clear, that's the composition of the common user fleet. To put it in proportion, 71% of the LMS fleet, 60% of the LNER fleet, 74% of the GWR fleet, and 81% of the SR fleet were in the common user pool. the relatively low proportion of the LNER fleet is accounted for by the large number of high-capacity coal wagons in the north-east, working pit-to-port, and exempt from the pool. 

 

Also excluded from the common user agreements were vehicles fitted with the vacuum or Westinghouse brake - not a large proportion of the fleet in 1923 but steadily increasing.

 

[Figures are derived from P. Tatlow, LNER Wagons Vol. 1 (Wild Swan, 2005).]

[Cwmtwrch]

2 hours ago, 34theletterbetweenB&D said:

while the 16T minerals dominate the replacement of both the company and  formerly privately owned mineral wagon fleet. 

I'm not quite sure how to read this, but in the mid-1950s there would still have been, very roughly, a 50/50 ratio between 13T RCH and 16T steel minerals in coal traffic, plus the occasional, usually but not exclusively unfitted, 13T traffic open full of coal.

[bbishop]

4 hours ago, Cwmtwrch said:

I'm not quite sure how to read this, but in the mid-1950s there would still have been, very roughly, a 50/50 ratio between 13T RCH and 16T steel minerals in coal traffic, plus the occasional, usually but not exclusively unfitted, 13T traffic open full of coal.

It is near enough a bell curve between 1950 and 1965.  Before 1950 there were the Buttersley and Charles Roberts wagons plus the LMS D2134 wagons and by 1965 there were very few 13 tonners around. Does Stephen have the stats to show when the 50/50 happened?

[Compound2632]

17 minutes ago, bbishop said:

Does Stephen have the stats to show when the 50/50 happened?

 

If you mean me, the BR period is so long after the period in which I am really interested that i disclaim any expertise. All I can say is that 1958 was the tipping-point for wood-framed wagons, with a list of 160,000 wagons being issued, of which 100,000 were to be withdrawn at the earliest opportunity.

 

if you meant some other Stephen, I apologise.

Edited Friday at 19:51 by Compound2632

[Cwmtwrch]

37 minutes ago, bbishop said:

Before 1950 there were the Buttersley and Charles Roberts wagons plus the LMS D2134 wagons and by 1965 there were very few 13 tonners around

As well as the Butterley and Roberts ex-PO wagons and the LMSR D2134 before 1950, there were many tens of thousands of MoWT 16T of different versions built during and after WW2, and several thousand post-war LNER D188.

 

I was using figures from Peter Fidczuk in part 3 of his article on 16T minerals in Modellers' BackTrack Volume 1, Number 5. He counted wagons in dated photos for each two year period, and acknowledged that the method is imperfect, but at least it gave a rough idea of proportions over time. For 1954/5 the proportion was wood/steel 55%/45%, and for 1956/7 47%/53%.

 

[Compound2632]

35 minutes ago, Cwmtwrch said:

I was using figures from Peter Fidczuk in part 3 of his article on 16T minerals in Modellers' BackTrack Volume 1, Number 5. He counted wagons in dated photos for each two year period, and acknowledged that the method is imperfect, but at least it gave a rough idea of proportions over time. For 1954/5 the proportion was wood/steel 55%/45%, and for 1956/7 47%/53%.

 

There might well have been a difference between the proportion of 16 ton to 13 ton mineral wagons seen in traffic and the proportion 'on the books' with many 13 ton wagons stored out of use.

[KingEdwardII]

10 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

At what date?

Good question. The book on the Cheddar Valley & East Somerset branches has pictures stretching from Victorian times until closure in the 1960s (& there are a couple of later times on the remaining stump from Merehead quarry). I think that the majority of photos are post-war, especially 1950s and 1960s, but the inter-war years are also represented.

 

One of the earlier pictures, dated 1923, shows the St Cuthert's paper mill at Wookey with a couple of sidings full of wagons. The wagons are about evenly split between open and covered, but it is notable that the wagons are from a range of owning companies including GC, GE, LNW and GWR plus some private owners.

 

An aerial view of East Somerset yard at Wells in 1938 shows a fair mix of wagons. Coal wagons for the engine shed and the gas works, Some tank wagons associated with a petrol storage depot. Various covered wagons and open wagons (though it should be borne in mind that the Wells goods shed was half a mile away across town at Tucker Street station).

 

A 1948 view of Shepton Mallet station shows the up mileage siding with an array of open and covered wagons .

Views of the down goods loop and mileage siding in the 1950s and 1960s show groups of open wagons, covered wagons and bolster wagons.

 

Pictures involving the various quarries along the line are as expected dominated by open mineral wagons, with private owner wagons in the earlier periods (Foster Yeoman as an example).

 

Yours, Mike.

[Compound2632]

7 hours ago, KingEdwardII said:

Good question. The book on the Cheddar Valley & East Somerset branches has pictures stretching from Victorian times until closure in the 1960s (& there are a couple of later times on the remaining stump from Merehead quarry). I think that the majority of photos are post-war, especially 1950s and 1960s, but the inter-war years are also represented.

 

All of which goes to demonstrate the importance of doing some research on the locality one is modelling (or using research on similar areas, for a fictional location) to hone the top-down proportions based on the overall statistics.

[kevinlms]

17 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

To be clear, that's the composition of the common user fleet. To put it in proportion, 71% of the LMS fleet, 60% of the LNER fleet, 74% of the GWR fleet, and 81% of the SR fleet were in the common user pool. the relatively low proportion of the LNER fleet is accounted for by the large number of high-capacity coal wagons in the north-east, working pit-to-port, and exempt from the pool. 

 

Also excluded from the common user agreements were vehicles fitted with the vacuum or Westinghouse brake - not a large proportion of the fleet in 1923 but steadily increasing.

 

[Figures are derived from P. Tatlow, LNER Wagons Vol. 1 (Wild Swan, 2005).]

IIRC correctly, the vehicles in the Common Pool changed gradually over the years, with some types added later notably some fitted vehicles and in some cases, GWR in particular, later taken back off, because they were 'losing' too many of certain vehicle types.

[Compound2632]

33 minutes ago, kevinlms said:

IIRC correctly, the vehicles in the Common Pool changed gradually over the years, with some types added later notably some fitted vehicles and in some cases, GWR in particular, later taken back off, because they were 'losing' too many of certain vehicle types.

 

There's a full list of dates in P. Tatlow, LNER Wagons Vol. 1, and also in Atkins et al.,  GWR Goods Wagons.

 

October 1936 for fitted opens and vans. Fitted cattle wagons were earlier but the GWR was in and out on cattle wagons.

Edited yesterday at 07:31 by Compound2632

[bbishop]

Any other Stephen's in this thread?

I have analysed Appendix 4 from Don Rowlands "the first half million" .  These are the cumulative 16ton mineral wagons built by/for BR.  E&OE.  An omission is the steel wagons built by the LMS, LNER, MoWT and PO.  So my figures are accurate other than starting at the wrong base point, on the other hand Stephan's figure is very broad brush.  I am thinking that the tipping point lies somewhere in 1955 or 1956.  Comments?

 

 

 

 

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

52 minutes ago, bbishop said:

I am thinking that the tipping point lies somewhere in 1955 or 1956.  Comments?

I start my modelling 'time zone' end 1955, and went for an initial 50:50 on the ECML coal hauls on the basis of similar data and some photos. The wooden wagons are displaced by steel - mainly 16T - about 3 or 4 a year, so that when my pass through time ends mid 62 there's only half a dozen (10%) in a coal haul.  I'd be the last to make any great claim for accuracy, but like the effect; alongside all the other transitioning from steam to diesel power, steady replacement of inherited carriage stock with BR designs, and novel BR wagons such as Presflos appearing.

[Cwmtwrch]

37 minutes ago, bbishop said:

I am thinking that the tipping point lies somewhere in 1955 or 1956.

That's also the implication of the Peter Fidczuk figures I quoted earlier.

 

57 minutes ago, bbishop said:

An omission is the steel wagons built by the LMS, LNER, MoWT and PO

You can add approximately 50,000 for the MoWT wagons, 6,100 for LMS D2109/2134, 7,200 for LNER D188 and 1,000+ for ex-PO wagons, so probably not quite 315,000 in total. That excludes all 21T minerals, which were mostly iron or steel and BR 24½T minerals which were all steel.

 

12 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

here might well have been a difference between the proportion of 16 ton to 13 ton mineral wagons seen in traffic and the proportion 'on the books' with many 13 ton wagons stored out of use.

Peter Fidczuk shows figures of 1960/1 of  wood/steel 19%/81%, 1962/3 14%/86% 1964/5 14%/86% again, 1966/7 0/100% but notes that these figures include a lot of 13T parked in sidings, which are likely to be either spoil wagons for the engineers or stored awaiting scrapping. Before that he seems to think that most 13T seen were still in traffic; certainly contemporary photographs show some still were into  the early 1960s. He starts, incidentally, with 1950/1 80%/20%.

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

11 minutes ago, Cwmtwrch said:

notes that these figures include a lot of 13T parked in sidings, which are likely to be either spoil wagons for the engineers or stored awaiting scrapping.

Something rarely modelled is a siding with wooden bodied wagons with the big white X cross, or more usually on ER 'COND', on the side. (And on one memorable occasion 'COD'.) Some of these wagons looked neat and tidy, presumably some minor fault had led to withdrawal from traffic; most very worn indeed.

[21D]

2 hours ago, bbishop said:

Any other Stephen's in this thread?

I have analysed Appendix 4 from Don Rowlands "the first half million" .  These are the cumulative 16ton mineral wagons built by/for BR.  E&OE.  An omission is the steel wagons built by the LMS, LNER, MoWT and PO.  So my figures are accurate other than starting at the wrong base point, on the other hand Stephan's figure is very broad brush.  I am thinking that the tipping point lies somewhere in 1955 or 1956.  Comments?

 

 

 

 

Hi

 

Dave Larkin’s The Acquired Wagons of British Railways Volume 2: All-steel mineral wagons and loco coal wagons’ gives quite a definitive picture of the pre-nationalisation steel version of the RCH mineral wagons registered for use on British mainline railways. Starting from a rake of Butterley ‘small’ 12 ton all steel minerals just post 1925 they gradually grew in numbers and capacity until the outbreak of war but still remained a tiny fraction of privately owned mineral wagons.

 

Construction of traditional RCH wooden mineral wagons seems to have ended in 1939 never to re-start due to all private owner wagons being pooled for the duration, post 1945 political uncertainty over nationalisation and perhaps the difficulty in obtaining sufficient good quality timber once the Baltic became a German and later a Soviet pond in 1939. The ensuing shortage of usable wagons forced the Government to construct a large number of steel mineral wagons from 1940 up until nationalisation.

 

Regards

 

Martin

[Compound2632]

35 minutes ago, 21D said:

Construction of traditional RCH wooden mineral wagons seems to have ended in 1939 never to re-start due to all private owner wagons being pooled for the duration, post 1945 political uncertainty over nationalisation and perhaps the difficulty in obtaining sufficient good quality timber once the Baltic became a German and later a Soviet pond in 1939. The ensuing shortage of usable wagons forced the Government to construct a large number of steel mineral wagons from 1940 up until nationalisation.

 

The pooling of PO wagons in September 1939 only covered existing wagons. Wooden PO wagons continued to be built - the wagon building firms presumably had stocks of timber in hand, as it generally needed two or three years to season before being used. Additional legislation was passed at intervals to bring these new wagons into the pool.

 

[I forget exactly where I got all this information; there are examples of such wartime-built wagons in Keith Turton's books, amongst others.]

Edited yesterday at 12:10 by Compound2632

[Cwmtwrch]

2 hours ago, 34theletterbetweenB&D said:

Something rarely modelled is a siding with wooden bodied wagons with the big white X cross, or more usually on ER 'COND', on the side. (And on one memorable occasion 'COD'.) Some of these wagons looked neat and tidy, presumably some minor fault had led to withdrawal from traffic; most very worn indeed.

The standard marking was "Cond" for railway owned wagons. including wagons built for them by the trade and the occasional purchase from private owners given Mxxxxxx or Wxxxxxx numbers, but "M.T.D."  (Move To Disposal, I think) for ex-PO wagons, i.e. those formerly pooled and carrying "P" numbers [British Railways booklet BR87209 of December 1958]. I suspect something to do with the Accountants...

Edited yesterday at 13:30 by Cwmtwrch
word deleted

[billbedford]

On 28/06/2024 at 12:56, Compound2632 said:

 

At what date? The "when" in the topic title is critically important.

 

Mostly summer Saturdays when the photographers were around. 

[Compound2632]

2 hours ago, billbedford said:

Mostly summer Saturdays when the photographers were around. 

 

That being of course the first element of data bias to be factored in when drawing conclusions from the photographic record.

 

What one really wants is the station's goods ledgers.