NER: What freight wagons would be seen?

[Katier]

Hi All,

I'm planning a NER junction layout with an adjoining light railway. The Station is said to serve a reasonably sized town with the light railway serving a couple of nearby villages and number ( I've said 3 ) of collieries. The mainline is a double track line probably with fairly decent RA, one end going to somewhere like York, the other end ultimately to a port like Hull or Tynside etc.

Location is said to be somewhere around York or somewhere in the York/Northallaton/Leeds triangle. The town might have it's own industry too ( so a factory of some sort with a single line serving it ) but not sure what.

Anyway I'm not sure what freight rolling stock would be likely to be seen. I see something like the following freight operations if that helps.

1) Through goods.
2) Coal wagon movements empties in, loaded out from mainline hauled by something like a T3 or B16.
3) Light rail coal movements bringing the coal down from the collieries to be formed into T3/B16 trains or the incoming empties being hauled up the the mines.
4) Pick-up goods type movements up to the villages, plus probably dairy and/or cattle movements on the light railway.

Now I'm sure I've missed something but that gives and idea of what I'm thinking, what I need to know is what rolling stock and who's (who owns it - NER, GNR etc. ) freight stock would likely be seen?

Thanks

Kat

[mick b]

What period ?

Coal would have been in Hoppers pulled by J27 ,Q6 and Q7 in Consett area ish from NER to BR days plus others. Not aware of B16 being used on this type of traffic.

[Katier]

NER, post B16, of course I made a mistake with the B16.. just have been a J25 ( limited to models I can use as not scratchbuilding initially). So 1919-1923ish - appreciate that the J25 should really be a J27 but not aware of a model of a 27. Can get a model of a T3/Q7 though.

[strang steel]

I think that it is good to use a little imagination with local goods services. Prior to 50 years ago, most small towns had almost all of the products brought in by rail and so the possibilities are endless.

Most consumer goods would be brought to the town in covered vans. As has been mentioned above, coal would be a regular commodity, and maybe a few 5-planks loaded with bricks every so often.

If you assume a local cattle market maybe once a week or fortnight, then you could have the stopping goods trains dropping off and picking up cattle wagons. Farmers would take delivery of machinery now and again, and an old-style tractor or baler on a low loader would appear at times.

If you go even further, you could have a private siding to whatever off-layout industry that takes your fancy, and they might produce all manner of items, plus would have raw materials inbound as well.

I hope this helps your imagination run riot.

[Rlangham]

Hi Kat, what scale are you going for? Union Mills do a ready to run J27 in N gauge, and Alexander Models do a J27 in OO (also I think a couple of other manufacturers make J27).

For 1919 you could have a 'presentation Tank' on a suitable wagon, these were WW1 Tanks (more often than not Tanks used for training, but the locals were always told they had seen action) given to various towns/cities etc after the war, captured German artillery was also given as presentation items too, often to smaller towns/villages and memorials, I wrote an article regarding my local Presentation Tank but the story is just about identical to all other towns - these easy to get hold of in kit form in any scale

[Katier]

Unfortunately I'm smack in the middle at 3mm which fits my space nicely while having an excellent range of NER.. Just no J27.

For the record potential locos include :-

Q7
B16
D17
N10
J25
J71/2/9
possibly J21
Y7

Regarding wagons would they all be NER, I'm assuming goods wagons regularly travelled across boundaries?

[jwealleans]

Pooling of wagons was introduced during WW 1 so you'd see many wagons from different companies. Pooling only applied to the common or garden wagons, though and the more esoteric ones were not pooled. What you wouldn't see many of would be private owner wagons.

Opens were far more common than vans (a ratio of 3 to 1 rings a bell but it may be higher) and most loads would be sheeted. Coal was everywhere.

There are good photos of goods yards of this period, often in Bob Essery's books. They're not all NER but they give you the idea.

Don';t forget that the station master got a cut of the coal sales, so that would be a high priority for him.

[Caledonian]

In his very useful book on modelling the LNER, David Adair comments that there were NO private owner wagons registered to the NER at the time of the grouping. Presumably this also applied to coal wagons, although the South Yorkshire pits may have had wagons registered with the GNR.

Again according to Mr Adair in 1929 there were 58,000 open goods wagons in LNER service against 13,000 covered goods wagons (vans), 22,000 mineral wagons and and 7,000 cattle wagons. The actual usage of these wagons was probably a bit uneven and its worth pointing out that a lot of coal especially in the North East was carried on internal lines directly to the docks, thus by-passing the NER so that those 22,000 mineral wagons may have been fairly closely concentrated in places like Yorkshire rather than spread around.

[Atlantic 3279]

Mr Adair

I believe "David Adair" was a pseudonym, probably the author's two "middle names". If you compare material in his book with articles published regarding Alloa and other related Scottish subjects in Model Railway Constructor a couple of years earlier then you may deduce that he had another surname.

[2512silverfox]

Graeme is quite right. David Adair is indeed the alias of a founder member of the LNER Study Group and a well respected researcher. The majority of coal carried in the NE area was in company owned high capcity four wheel wagons but there were also a number of PO wagon users, both colliery and factor owned. I am just finishing a couple of AIREDALE wagons which are a typical example.

[65447]

If you assume a local cattle market maybe once a week or fortnight, then you could have the stopping goods trains dropping off and picking up cattle wagons. Farmers would take delivery of machinery now and again, and an old-style tractor or baler on a low loader would appear at times.

Livestock, such as cattle, and perishables, such as fish, would not be marshalled in stopping goods trains but either conveyed in express goods workings or attached to passenger trains. There was an obvious need to ensure that transit was as fast as reasonably possible and to assist this the majority of these vehicles were fitted with automatic brakes and generally marshalled next to the locomotive.

[Bill Bedford]

Graeme is quite right. David Adair is indeed the alias of a founder member of the LNER Study Group and a well respected researcher. The majority of coal carried in the NE area was in company owned high capcity four wheel wagons but there were also a number of PO wagon users, both colliery and factor owned. I am just finishing a couple of AIREDALE wagons which are a typical example.

Unlike the ports in the North East, Hull had no staiths, only end tippers, and all the coal was carried to the dock in end door PO type wagons. Much of this coal came in via the H&B and the rest via the various joint lines in the South Yorkshire coal field. I don't think that the NER had much penetration into the West Yorkshire pits, most of that traffic was taken by L&Y, GNR and MR.
Probably the first thing the PO need to do with regard to his coal traffic is to decide where the coal was to be exported from. If it was the Tees ports then he should use hoppers, or if it was Hull then PO end door wagons are called for.

[Greedy Boards]

Hi All

have seen this theory that there was no PO wagons in the North Eastern Region before, and being a stubborn North Yorkshireman born twixt the Steel River and Iron Coast, have set about compiling a list of circa eighty PO wagons across the whole region.

Looking at the York, Northallerton, Leeds triangle, you might want to include Selby, as many of the local NER Region collieries would have been supported by locomotives based out of Selby Shed, and which had a significant team of 0-6-0 & 0-8-0 locomotives to do the work. In addition, you also had local sheds at both Thirsk & Northalerton, plus the Alne - Easingwold Branchline & shed that also come to mind.

In regards to traffic, the collieries with coal & coke traffic are obvious, but don't forget about the tar & bitumen tank wagons that would have applied their trade. Theses would also have created subsequent traffic for chemicals, including sulphuric acid, which would have been used in the production of fertilisers and other chemicals. Agricultural traffic would also have been significant in this area, with livestock, grain, animal foodstuffs, etc, BUT please also be aware that the NER financed the establishment of a dairy at Northallerton in 1905, and which has only just been closed in 2010, so milk traffic could definitely be added.

In regards to PO names, I can supply a list of companies with source of references, and you might want to research the Charles Roberts Archive held at NRM. But a taster would include York Gas Co; Whitwood Collieries, and Whitwood Chemical Co Ltd (Normanton); Olympia Oil & Coke Co Ltd (Selby); Micklefield Coal & Lime Co Ltd; Leeds Industrial Cooperative Society Ltd; James Hargreaves & Sons (Leeds); Hunt Brothers (Castleford); Dent & Co Tar Distillers (Selby); and finally the Wensleydale Pure Milk Company (Northallerton), which was eventually bought by Cow & Gate in 1931, merged with United Dairies to form Unigate in 1959.

Regards

Greedy Boards

[Caledonian]

Mr Adair

I believe "David Adair" was a pseudonym, probably the author's two "middle names". If you compare material in his book with articles published regarding Alloa and other related Scottish subjects in Model Railway Constructor a couple of years earlier then you may deduce that he had another surname.

Before my time (as a modeller) I'm afraid, but I've still found it a very useful reference.

As to Greedy Boards' PO list, which obviously contradicts what "David Adair" says, it may be significant that all or most of them are way south of the Tyne and prior to the Grouping may have been registered with the H&B or the GNR rather than the NER. Or then again it may not as I can claim no expertise regarding far away places like Yorkshire...

[65447]

There are several points to clarify about PO Wagons and the NER:

1. Milk traffic - only the tanks were owned by the relevant dairy or producer. The underframes they sat on, or flats that carried wheeled tanks, were provided by the railway company;

2. Wagons had to be registered with a railway company in what was an early form of 'type approval' to ensure compliance with applicable regulations and standards. However, just because a wagon ran over a company's lines or belonged to a private owner within that company's area did not mean that it was registered with that company. Quite often registration would be arranged through the wagon builder and, for mineral wagons, by the company which served the pit to which the wagon was to be returned empty. Finally, quite a number of wagons were leased or supplied under finance agreements and so would be registered by the provider not user. Accordingly, records of registrations by company cannot give the true picture of the distribution and use of such wagons;

3. There were only 2 coalfields in the North-East, Northumberland and Durham - centred around Newcastle, and these were mainly contiguous with each other and ran along, and extended under the sea beyond, the coast, although there were separate seams to the north and north east of the main fields. The coalfields of west and south Yorkshire, and below them Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, were firmly out of NER territory, as was that in Cumberland and those in southern Scotland. The Selby coalfield is recent;

4. The Stockton & Darlington was built expressly for the purpose of shifting coal to the coast and such traffic was the basis for other lines in the early period of plateways and railways. Consequently a particular type of wagon (chaldron) was already in use and the fact that much of the coal produced was loaded for transport by sea meant that the large capacity bottom-discharge hopper type evolved as being eminently suited to the purpose.

At this point it might help to quote Bill Hudson from his Private Owner Wagons Volume 3, OPC 1984 concerning the Northumberland and Durham coalfields: "Something in the order of half the output was shipped either along the coast, for export or for bunkering (fuel for ships' boilers), and much of that remaining was consumed within the densely-populated coalfield area. In addition, large amounts of coking coal were sent to the Furness iron and steel industry, and gas coal was sent as far as Lancashire. With this pattern of use, and the North Eastern Railway Company's desire to use its own mineral wagons, the area was unique in having very few private owner wagons." Searching through the four volumes it is obvious that most of the limited number of examples from the North East were of the hopper type and bore little resemblance to the usual RCH wagons seen in the remainder of the country. In fact there are only examples in Volumes 2 and 4 and I shall list these in a further post.

However it is correct to surmise that non-mineral traffic would require wagons of various types to transport it and Bill Hudson provides some examples of these.