The LNER Encyclopedia

Hullo

I have came across a picture of middlesbrough station showing a EE type 3 backing a train of long steel girders into the port sidings. The girders were slightly (from the cameras perspective) longer than the bogies bolster holding them and therefore required several runner wagons between each one of them.

The runners I can see were conflat wagons (not specialist single bolster wagons) and I'm curiosity that as the photograph was taken in 1969, would conflats have been used for the same purpose during the steam era?

Depends how far back you go I'd think, although as ever, almost anything is theoretically possible. Runner wagons, like barriers, were often stuff that (at any given point in time) would otherwise be lying around surplus. By 1969, there would be a great excess of Conflats whereas (say) ten years earlier, they'd have been of rather more use in their designed traffic. It's not something I've studied in depth but as well as 4w Plate wagons, I think Lowfits and Lowmacs have also been used.

So really, it's a case of anything suitably low and with little better to do - single bolsters had certainly been overproduced and would probably be an obvious choice in the '50s, but there were also some purpose-designed BR match wagons, which were basically an underframe with a simple wooden floor.

AFAIK the only railway to specifically produce match wagons was the GWR (and it wouldn't surprise me if they used them for something quite different to everyone else). As Ian has said pretty well anything suitable and to hand would have been used when overlength items were loaded.

It's a little later than you asked for but this thread came up on RMWeb last week and if you look at the picture you can see how there are single bolsters interspersed with the doubles and bogies for exactly this purpose. I think there may well be a conflat in the road on the extreme right as well. So anything low enough to do the job is probably the answer.