Daves C & W Works

[Woodcock29]

Chas
From my observations of Gresley coaches in preservation they weren't all fitted with downpipes. I have photos of a lot on the Severn Valley that were though. Looking in Harris books not many appear to have been so fitted in service days. So you'd have to have seen the right coaches to spot them.

Andrew

[jwealleans]

When Mr. King and I were visiting the LNERCA workshop in Pickering we asked this very question. There doesn't seem to have been a hard and fast rule, but it was a later change and mainly (but not exclusively) applied to catering vehicles.

[Chas Levin]

Chas
From my observations of Gresley coaches in preservation they weren't all fitted with downpipes. I have photos of a lot on the Severn Valley that were though. Looking in Harris books not many appear to have been so fitted in service days. So you'd have to have seen the right coaches to spot them.

Andrew

When Mr. King and I were visiting the LNERCA workshop in Pickering we asked this very question. There doesn't seem to have been a hard and fast rule, but it was a later change and mainly (but not exclusively) applied to catering vehicles.

Very interesting notes Andrew and Jonathan - glad to hear I haven't been quite as unobservant as I'd feared, but interested to hear of their more common use on catering vehicles: was that to do with temperatures, or humidity within the coach, somehow producing greater amounts of moisture on the roof that needed to drain away somewhere?
And if so, how and why did that apply to a Stores van like the H-series one that Dave's modelling here?

[Dave]

Thank you Chas.
Downpipes were on this van as it had a full length gutter which is unusual.
As Mike says downpipes were fitted to LNER carriages. You may not have seen them on the
Severn Valley stock, as the pipes were only fitted to carriages where the vestibule door opening
was located next to the end corner post. When this started to be applied I'm not sure but it was prewar,
and was in use in 1928.

[Dave]

It is dangerous to rely on preserved carriages as a guide, many restored carriages are not in their original condition
and restored by people who may not have had the info to put it back into it's original condition. Plus many of the LNER carriages were from departmental stock which was usually well butchered before being rescued. With the NRM's open 3rd on the NYMR we stripped everything
internally and it was just a shell when we started work on it, and now it's as close to original as we can get and keep it running.

[Atlantic 3279]

Is there any evidence that the presence of downpipes was mostly associated with designs that included either a door with droplight or some other opening window at the end of the side, tending to receive unwanted wind-blown run-off from the rainstrip and gutter?

[Chas Levin]

Thanks both; actually, I've not yet visited the NYMR (though it's extremely high on my to-do list!) and the only preserved LNER stock I've seen has been on the GCR and (if I'm not mis-remembering) the Keighley & Worth (and in both cases only from a distance).
I was basing my lack of familiarity with downpipes partly on models of LNER stock (photos of which I've undoubtedly spent far too long looking at, in a bid to improve my own efforts) and partly on contemporary photos of stock.
One thing I've learnt though is that before something's been pointed out and I've become aware of it, I can miss seeing it in countless photos, whereas once it's been pointed out it's the first thing I notice, so I'll probably now see downpipes all over the place.
Something similar happened with loco steam and vac pipes, the long runs you find along valances: I'd never noticed them until I was building a loco that I came to realise could benefit from them; next thing I knew, every photo I looked at seemed to be crawling with them!
It may also be that I've looked at fewer catering vehicles than I'd realised of course, while I certainly haven't seen many photos of NER or ex-NER H-series vans because there don't seem to be that many around.

[Dave]

Basically you are correct Greame regarding the fitting of downpipes, I don't recall seen them on stock with doors away from the end post,
that I can remember, I await to be informed and corrected.
A lot of catering vehicles had end doors, so where fitted, which is why people seem to notice them.
I will have a dig through my info and see if I can track some form of date from when they were fitted.
This morning I had a very quick look and found a drawing of a lav open 3rd of 1928 which had them fitted.

Chas it happens all the time you learn something and the next time you look it's there
in the photo.

[65447]

Downpipes gone into in depth previously, see: viewtopic.php?p=137262#p137262

[Dave]

Thank you 65447, I had a horrible feeling we had covered this subject before, but I could
not remember when. So a 1925 sleeping car seems to be the earliest carriage with them.

[Dave]

H4
Gas lamps made and fitted, using 8BA washers plastic tubing and rod.
Roof fillers added with a comgination of 8 and 10 BA washers and a bit of n/s wire.

[Atlantic 3279]

Ultra-detailed fillers!

[drmditch]

Very nice!

[Dave]

Thanks Graeme and Caroline.

I was under a lot of pressure from Scottiedog to complete the H4 for Saturday when we all met in Harrogate....I failed as I spent Friday
night in the Blue Bell. It was a good day out and meeting the convict Jesse again, it's so nice the prison services of Austrailia and England have paid for him to come over....with a return ticket as well.
Still the photos show what the current state of play is, handrails fitted to the ends, steam heat pipes, gas lamps, roof lights added.
Lettering has started, I put the NE on the tanks but then found a pic of it repainted and lettered in 1939, when it joined the weed killing train in Scotland. This showed the lettering on the body. So I've changed that assuming the original livery followed the same sort of positioning. I have
numbered it as the 1910 built version as those are the bogies I had printed. I do have the drawing for the 1909 built bogies as shown in the NER official photo.

[Chas Levin]

Lovely looking model Dave!