Books on Ministry of Munitions/War Department/Admiralty wagons?

[Rlangham]

As the title sums up, I'm looking for a good book on wagons - tankers, specialised types, 'normal' planked wagons etc etc used by the armed forces and government such as the Ministry of Munitions on Britain's railways during the First World War. Completely new area for me - can anyone recommend any?

Cheers, Rob

[65447]

Hi Rob,

I think that you will find that most of the rolling stock existed, or was adapted or provided by the various railway companies. There is as you will obviously appreciate a significant difference between the government taking control of the operation of railways, pooling of wagons and so on, to having wagons specially constructed for the War Department.

Chapter 10 Special Wagons in Essery, Rowland and Steel's 'British Goods Wagons from 1887 to the Present Day' offers a useful starting point, although it becomes clear that the 'Rectank' type used for transporting tanks did not appear until 1918 and was in fact more useful in WW2 and afterwards - the GWR had adapted some of its 'Macaw' wagons for the purpose previously, whilst certain companies had already constructed wagons, e.g. for transporting ship gun barrels, as part of their normal freight before the advent of war. Page 112 is the main reference.

I suspect that much of that which you seek will be included in standard company wagon histories.

[jwealleans]

65447 has it right - there are pictures of ROD vans in Midland Wagons Vol 1, in the GC section of the latest edition of LNER Wagons and I believe in one of the Southern Wagons volumes as well.

Somewhere I have a small volume called something like Railways at War which has line drawings and coloured plates of rolling stock but very few photographs. I'll try to dig it out and get you an exact title and author.

[JASd17]

Jonathan, are you thinking of the Alan Earnshaw book published by Atlantic in 1989?

John

[jwealleans]

The Earnshaw book is two volumes, one for each war? I have those and I'd assumed Rob does too.

A quick Google shows the book I'm thinking of is called 'Railways and War before 1918', by Bishop and Davis.

[Colombo]

Rob,

The Midland Railex Exhibition in August 2014 fell on the Centenary of the outbreak of WW1. As a commemoration of this event, the date of the P4 layout Plemsworth at the HMRS Exhibition Centre was set back to August 1914 and we built a special train to depict the transportation of troops to the embarkation point at Southampton, which was an intensive, well planned and rehearsed exercise designed to put the BEF in France in a little over a week. We elected to model a train carrying half a battery of artillery with a formation in accordance with the Railway Manual (War) 1911, (as amended in 1914). Copies are available from the IWM. This model consists carriages with accommodation for 100 men, cattle trucks for 80 horses and carriage trucks for horse drawn transport and guns. For practical reasons we modelled GNR carriage trucks and cattle wagons. With the exception of the guns all the transport was scratch built. The guns are 4.5" Howitzers from a HAT plastic kit.

The emphasis here is that no special wagons were constructed for this operation, the railways managed with what vehicles they already had and succeeded magnificently.

One of our colleagues constructed a Midland Railway D622 Gun Trolley which is depicted in R. J Essery's " Midland Wagons - Volume 2" chapter 10.

Colombo

[Colombo]

Rob,

I should add that the horse drawn road transport was scratch built with the assistance of D J Smith's " Discovering Horse Drawn Transport of the British Army" published by Shire Classics,
Colombo

[Rlangham]

Thanks all - I have the books mentioned but wondered if there was anything particularly photo-heavy at all showing the various liveries that they were put into by the Ministry of Munitions for use within the UK. I was surprised to learn a few months ago that the liquid tank wagons such as this one at Beamish;


http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld ... 5wWRXym0gA

Were used for transporting explosives to the National Shell Filling factories around the UK, and was wondering if there were any other more specialised uses such as this - although other photos show just standard planked wagons filled with shells. Apparently the NER also had a modified type of CCT for carriage of aeroplanes too but I haven't seen any images of these. There were also a great deal of locomotives including ex-railway company ones such as NER E1's, H's used by the Ministry of Munitions at various sites but photos of these are very thin on the ground too, and i'd be interested if they had any modifications made and where they were used, for example the L&Y 'Pugs' used at Ainstree had spark arresters and at least some of the NER ones did too

[65447]

Tony Watts' Ince Waggon Works book has a photograph of Ministry of Munitions open wagon no. 8535 on p174, HMRS catalogue ref.ACA211.

The NER CCTs were to Dia.62 built 1901 and altered to Dia. 214 in 1917 by adding 4 bolsters each side for carrying crated aeroplanes, so if you find a photograph of this type with 4 bolsters a side there you have it. Almost all locomotives used in or near munitions works or storage had some form of spark suppression for obvious reasons; details and possibly photographs might appear in company locomotive histories for the type but more likely in specific military histories. TNA might have files too, they do for the WW2 armoured trains.

[Colombo]

Rob,

In our Archives at HMRS we have a collection of photographs and other materials that were used in the production of a book on British railway guns.

You probably know that GWR Dean Goods locos were used in the UK to attend railway guns stationed near the coast in out of the way places on camouflaged spur lines. These locos were often fitted with condensing apparatus to avoid the issue of steam that might be spotted by airships, planes or enemy shipping. As I recall, we have a picture of one near Withernsea that is being attended by a J27 in lieu of a Dean Goods.

Many of the photos would have been regarded as top secret at the time. There is a train of light tanks on bogie wagons disguised as a train of coal wagons with painted tarpaulins stretched over framework on all sides and the top.

Colombo

[Dixie]

I have a well amended copy of the North Eastern Railway, Diagram of Wagons book for 1904. I note that an amendment sheet was issued(no date given) for Diagram E 5 which was described as a 12ton Aeroplane Crate Wagon. The numbers given were G407 and G417. These were converted in February 1915 from 12 ton plate wagons - built to Diagram B12 from 1911 onwards. The latter had sides two planks deep whereas, when converted,
the sides appear to have been removed and four detachable stanchions added to each side, with a well beneath to carry the stanchions when not in use. The steel wagon ends were retained. They were fitted with screw couplings and were dual piped, ie they could work on any rail system.

The underframe was of steel, the wheelbase 15ft, length over headstocks 27ft and over buffers 30ft. Regrettably I have never seen a photo of an E5 but an illustration of a B12 appears in Peter Tatlow's LNER Wagons Vol 2, page 95. Any additional information would be appreciated.

[Colombo]

I have attached photos of an interesting train taken in WW2.

There appear to have been several squadrons of light tanks stationed around the country for rapid deployment in case of a sea-borne invasion, during the earlier years of WW2. Perhaps these are some of them.

Colombo

[65447]

I have attached photos of an interesting train taken in WW2.

There appear to have been several squadrons of light tanks stationed around the country for rapid deployment in case of a sea-borne invasion, during the earlier years of WW2. Perhaps these are some of them.

Just to avoid any confusion, the OP specified WW1. There is much more information available relating to WW2 and it would be a loss if this thread, like so many others, got distracted away from the original topic about which there is much to be learnt.