Various wagons at Beamish and Pickering.

[jwealleans]

I know we all like this kind of thing, so here are some shots of rolling stock I wasn't sure about at Beamish yesterday.

This looks to me like a G1 NER van with the outside framing boarded over? No makers plate in sight.

[richard]

Are some ex-military? "WD" could be War Department (the NER only had ND, CD, SD - no Western Division); and RNAD might be Royal Navy?

Richard

[jwealleans]

'WD' is certainly War Department and the livery looks authentic for WW I. The maker's plate was all black so I couldn't photograph it but it was dated 1918 and had a reference to what i read as an indent number so I'm guessing it's a genuine WD vehicle. It's not a type I've seen before although I'm not an expert; I was struck by the similarity to a G2. I thought it might be an interesting variant, especially for 'Corfe', being set in 1920.

[Postman Prat]

Regret I cannot be a lot of help other than RNAD usually stands for Royal Navy Armament Depot .

The WD wagon may date back to 1918 but Military internal users lasted a long time in some cases. (I'm not saying any of these were internal users - it's just a possibility that could explain their survival)

[Trestrol]

Try this. it's the stocklist for Beamish on the Beamish transport blog website.
http://www.beamish.org.uk/downloads/Sto ... er2010.pdf

[52D]

RNAD = Royal Naval armaments depot

[Bill Bedford]

The second one is a LNWR van build WW1 for the RoD

[jwealleans]

Well that was all very informative. Thank you to everyone especially Trestrol. I had raked through the Beamish site without finding anything like that document although I was sure they must have all that information somewhere.

Between here and RMWeb people have contributed the following about the WD and Naval vans. They seem to have come to Beamish from the now closed military museum at Beverley. One RMWeb contributor wrote, from notes at the Beverley museum: “This van has always worked for the Army. Vans give protection from the weather and pilferage. Note the lower door which acts as a loading ramp.

This box or closed van was used for the movement of small stores. Loading and unloading was facilitated by the use of the hinged bottom flap, which when lowered on to the platform, formed a bridge for the passage of sack barrows then used in freight handling.

The wagon was constructed for the War Department in 1918 by Cravens Railway Carriage & Wagon Company Ltd of Sheffield. The wheels were made by Miller & Company of Edinburgh in 1917.

This particular wagon arrived at the museum in February 1986 from the army depot at Bicester having been transferred from a depot at Didcot in 1956. Beyond this date the history is difficult to establish due to the renumbering of equipments that occurred in the mid 1950s.”

He further added with regard to the two small vans: “...two very unusual small closed vans built in Rotherham in 1913 and used in Royal Naval Armaments Depot, Gosport, for the internal movement of small consignments of explosives within the Dockyard. They feature sliding, opening roof sections to allow loading by crane.”

I am also advised there is some discussion of the WD vans in the HMRS Journal of a few years ago.

David Geen does a kit of this van in LNWR guise here. Buffers and axleboxes may be different. I couldn't get to a place to take a clear shot of the axleboxes, but here are the buffers:

[Trestrol]

Sorry the link didn't work. the stocklist is located on the right hand side of the page below,
http://beamishtransport.blogspot.com/

[jwealleans]

Hi Trestrol. The link worked fine although the document is incomplete.

I was also pointed to the Vintage Carriages Trust who have done a wagon survey. Search on location 'Beamish' and it's very informative. http://www.ws.vintagecarriagestrust.org/ws/wsearch.asp

To wrap this up here are the last of my photos from the day

The transship van usually lives in the goods shed, but (I assume) the Y7's in there at the moment. There was certainly a pile of coal outside as if they'd been coaling it off the goods dock.



This flat has seen better days.



Mrs. W was very taken with the crane as well.

[Trestrol]

The flat wagon is actually a fire engine wagon for carrying horse drawn fire engines. the plan is to restore this soon and mount one of the two fire engines Beamish own on it. It has grooves in the flatbed to take the wheels.

[Rlangham]

There was, or maybe still is, a plan to build a reconstructed Fire Station at Beamish, that would be a great sight

[StoneRoad]

Until quite recently NER 03938 had a 'shed' or mobile workshop/bait caban from its TIC days..

..and like the crane, restoration is 'awaiting funds', so if anyone has some spare???

[jwealleans]

I thought this would be as good a place as any to post this: we were up at the NYMR at the weekend for the first time in a long time and I found that the display at the far end of Pickering station has changed. The GE van is still there but it's been joined by what I discover here and here is a Diagram H3 Stores Van. I've had the stores train in mind for a while as a project, although with any luck Dan Pinnock will rerelease his kits before I scratchbuild them. This one isn't in the new Tatlow other than in the text but I expect there's a drawing somewhere.

Those who know Pickering station will know that you can't get a good overall shot so I took what details I could.

[Bryan]

Just to add to your photos.
Here are mine in as received condition last year at Newbridge.