RITES OF PASSAGE FOR A MODEL RAILWAY - 9:- Low-sided, Flat and Bogie Freight Stock

Low- sided wagons came in many forms. Some were used for transporting containers, some with shackles for machinery and others were tailored - with ribbed decks - for carrying steel plate to ship-building yards or bridge decking for civil engineering. Then there were machinery wagons to transport tractors and combined harvesters from the manufacturer to the supplier. Further, well wagons transported large cylindrical elements such as ships' boilers and bridge bascinets to support the superstructures. Other special purpose vehicles carried plate glass, and trolley wagons took loads that might otherwise be vertically 'out of gauge'. Pulley wagons carried loads that were suspended within the wagon body and performed a similar function to that of a well or trolley wagon. Early in the 20th Century special wagons were built to carry armour-plating for ships. Drop-sided wagons enabled the sideways loading and unloading of machined goods for civil engineering and shipbuilding that might be too heavy for railway cranes. Trestle wagons enabled out of gauge loads to be carried diagonally, like steel plate for ship or bridge building that would otherwise entail parallel lines being closed because of width problems. And then there was the Cantilever Set that allowed bridge sides to be transported by rail to sites. The biggest challenge was the movement of boilers to power stations. A special set of wagons was engineered from other components to carry these, at a maximum loading capacity of 290 tons and this can be seen at the Shildon site of the National Railway Museum. It consists of eight large bogies and 'bridging' units made up from girder sets and heavy plating to carry the tall turbines lengthwise and was built at the Ashford Works of the Southern Region in the 1960's - see below in the reading list, BRITISH RAILWAYS WAGONS.

Late in the 19th and early in the 20th Century containers were already in use for moving furniture for ease of handling, although the handling equipment had not kept up-to-date. The containers, built of vertical planking, had to be loaded with old cranes and manhandled into place from the wagon to the horsedrawn carts - later lorries - but gradually handling improved. By Nationalisation containerisation was much more widespread, with different types of container available for different types of load. There were open containers with twin bars to maximise lifting; there were smaller containers that could be fitted side-by-side or end-to-end; and there were the conventional containers - that could be loaded with goods from house furniture to frozen animal carcases - to be taken door-to-door, and stored in customers' yards ready for collection. But they could not be stored in stacks yet, like modern containers. At first containers were privately owned but later the railway companies built up stocks for their own use.

The North Eastern and Midland Railways boasted the greatest range and size of fleets for the movement of heavy freight, then the LNER and LMS took over in the 1920's. The depression helped no-one but in the late 1930's, before WWII, traffic picked up until the weight of responsibility almost broke the railway companies' backs. Bust-to-boom.

A great element of goods on low-sided wagons took the form of machinery and steel plate. In the manner of machinery there were army lorries, tanks and half-tracks as well as mobile guns and assorted field ordnance. The War Department had bogie tank flats built, with jacks that could be screwed down to allow the tanks to trundle off without the wagon trundling off in the opposite direction! They were also fitted with vacuum brakes for faster running. Later many of these tank flats were converted to bogie bolster quads - four sets of bolsters - for transporting steel girders and the like. Machine wagons already existed for the transport of farm machinery, and in WWII these could be used in block trains for moving military road vehicles. Plate wagons were built by the score for the LNER and LMS chiefly for moving steel plate to the shipyards on Clydeside, Tees-, Tyne- and Wearside in the North East and Barrow-in-Furness and Merseyside in the North West. Added to these were four-wheeled twin bolster wagons for transporting shorter girders, rail or twisted steel lengths to be used in concrete bridging or buildings as well as 'steel mats' for bigger concrete surfaces. There were older single bolster wagons that were built to carry longer steel products where a single vehicle body length might be asking for trouble. They may also have been used for carrying long timber (tree trunks) to sawmills. 'Low-fits' could be put to many uses, and there were single plank brick wagons (as well as bogie brick wagons that were higher-sided for large loads).

There is a Tank Warflat kit available from the Double O Gauge Association shop. For price including postage go to :

davida_sullivan@yahoo.co.uk

Departmental stock is largely ignored, but necessary for the smooth running of a railway. Many were downgraded from revenue-earning service as they wore out and served as 'internal user' (IU) vehicles that were probably shunted within loco or goods yards for tools and the supply of grease or other lubricants.

Then there were the sleeper wagons and flat wagons for moving whole, complete made-up sections of rail that would be lifted off the wagon by one crane and lowered into gaps left after another crane had lifted a previous section. This operation was carried out 'in tandem' and featured in a video recording titled BEHIND THE SCENES from Fast-Line (I still have a video recorder, but it may well have been translated into DVD form by the same people). The same video contains a section on limestone quarrying for railway ballast, ballast production from furnace slag at Lackenby (steel works) on Teesside, maintenance of the line and so on including creosoting sleepers at Hartlepool. There is even a section featuring a namesake of mine in the 1930's, who was District Engineer around Hartlepool.

Let's not forget cranes - brakedown, line maintenance and goods handling. The latter could have been either small mobile ones or yard features. And there were ballast ploughs and ballast wagons. Some of these last-mentioned were specialist vehicles that distributed the ballast outside the rails, others dropped the ballast only between the rails and the ballast ploughs were often converted brake vans known as 'Sharks'.

From the 1950's Departmental stock was especially built for the task and took the names of sea fish such as 'Dogfish', 'Grampus' and 'Sturgeon'. There was a 'Mermaid', but I won't go into that!

RAILWAYS in PROFILE SERIES: No13 - LNER WAGONS BEFORE 1948 Vol 1 compiled by David and claire williamson, edited by Peter Midwinter, publ Cheona Publications 2003, ISBN 1-900298-16-3 :- a thorough examination of LNER wagons with b&w and colour images. A must-have for the serious modeller or researcher

LNER WAGONS by Peter Tatlow, publ Pendragon Partnership and Peter Tatlow 1998, ISBN 1-899816-05-4 :- A very knowledgeable author on the subject matter expands the reader's own knowledge in this overview featuring b&w photographs, drawings, diagrams and numbering sequences from open wagons to brakevans and breakdown train vehicles

BRITISH RAILWAYS WAGONS, Their Loads and Loading by Brian Grant and Bill Taylor, publ Silver Link , 2003 Vol 1 ISBN 1-85794-205-1, Vol 2 2007 ISBN 1-85794-300-9:- an exhaustive insight into railway freight operation, loading guidelines and marshalling. Also Departmental and Non-Passenger carrying stock with b&w images, drawings and specifications

BRITISH RAILWAY GOODS WAGONS In Colour For the Modeller and Historian by Robert Hendry, publ. Midland Publishing Ltd 1999 ISBN 1-85780-094-X:- Very useful to modellers in terms of livery, and weathering for the realist. Takes you from revenue earning coal wagons to departmental stock and brake vans. A glossary at the back, plus telegraph codes, lamp codes and drawings with specifications

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