I have a half-finished heavy (20 ton) brake van kit from Bill Bedford - not entirely appropriate, as these were intended for longer trains than would be running here. This design apparently arose from an accident in 1890 when an 8-ton brake van proved inadequate, leading to a recommendation of a 10-ton brake van for each 20 wagons, hence trains of over 20 wagons needed two 10-ton brake vans, or one of the new 20-ton brake vans.
I also have a part-finished scratchbuilt 10-ton brake van, based on drawings from "North Staffordshire Railway Locomotives and Rolling Stock" by R.W. Rush (The Oakwood Press).
Recently I started to fill in the gap by building some more bodies, based on drawings in the same book - large cattle wagon, large and small van, several open wagons, of two and three planks, and a 6-wheel milk van. Most were 12 foot wheelbase, for which I intended to use the Association kit 2-351, shortened as necessary for wagons less than 21 feet long.
It was already clear that there were discrepancies in these drawings, and comments in the book suggested most of the official drawings had been lost long ago. Acquisition of "North Staffordshire Wagons" by G.F. Chadwick (Wild Swan), at the recent Railex, confirmed my fears - surviving records seem to consist of board minutes (which cover numbers of wagons bought or built, and limited descriptions), but virtually all the accompanying drawings and diagrams have been lost. Many of the wagons were bought in, and apparently in a few cases drawings are available from the manufacturers' archives.
The Chadwick book is much more extensive than the limited coverage of wagons in the Rush book, and appears more reliable, with more photographs to support its drawings. But it's still clear that there's not really enough hard facts - modelling is going to be mostly guesswork.
Running down my current models:
- The two brake van designs appear to be accurate (apart from a minor difference in wheelbase for the 10-ton van - apparently the usual Knotty wheelbase was 9'7" or 10'6", not the 10' assumed in the drawing).
- There is little detail available for the cattle wagons (the Knotty had about 100 available). There are photographs for a medium-size wagon (15'6" long, rather than the 18' large one I had built). I will probably keep the large wagon, on a 12' wheelbase chassis, on the grounds that it seems reasonable to assume at least some of the wagons would have been large, and to add a couple of medium ones.
- Large van - I could find no trace of this. The most plausible explanation is that it's one of six silk vans built for the Macclesfield-London route, to run in passenger trains - Chadwick indicates there are no photographs of these vans, but his drawing suggests they were to the same dimensions as the conventional small wagons.
- Small van - looks OK.
- Open wagons - main problem is length/wheelbase, where Rush uses 19' wagon on 12' wheelbase, and Chadwick indicates variable lengths (15'-17'6") on 9'7" wheelbase for 3-plank and 10'6" wheelbase for 2-plank. Also Chadwick suggests that the 2-plank had solid sides (probably drop-sides in some case) whereas Rush has both 2- and 3-plank with conventional doors. Fortunately they are fairly quick to build, so I will probably scrap them and build afresh, to the Chadwick drawings. I need to re-think my underframe selection, probably mostly using 2-325 (10'6") and 2-328 (9'6"). Brakes were generally single-sided, earlier ones (pre-1890) having no v-hangers, and operating on a single wheel (which should be relatively easy to represent).
- The milk van is probably too late (1912), but various milk vans had been built earlier. All were of a broadly similar design, with planks for the lower part of the sides and louvres for the upper part, similar to the GWR Siphon C) - not clear if there was a gap between the planks. Variations included:
- 4 or 6-wheel chassis
- inside (sliding) or outside (hinged) doors
- number of planks - earlier styles seem to have had more planks (and thus a shallower louvred section).
Fortunately I had also included in the batch a couple of LNWR cattle wagons, to handle traffic between Market Drayton and Crewe, and I believe the drawings for these are probably accurate (and supported by accompanying photographs), so I just need to select suitable underframes for them and finish them off.
