It is very unusual to acquire a piece of vintage rolling stock that needs absolutely nothing done to it. However, today, just a few hours work has completed two wagons ready for use:
The brake van I have had for many years. A previous owner had removed the original couplings and fitted it with smaller more realistic ones. After a long search, I recently acquired a second spare coupling of the type originally fitted — so have returned the brake van to ‘as manufactured’ condition.
The covered goods van I bought a few months ago. It was very dirty, so I have cleaned it. I think the van must have been used on a layout laid on the floor, judging by the amount of hair and carpet fluff wrapped around the axles and lodged between the wheel spokes. One coupling was badly bent, now straightened. One buffer casting was loose on the steel pin used to fasten the buffer to the wagon, sorted with a spot of glue.
I am sure these two wagons are painted the same colour grey. The brake van is more thickly varnished and the yellowing of that varnish has greatly changed the appearance.
A closer look at the two wagons:
These wagons are from the same series as this one I described in my post #55:
The bodies are wood, hand painted then decorated with large transfers that cover a whole side or end of the wagon body. All three wagons carry the running number ‘1920’ which will be the date of manufacture. On page 140 of ‘The Bassett-Lowke Story’ by Roland Fuller (New Cavendish Books, 1984) there is a ‘works photograph’ of three of these wagons, including the brake van and covered van models illustrated above. The photo reproduced in the book was no doubt taken to mark the introduction of these models, and two of the three wagons have solebar transfers with the number/date 1919. I have also seen solebar transfers for 1921 and wagons with no date — possibly these are of later manufacture.
The eagle-eyed will have spotted that the couplings on the open wagon are a different shape from the couplings on the two vans. The couplings on the open wagon are a kind of half-way house between the shapes of the coupling hooks used by Bing and Carette. These couplings seem to have been briefly made at Northampton just after WW1. The wagons dated 1919 in the photograph reproduced in The Bassett-Lowke Story have these half-way type couplings.
My three wagons suggest the change-over to Carette pattern couplings occurred during 1920. This would indicate that the tooling from the Carette factory in Nuremberg (shut down by the Germans during WW1) arrived at Northampton before the end of 1920. It also puts the manufacture of my open wagon earlier in 1920 than the manufacture of the two vans. Incidentally, my brake van did definitely originally have Carette-pattern couplings because the shape of the inner end of the coupling around the fixing screw had left a tell-tale scar in the paint.
I really am not a person who likes or seeks to collect ‘complete sets’. However, I suppose there is a collecting aspect to a lot of model railways, and these wooden transfer-decorated wagons are an interesting small series. Initially, in 1919, four types were issued, all LNWR. These were the three shown above plus a 10-ton mineral wagon. I have the LNWR mineral wagon too, so that’s a complete set of sorts. Slightly later, two more mineral wagons were added to the range — one GNR, the other MR and branded for loco coal. I have an example of the MR wagon but it needs a replacement W-iron to make it useable.
The six types listed above were the only pre-grouping wagons made in this series in 0 gauge. Many more types were made in Gauge 1.
The range of transfer-decorated wooden wagons was expanded later. In 1924, for sale at the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley, a fictitious private owner ‘Schweppes’ open wagon was produced at the instigation of the drinks manufacturer. I don’t think it was included in any Bassett-Lowke catalogue, but it could be bought from Bassett-Lowke shops. It was slightly cheaper than the standard models. The ‘Lowko Spirit’ tanker (see my post #115) was always listed in catalogues in the same section as the transfer-decorated wooden wagons, though it was dissimilar in many ways. Later in the 1920s, an SR open wagon and covered van were produced. No doubt these wooden SR wagons were introduced in acknowledgement of the complete lack of SR vehicles in the contemporary range of tinplate wagons. Though post-grouping, the dimensions and style of transfers used for the SR wagons were the same as for the pre-grouping types described above. When 0 gauge transfer-decorated, wooden wagons were later made for the LMS, LNER and GWR (see my post #105), the style and dimensions were closely similar to the equivalent contemporary tinplate wagons, and substantially different from the 1920s models.
