Garden Railway Forum

The latest kit from Jerry Irwin is a Transporter Wagon, complete with bogies for SM32 only. Mine should arrive tomorrow (Saturday), coincidentally on my birthday!
Transporter wagons are well known for their use on the Leek and Manifold Railway and many pictures have been published. However, Jerry has sent one of an unidentified wagon marked NSR? A quick Google search leads me to believe it may be Dutch Railways but that could be wrong.
Any ideas please.....

North Staffs Railway? Looks like a Leek and Manifold transporter wagon, I think?

Happy Birthday for tomorrow!

Andrew

Thanks Andrew, now that you have said that I can see what I think is a Staffordshire Knot emblem on the wagon. I was puzzled by the chalk writing, the strange buffers and the very tall vacuum brake pipes, which I haven't noticed on L&M stock before.

Yes, the open wagon is North Staffs I'm sure. That is definately the N.S Knot in the centre. The 'NSR' branding is a bit unusual, it was normally just 'N S' I thought but I'm no expert and it may be period dependant, I'd guess.

So the transporter being L&M seems most likely.

That looks a great kit to build Peter.


Very sorry for missing your Birthday mate.

Had a lot on with my own daughter last week.....

https://www.abebooks.com/paper-collecti ... 6412868/bd

Looks like the wagon appears in an illustration in this book.

Peter Butler wrote: ↑Fri Apr 16, 2021 10:55 pm Thanks Andrew, now that you have said that I can see what I think is a Staffordshire Knot emblem on the wagon. I was puzzled by the chalk writing, the strange buffers and the very tall vacuum brake pipes, which I haven't noticed on L&M stock before.

I have seen pictures of the transporter van with vacuum piping coming out horizontally from the end plate. In the arrangement above how did they roll-off the standard gauge wagon without fouling? Surely they didn’t unfasten the vacuum pipe each time.

Garden Railway Specialists do/did a resin version of the L&M transporter btw, but I found you needed to be inventive to get it to negotiate tighter curves. Look forward to the build record for comparison.

Andy S.

RylstonLight wrote: ↑Tue Jun 01, 2021 8:15 am
I have seen pictures of the transporter van with vacuum piping coming out horizontally from the end plate. In the arrangement above how did they roll-off the standard gauge wagon without fouling? Surely they didn’t unfasten the vacuum pipe each time.

Andy S.

Just speculating, but if the wagon itself wasn't braked but just piped through, then they could swivel the whole pipe through 90 degrees out of the way. Might be worthwhile looking at that bit of video of the L & M where they are loading a transporter wagon to see if it's visible.

I'm out on a walk at the moment (just stopped for breakfast) so not sure my phone is up to close scrutiny of a video

Rik

PS Just watched the video and it looks like a different arrangement for the vac pipe. So, no help

Photograph from Linsdsey Porter “The Leek & Manifold Valley Railway” (ISBN 1 874 723 82 6) has what I think is the same waggon from a different angle (the barrel and box are in the same positions).
This clearly shows the vertical pipe but in the same book there is a picture of the horizontal arrangemnt albeit a poorer photo of the wgon end.


Hope this helps the build!

Andy S.

Thanks everyone for your investigative work, I'm sure there is an explanation out there somewhere but I can carry on in my ignorance for now.
I do have a theory though..... what if one end of the transporter (with the vertical pipe) was never shunted against a loading bay, therefore not being an obstruction. The other end (horizontal pipe) was the only one on each wagon in that position?
The GRS transporter wagon has pipes at both ends in the horizontal....
This is one I bought on ebay before receiving Jerry's kit. As Andy said, it is a four wheel arrangement and I have yet to see it attempt a circuit on my railway, whereas the one from Jerry Irwin has bogies and wheels running in ball-bearings and rolls beautifully......

My initial thought when I saw Andy's end on picture, above, was that maybe there is a screw up joint at the elbow? So that they simply loosened it to drop the pipe to horizontal whilst loading and then tightened it up again when vertical. Similar to hingeing a domestic radiator forward to paint behind it.
I don't know, it just looks as though it might work?