Great Chesterford Junction Part Two

The big problem I have had is finding photographs of 1960's industrial plant and buildings, most appear only in glossy company brochures of the time, and very few employees at these places would have a camera to hand, and in many work places using a camera on site would have been frowned upon.

Staff could consider they were being spied upon, company's that their trade secrets and activities were being spied upon.

Joe public would not have been allowed near!

Colour print film was very expensive.

So the odds are stacked against us when modelling industry of 50+ years ago.

Jim

 

As a young well behaved boy I spent many hours on my bike riding alongside the steam locos on Slough Trading Estate. Actually crossing in front of them if the truth be told. Most of the smaller factories were well kept and many had brightly coloured frontages. The back of the buildings were pretty filthy.

 

Hi Gormo, some of your pics are missing

Jim

 

Hi Gormo, I think my laptop was having a lie in , Jim

 

Hello All, re spray can vandalism. 1 / in the mid 1980s ( that seems a long time ago now ! ), according to the US trade magazine "The Railway Age", New York's MTA / Metropolitan Transit Authority initially ignored graffiti, with the result that trains and structures were covered in it, passengers deserted the system as they felt unsafe ( though in actuality it was no less safe than previously ), and revenue plummeted, so the very tight budget blew out. The MTA then spent multiple $millions in removal and overpainting, including repainting complete trains overnight, and it took around five years to get back to occasional graffiti, which, even now, still has to be removed quickly. The money spent on this effectively delayed fleet upgrade and replacement programmes by a decade, and it also stopped a proposed fleet expansion. 2 / It is not just "stupid teenagers" who graffiti public spaces and private property, many of these people are adults, including an art shop owner in a Melbourne Bayside suburb whose "team" regularly sprayed the Melbourne Suburban Electric Train Fleet. 3 / in the 1980s the AFULE / Australian Federated Union of Locomotive Enginemen Electric Train Depot Branch (now the RTBU ) banned driving graffiti trains, which would then need to be taken out of service, usually at Flinders St. Whilst train transposals minimised delays to passengers, the annual cost of graffitied trains exceeded the cost of a then new Comeng 6 car EMU, which effectively meant that Melbourne commuters did not get the additional train sets originally proposed. So graffiti has both a short term, and a long term consequence. 4 / The AFULE ban did have the effect of minimising graffitied trains running around the network, which in turn seems to has lessened the problem here. I understand that Sydney, NSW also quickly removed trains from their network for similar reasons. 5 / I have been told that Southern Shorthaul Railroad / SSR, a freight operator in south east Australia, has resorted to repainting its bogie grain wagons in black, and moving the wagon number and data panel to the top of the wagon, in lieu of the normal bottom left hand side, due to persistent graffiti attacks. 6 / looking at freight trains in the US on YouTube, graffiti is nw so extensive that an ungraffitied wagon stands out from the crowd ! It is also noticeable that wagon data panels are frequently painted over, which makes character recognition readers useless, 7 / this problem is not helped when social media actively promotes, and does not discourage this vandalism. 8 / I also do not think it is a good idea for our models to display graffiti, or to buy graffiti decals, as this, in my view, normalises anti social behaviour. 9 /grumpy old codger rant over, Regards to all from Australia, Echidna.

 

Interesting, I take it that the use of RF transponders for wagon identification was not adopted, as character recognition systems are a more recent technology.

Jim

 

Thanks Gary, I have referred to the pages on that site quite often over the last few years, it's a good reference source

Jim

 

Thank you for the link Gary, what an amazing amount of info.

 

Dear Jim and others, 1 / re US railroads, the current wagon data panel displays in North America date back to the 1940s, and I recall a Trains magazine article in the 1960s where Hump yards used cameras to capture wagon numbers as they rolled over the hump. In the early 1970s the AAR / Association of American Railroads tried vertical coloured bar codes, which, like the earlier B&W bar codes were unreliable due to traffic dirt (which, at the time I thought should have been obvious) but apparently the coloured bar codes were a significant improvement, but ultimately were also too susceptible to traffic dirt.Subsequently, the use of cameras was increased, but presumably restricted to major yards. 2 /These days most US rail wagons are investor owned, so there is not a vested interest in re-equiping, and maintaining RF transponders. There is also wagon investor opposition to EP / Electro-Pneumatic brake systems for similar reasons. 3 / I understand that some block freight wagons, such as coal wagon block trains owned by the Electric Power generators are RF equipped, and this is tied in with the Merry go round operations. EP brakes on an American freight wagon uses electric cabling and contacts embedded within the air hose , and connected by friction contacts on the glad hand connector, which is the metal hose fitting at the end of the hose pipe. For fixed formation block trains, EP equipped freight wagons allow for safer braking of long trains, and again the Electric Power generators seem to be the primary uses. 4 / As an aside, I remember a discussion that our Union Executive ( the ARU ) had regarding future wagon maintenance, which co-incidentally coincided with another Railway Age article where a Block Coal Train of 120 US short ton Bath Tub Tippler wagons had clocked up one million miles of traffic prior to requiring a heavy overhaul, excepting for brake block changes. That article pretty much ended that discussion. 5 / In past British railway history, there were many ( unsuccessful ) attempts by railways to go for higher capacity wagons, which Private Owners bitterly, and successfully opposed. New wagons after 1929 were supposed to be fitted only, the Great Depression saw that deferred for 10 years, and 1939 was not conducive to that either, so another 10 year delay. In the early 1950s BR decided to replace the now nationalised fleet of PO wagons with 16t steel open mineral wagons, to replace 10t-13t coal wagons. Many small traders were unhappy with this as well. In the mid 1950s, BR decided to build only vacuum fitted wagons, though this was also not fully implemented, again due to private industry being opposed to the "complications" of dealing with fitted wagons.BR then decided in the mid 1960s to change to fully fitted, long wheelbase UIC compliant air braked wagons, a process that was eventually completed by circa 1990. 6 /The GWR met resistance to the long wheelbase Felix Pole 21 t mineral wagons, despite the provision of generous hire purchase, and lower hiring charges. 7 / So I think history demonstrates that PO wagons can seriously hamper wagon fleet modernisation, and it is notable that North American steam railways primarily used railway owned wagons, with tank wagons and refrigerator/reefer cars excepted. ( Even then reefers were frequently owned by Railway subsidiaries.) It was the de-regulation of US railways, and tax breaks to encourage private owner financed replacement wagons in the 1980s that resulted in most US rail freight wagons now being investor owned. ( One unanticipated consequence of this was some investors purchasing, or establishing very Short Lines so that investor owned wagons could go into general traffic, as opposed to a specific long term hire contracts. Which posed the interesting problem of a traffic downturn resulting in an empty wagon being returned to the owning road, which being very short in length, and with limited siding space, you could very quickly run out of storage space ! ) 8 / On the formation of the Big Four in 1922, a decision on a national brake standard was required. The SR wanted to standardise on air brakes, the LNER had roughly 50% air & 50% vacuum, and the LMS had its Northern Division ( Scotland ) air braked. The GWR was nearly all vacuum, and was opposed to air brakes ( this being despite the fact that air brakes were technically superior ) and eventually got their way. Despite this, between the Wars, the GWR saw a marked increase in Continental air braked wagons, and with the benefit of hindsight, it would have been preferable if the GWR had agreed. Another irony here is that the LNER / BR ER,NER had completed the change over to vacuum brakes when BR was then having rethink, and eventually went to UIC standard air brakes. The post war BR EMUs were generally air braked, and the SR EMUs were all are braked. 9 / I recently read that the Australian Railway Commissioners agreed in 1926 that NSW, Victoria and South Australia would change over to US MCB / Master Car Builders ( Janney ) Automatic (knuckle) couplers. The VR had basically completed this by the mid 1950s ( Red Tait EMUs, and some other older passenger cars excepted ), and the UIC had been working on this since the late 1920s ( clearly without much success ! ) The former USSR uses a modified Willison coupler, designated SA3, which has been the subject of attempts to achieve a UIC standard, so far with limited success and application.( Refer to Wikipedia for more info. ) This ws supposed to be a short reply ! Regards to all, Echidna.

 

They usually have a little office at the front and you can’t see into the workshop part from inside or outside. Side windows are generally filthy.

 

Looking good Gormo, even your lettering on the parts are artistic, is caligraphy another of your talents!

Jim