Guinness spine wagons

[colmflanagan]

Helllo All,

 

Can some knowledgable person help me with an historical query.

 

As most of you know, Leslie Mc Allister is producing the Guinness "spine" or "skeletal" wagons produced in the sixties, he says, for use with bulk barrels of Guinness to "The North" - they may have run elsewhere.

 

Can anyone tell me how long they remained in service? I'm sure I saw lots of other wagons with smaller Guinness barrels until the freight trains to Belfast stopped, but am not sure about these ones.

 

Colm Flanagan

[Hunslet 102]

Helllo All,

 

Can some knowledgable person help me with an historical query.

 

As most of you know, Leslie Mc Allister is producing the Guinness "spine" or "skeletal" wagons produced in the sixties, he says, for use with bulk barrels of Guinness to "The North" - they may have run elsewhere.

 

Can anyone tell me how long they remained in service? I'm sure I saw lots of other wagons with smaller Guinness barrels until the freight trains to Belfast stopped, but am not sure about these ones.

 

Colm Flanagan

 

Colm-not sure exactly when the "spine" wagons finally ceased working,but there is evidence of them still being around the Guinness yard at Adelaide in 1976,although the open wagons with the smaller barrels were more in abundance at this time.The "spine" wagons were more associated with the old Grosvenor freight yard,so their heyday would be the late 60s early 70s,certainly up North anyway.

[Mayner]

The "spine" wagons actually had a wooden planked floor, were 20' over headstocks and rated for 12T, most seem to have been phased out of revenue traffic and converted to sleeper wagons or Departmental stock, as 20T steel floored flats and skeletals were introduced in the late 60s.

 

 

The wagons seem to have been used for Guiness traffic to Derry and possibly Donegal as there is footage of a couple of a goods departing Foyle Road with a couple of these wagons behind a Mogul.

 

In the mid-late 1980s these old Guinness containers were conveyed to Adelaide inside CIE Half-Height Containers on standard 20T flats.