DWWR / DSER 3 - Plank Wagon

[KMCE]

In 1872 the DW&WR ordered 40 open wagons, 20 of which were from the Metropolitan Railway Carriage & Wagon Co (MCW).  In April of the same year a broken drawbar on a goods train caused a derailment at Foxrock which led to the introduction of side coupling chains.  Whether these two events were interrelated is not clear, however from the drawing information I have no side chains were designed into the MCW wagons, so perhaps these were ordered before the incident.

The Historical Model Railway Society (HMRS) has a drawing for this 3 - plank wagon produced by MCW which is annotated that it was for the DW&WR.  The information provided on the drawing is very good, albeit a little smudged, however still in good condition for 150 year old drawings.  A digital copy of the drawing was purchased with the view to creating a model.

This drawing was imported into CAD and drawn up, however some inconsistencies between figured dimensions and drawn information needed to be resolved.  I opted to use the figured dimensions and the drawings were amended accordingly - nothing major, but worth tidying up nonetheless. 

 

 

The wagon has a 9' wheelbase with a load area of 15’ 0” x 7’ 1”, so quite a large wagon for the time of construction.  The earlier design provenance can be seen in the extended headstocks which look similar to dumb buffers.  In line with other wagons of this era, brakes or in this instance – brake, is on one side only.  Given the single brake arrangement, it is reasonable to assume these were coupled in one direction & thus brake levers would be on one side of the train in any given rake to allow banksmen to secure the train without recourse to crossing the train.

 

These wagons were re-built in 1907 in the Grand Canal Works which transformed it completely from this characteristic wagon.  The re-built version had 4-planks, almost flush doors, with door planks vertically instead of horizontally.  There is an image of the re-built version in Shepherd & Beesely “Dublin & South Eastern Railways” page 107, which I will not reproduce here as it is distinctly different from this wagon.

I have not been able to uncover any photos of this wagon to date, so we will have to make do with a model at this time.

A 3D model was developed from the drawings above to allow printing.

 

This printed quite well, and in OO Gauge with options we get:

 

 

As noted with other models, the wagon is available in various options - for example the model below is printed with chassis & brakes only and has been developed in P4 finish to 21mm with buffers, drag hook, couplings and P4 wheels added separately.  The wagon has not been painted yet, so is still with a basic undercoat:

 

The model will be offered with various options:

Basic body only

Add:

• W frames, axle boxes, & springs
• Brakes
• Buffers
• Drag hook
• NEM coupling pocket (OO gauge)

 

Prices:

N-Gauge: € 9 - € 12

OO / P4 Gauge: €40 - €45

O-Gauge: € 80 - €85

 

All costs will be exclusive of shipping costs which can be determined at the time of sale and will be based on actual cost where applicable.

 

Hope this is of interest, and if so, please reach out by PM

Ken

Edited December 6, 2021 by KMCE