GWR 4 and 6 wheel carriages

I have been following the development of the Hatton's "Project Genesis" coach range with interest. Latest news is that the GWR (and other) 4 and 6 wheel carriages (Hatton's calls them coaches) will be available Q1 2021.Get your pre-orders in! At £30 a pop not bad if the detailing comes up to the publicity. While totally generic (and thus of course lacking railway company-specifics such as hand grabs), with the appropiate company they certainly look the part. Good selection as well. Lots of detail on the Hatton's website. The image below is from an email I received from Hatton's.


Unlike the rest of the range, the GWR coaches are only available with oil lighting (as opposed to gas lighting). Hence those large pots sitting on the roof. Perusing my photos of 4 and 6 wheel coaches from the 1900's on I have yet to find anything other than gas lamp covers on these coaches. I think I found one photgraph of a 4 wheeler with the pots removed and covers in place (see below). Oil lamps were plentiful of course in broad gauge and convertible days. MacDermot (History of the Great Western Railway) states that the "wretched rape-seed oil lamps" were phased out for gas ones starting in 1882, and that the last few survived until 1917. Various on-line commentaries state that the GWR still had 500 oil-lit coaches in the 1930's (others sources say 500 gas lit ones, go figure, I suspect gas lit ones, given that MacDermot is usually correct), Hatton's are offering a lit version (with an 18-pin DCC socket if you want them under DCC control) for £36. Not bad, and it works with DC or DCC. Now comes my little problem with the lights (and the oil pots, although simple enough to remove and replace with gas ones):

I came across a reference to the operation of oil lamps in carriages (from 1842). Described as time-consuming, one man on the roof, lit oil lamps being passed for insertion into the pots by a couple of other worthies with a cart loaded with lit lamps at ground level, who used a pole and chain. This was done at dusk for trains that ran at night. During the day the carriages had no lamps (presumably they were taken out at dawn by another gang of stalwarts). So during daylight hours these carriages had no lighting.The use of the "GWR" entwined monogram limits their use to no later than around 1906 (Slinn, Great Western Way).

If this is the case, these carriages are probably best suited to late Victorian/early Edwardian modelers, 1886-1906. Who are definitely a minority. Anything later than 1917 means getting rid of those pots on the roof and replacing with gas lamps. Although Rule 1 applies.

Nigel

I was looking at the 4 wheel all third in detail just today Nigel and it does look rather good. Slightly before my modelling era and they are just generic, but then I'll never be able to get a factory perfect finish on my Ratio and Triang based variants.

I could of course occasionally operate the branch with Edwardian stock, but then those brake duckets look completely alien to GWR eyes and are in the wrong place.

They are tempting and Hattons say the 6 wheel versions will go round corners. I wonder if the lighting is tuned to represent the luminance level of oil lamps?

Hmm,

Bill

Hi Bill,

Same here - hmm. Nice paintwork but the details are glaring. I'm taking the easy way out - crimson lake (muddy brown-red), no lining, or wartime brown.

If that 6 wheeler goes around corners it's a candidate for some Siphon bashes.

Nigel

Engineering samples now available to view here:

https://www.hattons.co.uk/newsdetail.aspx?id=895&utm_campaign=mar-376-hattonsgenesisengineeringsamples&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Klaviyo&_ke=eyJrbF9lbWFpbCI6ICJ0ZXJyeWtlbXB0b25AdGFsa3RhbGsubmV0IiwgImtsX2NvbXBhbnlfaWQiOiAiSkdRZVhoIn0%3D

Terry

I have pre-ordered a LNER pre-war brown 6-wheeler full brake to weather up and add to an engineers train somewhere.  There is plenty of photographic evidence that this type of vehicle sat in sidings for years after withdrawal and became departmental stock for crane crews etc.  Even if its wrong, (1) very few purists visit my layouts, (2) Rule 1 always applies and (3) they look really too nice to pass up!!

Barry