Re: S trucks? How old r they? WAS: Re: what is in the 's' truck at 3801 ltd?

[Craig Warton <craigw@wolf.net.au>]

Barry Campbell wrote:

> S truck date back, in their final form, to at least the 1930s. ISTR there
> may have been timber frame versions that went back to the 19th century. The
> batch that were finally scrapped in the 1980s dated from a large order of
> 10,000 dating from the immediate post war period. Bear in mind that the
> NSWGR were also ordering things like G wagons which were what the Yanks
> would call gondolas and stacks of bogie louvre vans, hoppers and stock
> waggons makes you wonder why they bothered to waste the money on the S truck
> fleet. The answer to this will tell you why the railways are in the state
> they are today.
>
> Barry Campbell

Barry,

The "S" wagon was introduced in 1907. There were two variants, a square corner
version built until 1910 (approx 2500 in service) and a round corner version
(with I beam underframe) built 1910 - 1918 (or there abouts) approx 7500 of
these were built Most were delivered with turton buffers and 3 link couplings, a
program to increase the amount of auto fitted stock was started in the mid
1930's and a lot of the S wagons were modified with autos from this point on.
The post war S wagon was first deveoped in 1943, when two types of wooden bodied
wagons entered service - they were built from 1943 - 1945. The composite bodied
wagons started to appear in early 1946, and used some parts that were salvaged
from the original steel body wagons. They were a replacement for the earlier
wagons and kept the number of the wagon they replaced (although they were not
actually accounting replacements, being considered as rebuilds) Thus, there are
no dates into service for them post war. A small number of SS wagons were
rebuilt as S wagons in the late 40's and early 50's and several hundred S wagons
were delivered as new wagons in 1957 - 58 and were (i think) the final S wagons
to enter service.
The wagons prior to the intro of these 18' wagons were 15' long, and from 1896
or so 16 ' long. There were no 18' wooded underframe open wagons in traffic at
that time (the length of the WW2 vintage B wagons escapes me at present)

Hope this clears things up a little.

Regards,

Craig Warton