Motor Cars and Commercial Vehicles
Note: This section deals only with the design of factories and rail connections. The various motor car and commercial vehicle company histories are listed in Appendix One - General Information - British Motor Manufacturers.
For illustrations of period-specific road vehicles, more unusual designs and a discussion on the changes in styling see App 1 Private Motoring - Motorbikes, Scooters and Cars. For more on the railways involvement in moving road vehicles see also Freight Operations - Road Vehicles, Military Traffic and Farm Machinery and Non passenger coaching stock - Private Carriages and Motor Cars.
The location of motor car factories was determined by many factors, Ford's first factory in Manchester was close by the docks to allow the import of parts and in 1906 Rolls Royce considered building their new factory in Leicester but the electricity in Derby was cheaper. The Ford factory at Dagenham was built on the river bank, this allowed the import of ore and coal for its on-site steel works, the illustration below is from a Ford advertisement.
Fig ___ Ford Dagenham factory quay
Broadly speaking motor car production in Britain has been based in Coventry, Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool, the massive Leyland works had so much internal railway they needed two full size signal boxes to control all the available sidings.
Commercial vehicle manufacture was more widely dispersed, as well as the commercial vans produced at the motor car factories there were several firms specialising in lorries. This side of the business is discussed after the motor car trade below.
In America where mass production of motor cars was born a lot of the early factories were established inside already built-up areas and purpose built multi-story buildings derived from the British developments in large mills allowed production to spiral down through the works. The Italians followed the American model (the Fiat factory even has the test track laid out around the roof) and in Germany motor car production featured numbers of multi-story engineering workshops.
British motor car factories tended to be organic collections of single and multi story buildings which built up over time. The Ford factory at Dagenham was the first production line based motor car factory built in the UK from scratch, and the difference between this straightforward and well laid out site and the jumbled 'organic' British owned works in Coventry and Leyland is quite striking.
Fig ___ Typical British motor car factory
There were a few atypical factories, Fords first factory in Manchester was a compact multi-story building. This was really just an assembly plant however, the parts were delivered (by road from the nearby docks) and hoisted to the top floor using a large internal lift. The car was assembled and fitted out on the upper two floors and lowered complete to the ground floor show room. This small works is clearly not up to mass production but a specialist motor manufacturer, such as one of the smaller sports car makers, might operate from premises on this sort of scale.
Fig ___ Early Ford factory
The larger mass production motor car factories were big sprawling affairs, clearly adding a complete factory to a layout is hardly practical but you can represent railway access to one side of the factory, with a couple of tracks leading off into the factory itself. The illustration below is of the Ford factory in Trafford Park, built in 1911 they switched to production line working in about 1913. Points to note are the heavy gantry crane at the near end which carried goods into the building and the taller gantry at the far end stacking packing cases. Toward the far end of the main building are glazed awnings above loading platforms and one or both tracks extend through under the gantry crane at the far end.
Fig ___ Ford factory 'tradesmen's entrance'
This was only a small part of the works, which extended off to the right quite a way (see also Lineside Industries - Prototype industrial buildings' for a view of the workshop buildings at the other end of the factory. In N you would need a space at least two feet six inches (75cm) by six inches (15cm) to represent this factory connection, extending it to three feet (90cm) would be preferable.
Mass production motor car manufacture is definitely a candidate for the back-scene, for a model railway layout all that is required is a couple of long sidings. For a post war layout using double decked car transporters a ramp or end-loading platform is required at the end.
The track plan depends to some extent on the period being modelled, pre-war you can have shorter sidings for the loading of motor cars. Two end-loading sidings each holding five 12 foot wheelbase CCT type vans or the same length of open carriage trucks would generate a reasonable minimum length block train load (two twelve inch sidings).
For the air braked era the sidings need to be longer, in N the Cartic 4 units require about eighteen inches, and you really need two of these to represent a train load, preferably with one or two bogie car-flats as well (two sidings each two feet long). Remember if mixing carflats for commercial vans with multi-deck wagons for cars you should position the carflat at the loading end (to be loaded last) as the vans might well not fit through the multi-deck wagons when loading. The remainder of the traffic could be handled with a single siding but two would be preferable. The track plan shows assumes oil fired boilers (hence the tanks to the right). The kick-back sidings can only be accessed via the car loading lines and run-round is provided on the main line, neither of which are ideal but save a lot of space.
Fig ___ Motor car factory
Being essentially long and thin, roughly ten inches from front to back, this represents an attractive option for running along the front of a hidden fiddle yard (about seven inches depth is needed for the factory itself, plus three inches for the main line).
The plus side is the range of industry specific traffic such as Bocar vans and (post war) converted ferry vans as well as motor car carrying vehicles. The works would also receive wagon loads of coal for the boilers, steel wagons carrying thin plate and bar for the chassis (after about 1950 they might also receive steel strip in coils), timber wagons of various kinds, tanker loads of thinners for the paint shops and numbers of vans.
Smaller motor car factories tended to buy-in most of the components and functioned as design and assembly plants, the larger British companies also tended to assemble their cars using a lot of bought-in components. American plants tended to be much more integrated, The giant Ford factory at Dagenham factory had its own gas works and even a blast furnace (where they made pig iron to cast their own engine blocks).
A common practice for export cars was to put them into a wooden box or container, an example of this may be seen stowed on the Robin in St Katherine Dock in London. There were snags with this system, for one thing unseasoned wood used for the case often caused corrosion due to condensation. The example below, from a photo taken in the 1950s, uses a blockboard case (plan sheeting, not planked). The consignment would consist of a number of cases, all about the same end size but half about 20 percent shorter than the example shown. Note the slight over-spray forming a rough box around the stencilled lettering.
Fig___ Car cased for export
Unlike their American and larger Continental rivals the British car makers did not make their own steel or their own glass. Most British motor car firms relied on third party suppliers for many of their components, up to and including engines, gear boxes, brake systems and bodywork. Almost all the electrical parts, coils, lamps etc, used in British cars were made by one firm (Lucas). The British motor industry grew up as a patchwork of small firms, the interrelationships were complex and firms often made parts for each other.
The body panels were designed by the car manufacturer but up to the 1920's they were usually produced by a small number of specialist firms. The two largest were Pressed Steel Ltd of Oxford (close by the Morris factory at Cowley) and Fisher & Ludlow of Birmingham and Tile Hill (close by the Standard Motor Co works at Canley) but other, smaller, firms existed, notably Mullins of Birmingham (absorbed by Standard Motor Co in the 1950's) and Briggs Motor Bodies. By the later 1920's the body makers had mostly been bought by the motor car firms but they retained their original factories, necessitating the transport of bodies to the car factories.
Even fitting out the interiors was often contracted out for more up-market motor cars, Hillman, Humber and other members of the Rootes group often used Thrupp & Maberley, the oldest firm in the Rootes Empire, established as carriage builders in the 1780's.
With all these different firms involved in car production there was a healthy trade for the railways on moving the parts and partly assembled vehicles from plant to plant and for carrying the finished cars, vans and lorries to the distributors. By the 1930s the railways were offering long flat wagons based on old coach under-frames for car traffic, these would normally be loaded via an end-loading dock at the factory and the receiving end, if traffic was not regular however simple metal trays could be laid up against the end of the wagon from the ground and the car driven on or off on these.
There is a photo of a Rolls Royce chassis being loaded onto a flat wagon by crane in Bob Essery'e book on MR wagons (Vol 1) but the bodies or body parts were also delivered to the chassis makers where mass production was employed. The railways provided a range of vans for this kind of traffic, the Great Western Railway built a small fleet of BOCAR vehicles, based on converted four wheeled and bogie passenger coaches for traffic from Pressed Steel to the Morris works at Cowley. These vehicles had plain ends, a low almost flat roof and canvass 'curtain' sides. British Railways were still converting 57' redundant passenger coaches for this traffic into the 1960s.
Fig ___ Bocar motor body vans
By the 1960s complete car bodies were being shipped with a base coat of red-brown primer, stacked two high in simple metal frames that were lifted by fork lift onto open bogie flat wagons. Pressed Steel was still using railway company vans to ship motor car body parts for British Leyland in the 1980's.
The completed cars were often moved in fairly large vans, called Covered Carriage Trucks or CCTS, but some motor car vans were of standard size (such as the GWR 'Mogo' based on its standard van but fitted with end doors). There were also a lot moved on open carriage trucks based on standard goods chassis. For illustrations and a discussion of both open and covered types see also 'Goods Rolling Stock Design - Specialised Rolling Stock'.
In the air braked era BR converted some of their long wheelbase ferry vans, fitting them with curtain sides, to carry parts to the Ford factory, see 'Goods Rolling Stock Design - Air Braked Stock' for an illustration and notes on these vans.
Fig ___ BL (ex ferry) van
A lot of cars were shifted on old passenger coach underframes fitted with a wooden deck. these could be side-loaded but were usually end-loaded. For more information on these 'carflat' vehicles see also 'Freight Operations - Non Passenger Coaching Stock - Private Carriages and Motor Cars'.
Since the later 1950's there has been a shift to using multi-decked car transporters for rail movement of cars, commercial vehicles tend to be larger and these are usually shipped on single decked vehicles. The early double-decked motor car carriers used a lifting central section to allow all cars to be loaded at a single level but this proved a time consuming exercise.
Modern articulated double-decked rail vehicles such as the Cartic 4 and Autic 6 are loaded either from a fixed double ramp at the end of the sidings offering access to both levels or via a railway bogie flat wagon mounted ramp which can be adjusted to feed the upper or lower decks of the transporters. Most commonly the lower deck of the car carriers is accessed with a pair of perforated steel channels laid up against the end of the rake. The upper deck is then accessed via the bogie flat wagon with a ramp mounted on it, the steel channels are used to get the vehicles onto the flat wagon, the car is driven along the wagon then up the ramp at the far end. The angle of the ramp is about 35 degrees from the horizontal, which is steep.
A series of lengthy sidings will be required to portray a modern depot, but the 'works' itself can be painted on the back-scene. The a single Cartic 4 unit is about as long as three passenger coaches, two or more units would be required to represent a typical shipment. In some cases a mix of double-deck carriers and converted coach underframes were used in the same rake. I am fairly sure I have seen a single rake with cars on double deck carriers and commercial vans on a couple of carflats at one end.
The N Gauge Society offer their members a kit of the Cartic Four unit. The old Lima model can be used to make up an Autic Six but if accuracy is important to you that involves making new supports for the upper deck from plastic card cut to the correct shape, slightly different to the Lima design.
Fig ___ Cartic 4 car carrier
Commercial Vehicles
The history of British commercial vehicles is more fully illustrated and discussed in 'Appendix one - Road Traffic - Steam, Motor and Electric Commercial Vehicles'. Commercial vehicles were never built in anything like the same numbers as cars and particularly with lorries and trucks the old practice of one firm building the chassis and sending this to another factory to have the bodywork added continued into the 1960's.
In the 1950's BMC partners Morris and Austin routinely shipped the chassis with a basic cab of their light vans to a third plant for the rear bodywork to be added.
Production of commercial vehicles was overshadowed by the tremendous growth in motor car manufacturing industry from the late 1930's. There were however many firms producing commercial vehicles, buses and farm tractors. For anyone interested in British commercial vehicles there is a rather good truck museum at Leyland (see also Appendix One - Steam and Motor Commercial Vehicles).
A larger manufacturer would have an extensive works, the example below is typical. The photo on which it was based was taken in the 1930s, there appear to be only two sidings run into the works, there are on the left (tinted red). One runs along the front of what is presumably a stores building, the other passes under a large gantry crane and then (I suspect) between the buildings and on through the works. I would expect the central boiler house to have had an adjacent siding for coal (or possibly oil) supplies.
Fig ___ Large commercial vehicle works in the 1930s
Many lorry builders provided only the chassis and cab, the rear body was then added by firms specialising in this work. The chassis, often without even a cab, was usually delivered to the coach builders by road (running on trade plates). There was a limited traffic for the railways in road vehicles of this type but lorries are not built in the same numbers as cars so rail shipments would be infrequent. As an example Foden, one of the larger lorry builders, was producing only sixty chassis a week when it was at full capacity in the 1970's.
Having said which a lot of lorry builders started out as iron works and the like and many establishments had a siding or two laid into their premises. These sidings could be used for the supply of parts and raw materials to the factory. In the present context much of the factory can be represented by low relief structures on the back scene, with the railway siding and associated loading bank to the front.
Two examples of these combined factory and public wharf sidings I know of, both on the North Staffordshire Railway, were the Vulcan Foundry and the Foden commercial vehicle works. Foden's started as an iron works and had a single siding capable of holding fourteen wagons of nine foot wheelbase. The North Staffordshire Railway paid for the siding and required a 'public' loading wharf on the opposite side from the factory to pick up local agricultural and other traffic.
Fig ___ Rural Engineering works with 'public wharf'
In the 1980's Leyland (and later Leyland Daf) shipped chassis with cabs for export via ports on the North East Coast. These shipments were accomplished using a range of vehicles including carflats, modified Freightliner flats and the purpose built Comtic articulated transporter.
The comtic was introduced in about 1984, a new air braked vehicle specifically for lorry traffic. It was an articulated six wheeled vehicle resembling two lomacs fitted together and sharing a centre pair of wheels. I believe the design is a single decked variant of the successful Autic Six twin deck car carrier. The old Lima articulated car transporter makes a good basis for these wagons, simply cutting away the supports for the upper deck produces something very similar in appearance to the Comtic.
A single Comtic would carry three lorries with one bridging the join in the middle. The sketch below shows how three tractor units were loaded in one photograph of this vehicle. Note how the middle vehicle is parked off-centre with the cab toward the dip to keep the roof within the loading gauge.
Fig ___ Loaded Comtic commercial vehicle carrier
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