![W60828 Dean Forest Railway](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3d/W60828_Dean_Forest_Railway.jpg)
A bogie bolster wagon is a British railway term for a wagon designed to carry long thin cargoes such as timber or rails and other steel sections. The sides and ends are minimal and there is no roof. The load is carried longitudinally and borne by three or more bolsters (half baulks of timber) fixed transversely. The load is constrained sideways by movable metal
stanchion
A stanchion () is a sturdy upright fixture that provides support for some other object. It can be a permanent fixture.
Types
In architecture stanchions are the upright iron bars in windows that pass through the eyes of the saddle bars or horizo ...
s fitted into the ends of the bolsters, and secured with chains and shackles.
Design
![Salmon wagon at the North Tyneside Steam Railway](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/Salmon_wagon_at_the_North_Tyneside_Steam_Railway.JPG)
A bogie bolster has both
bogies and bolsters.
Bogies are four-wheeled, articulated carriages beneath the main load bed. They allow a long wagon to carry long loads, but still have individually short wheelbases, and so go round
tight curves.
Bolsters are
baulks of
timber
Lumber is wood that has been processed into dimensional lumber, including beams and planks or boards, a stage in the process of wood production. Lumber is mainly used for construction framing, as well as finishing (floors, wall panels, w ...
fixed across the bed. The bed is thus not flat, but most loads such as
girder
A girder () is a support beam used in construction. It is the main horizontal support of a structure which supports smaller beams. Girders often have an I-beam cross section composed of two load-bearing ''flanges'' separated by a stabilizing ...
s,
rails
Rail or rails may refer to:
Rail transport
*Rail transport and related matters
*Rail (rail transport) or railway lines, the running surface of a railway
Arts and media Film
* ''Rails'' (film), a 1929 Italian film by Mario Camerini
* ''Rail'' ( ...
, timber lengths,
signal
In signal processing, a signal is a function that conveys information about a phenomenon. Any quantity that can vary over space or time can be used as a signal to share messages between observers. The '' IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing' ...
posts etc. are stiff enough that they only need to be supported at intervals, not continuously across a flat planked bed. The space between baulks allows room for tie-down chains or lifting straps, making the bolster design easier to work with than a completely flat bed.
Bolsters could be fixed in place, or be removable. Some had as many as five bolsters.
Some designs had multiple sockets and a pair of bolsters could be moved between them. The bolsters could even be allowed to swivel around a central locating pin, and curved steel rubbing strips on the wagon deck.
The design of bogie bolster wagons had developed from earlier timber wagons, which were short four-wheeled wagons, each carrying a single swivelling bolster. A pair of such wagons could carry a large tree trunk to a sawmill, but they required either the tree to take the full tension of the train, or a suitable number of
match wagon
A barrier vehicle (BV), barrier wagon, match wagon or translator coach is used to convert between non-matching railway coupler types. This allows locomotives to pull railway vehicles or parts of a train with a different type of coupler. A match ...
s to be marshalled between the two bolster wagons. The long, but relatively lightweight, bogie bolster replaced that arrangement with a single wagon.
Most designs also had
"stakes", which are removable vertical steel bars to restrain a load from rolling or sliding sideways. They could be either fixed through the bolsters, or inserted into pockets along the edge girders of the wagon body.
Bolster wagons are relatively lightweight. Heavier well wagons, used for machinery loads, had deeper and stronger side girders. They had a cranked side profile, so that the
centre of gravity
In physics, the center of mass of a distribution of mass in space (sometimes referred to as the balance point) is the unique point where the weighted relative position of the distributed mass sums to zero. This is the point to which a force ma ...
was of the load was lower. Bogie bolsters could carry typical loads of .
The
GWR telegraphic code word for a bogie bolster was 'Macaw'.
Other codes for specific types were 'Beaver' or 'Gane'.
Rail wagons
Bogie bolsters were particularly useful for permanent way loads, such as
rail
Rail or rails may refer to:
Rail transport
*Rail transport and related matters
*Rail (rail transport) or railway lines, the running surface of a railway
Arts and media Film
* ''Rails'' (film), a 1929 Italian film by Mario Camerini
* ''Rail'' ( ...
. Many such wagons were not part of the railway's commercial stock, but were included as part of departmental stock (stock used for engineering works on the railway itself).
Codes for these wagons included 'Salmon', Bobol
and 'Gane'
A number of bogie bolsters have been preserved on British heritage railways, as they are convenient for moving rails,
telegraph pole
A utility pole is a column or post typically made out of wood used to support overhead power lines and various other public utilities, such as electrical cable, fiber optic cable, and related equipment such as transformers and street lights. It c ...
s and other
permanent way loads.
See also
*
Skeleton car (US)
References
{{Freight cars
Freight rolling stock