THE wagons first put upon my line measured only 4 ft. by 2 ft. inside. It soon became apparent, however, that a gauge of 15 in. could carry with safety a much larger vehicle. In fact it may be taken as a reasonable rule that the floor area of narrow gauge wagons should not be less than four times the gauge in length and twice the gauge in width. I have found such a wagon very handy for light work, but on the Eaton Railway I adopted an over measurement of 6 ft. by 3 ft. with 1 ft. 3 in. depth of side. The wheel base is, in all cases, half the length of the wagon. The larger wagon above described carries 16 cwts. of coal, and from 20 to 22 cwts. of sand, road metal, bricks, etc., and weighs about 7½ cwts., or one-fourth of its total gross loaded weight, _i.e._, it carries three times its own weight. The axles in this case are 2 in. diameter. For heavier loads I have made the wagons with 2¼ in. axles to carry 30 cwts. which is the standard I have finally adopted; and also with 2½ in. axles to carry two tons. Two of these last were built for the Eaton line, on which logs of timber up to 30 in. square and 60 ft. long have to be conveyed from the G. W. Railway to the Estate works. Each end of the log rests on a “timber fork,” which can be fitted on to any wagon, and in this way, not only timber, but any kind of lengthy goods can be carried with the greatest ease. My resident engineer at Eaton gave me an amusing account of the arrival from Messrs. Handyside & Co. of the ironwork for the coal store at Eaton. This included a number of long and awkward shaped pieces, and the foreman sent by this firm to erect the shed was in despair at seeing the toy wagons provided for the transport of pieces that with some difficulty had been loaded in the main line wagons. To his surprise the 15 in. gauge handled them with far greater facility than the 4 ft. 8½ in., owing to length being no drawback.
My standard wagons are constructed of pitch pine with angle-iron rims, and the box sides are framed together independently of the wagon itself, thus a flat wagon is converted into a box wagon by merely placing this frame upon it. These sides, or “tops” as they have come to be called, are about 15 in. deep, and the wagons being constructed to a standard size, are interchangeable. An iron rim on each enables two or three of the tops to be placed one above another upon any wagon, to give an extra depth. To empty the wagon, two men readily lift off the top, and, if necessary, turn it over sideways, sufficiently to shoot off the contents; or the load may be upset without removing the top. This mode is almost as rapid as emptying a tip wagon, which, though convenient to unload, is a fraud as to capacity, and cannot be designed to carry more than one-and-a-half times its own weight; and even then there is the objection that the centre of gravity is far higher than in the box wagon.