Location based freight stock

[Stokestation12]

Hi all,

I was wondering if there was any way of finding what freight stock is available from certain parts of the county.
For example, I am from Stoke, Staffordshire. I have a sneyd, burslem colliery freight wagon and was hoping to create a rake of local only freight wagons for on a layout.

I'm aware of a Fenton and a stoke colliery wagon that is available; my question is, is there any way of searching for rolling stock by its location rather than era or freight type etc?

[Bigmet]

Trade Directories for your location will give you business names trading in your area. There are probably books covering the railways of the Staffs coalfield. I would start at my local library, they may well direct you to the county archive.

It is entirely up to you how you make up a train, but from the point of view of historical fact, the wagons on any coalfield would probably reflect the four major groups of concerns:
Pit owners, shipping their coal, such as you have identified.
Industrial customers, sending wagons for specific coals suited to their processes. 'Stinkup Gas, Coke and Tar Oil'.
Coal Merchants, large and small, supplying both industry and domestic customers. Charringtons, Co-op, at the large end, all the way down to Fred Bear, Tiddly, Sussex.
Transport Factors who leased out (loads of) wagons to any customer; JudBud, JR Wood, S. C. (Stephenson Clarke) three of the better known concerns working very much like today's road hauliers, supplying vehicles to any customer who needed capacity.

[End2end]

A couple of ideas.
Have a look at model shops for the area your modelling and see if they have commissioned any PO wagons.
Try the limited edition commissioners like Burnham & District MRC (Sadly not producing wagons anymore but you may find something on thier website - https://www.burnhamanddmrc.org/ - thier site says "Oops! This site has expired." but you can still see the site and scroll down), Robbie's rolling stock amongst others.
Search google for "private owner wagon (and the area)" or something like that.
Ebay may also be a good place to search.
Hope it helps
Thanks
End2end

[Morayshire]

Don't forget Powsides.

https://www.powsides.co.uk/www.powsides.co.uk/info.php?p=7

Also useful as a starting point is the pdf at the following link:

https://http://mmrs.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/P-O-wagon-index.pdf

This gives a list (may not be wholly accurate) of what was out there.

[Stokestation12]

That's brill, thank you all for your suggestions.
I'll have a look

Re the layout, it's very early days. I'm a 90's child, so my layout will consist of an intercity swallow hst, a sprinter and a freight train pulled by a class 90.

The coal wagons won't be on a running freight train. I had 2 ideas for them:

1. Parked up and weathered in a 'forgotten' yard or siding.

Or

2. Make a railway museum and have them on display in there with a few unused loco's from my grandads collection that he passed on to me.

I was going to have local companies, as my planned layout would be a fictitious station in Staffordshire, somewhere between stoke station and the moorlands.
Then I was going to add a few other wagons from family holiday locations from when I was a child, namely Paignton and Torquay, as I have some of my favourite memories there.

[stuartp]

If you go to local shows, have a look at the second hand traders' stalls and see what they've got. Hornby, Bachmann, Dapol, and before them Mainline, Lima and Airfix have all done PO wagons over the years. Some as main range releases ("Moy" coal merchants of Colchester and the Devizes Sand Company seem to crop up regularly) but a lot of the more interesting ones were limited editions (Dapol) or Bachmann Collector Club editions. I've put together a 20-odd wagon train of South/West Yorks POs that way over the years.

[UrbanHermit]

On a contrary note, and just out of interest, it's worth remembering that private owner wagons got about quite a bit. I was intrigued to find in that excellent book that Bigmet and I keep raving about, The Big Four in Colour, a photo taken at Aylesbury station with, standing in a siding in the background, a wagon belonging to the company that owned the mine in the South Welsh village I live in. I'd love to have one on my layout...