Wagon weights and Tare - am I correct?

[81F]

Dear All, please can I check my facts before I "overload" a model wagon?

Am I correct in thinking that the weight painted on steam era wagons was the weight of the cargo alone and the Tare weight was the weight of the wagon empty? Therefore a fully loaded BR 16T mineral wagon would actually weigh 16T plus 6T, 17CWT Or is it the case that the 16T is the weight of the wagon and load and therefore its capacity would be 16T minus 6T, 17CWT which I think is 9T, 5.4CWT?

Also regardless of the answer, have I got my maths right when subtracting 6T, 17CWT from 16T?

Many thanks to anyone who can help.

[37lover]

81F, Sorry I cannot answer the tare vs gross weight but I always thought there were 20 cwt to an imperial ton in which case subtracting 6t 17cwt from 16t would give 9t 3cwt.

[Going Spare]

Whether correct or not I do not know but I have always taken a '16 ton mineral wagon' to indicate a 16 ton load capacity with the (tare) weight of the wagon itself additional to that.  In your example, the total gross weight of a correctly fully loaded wagon would be 22 tons 17 cwt. 

[RB51]

Tare weight is unladen weight. R-

[What About The Bee]

The entirety of the problem is as simple as can be.  Standards, as in, it would have been nice to have some.

CWT is either 100 lbs or 112 lbs.  This varied geographically within the UK.  For the LMR this was 112 lbs.  

A ton has three definitions of measure.  This makes the unadorned word "ton" to be functionally useless as a unit of measure. Long (Imperial) ton, short ton or metric ton; please be specific.  

As to the gross or tare weight, for the early LMR, the gross tonnage limit was 4 tons.  I think that was a 2000 lbs ton but cannot be sure. It could have been the imperial ton at 2240 lbs.  I know there was a railway scale near the pig station by Manchester.  As specified, it was a gross limit.  Everything was included.  

I think the question requires quite a bit more definition 81F.  Just the arithmetic part of your question has 6 different answers, depending upon which ton and which CWT.  Maybe you can dispense with a metric ton, but that merely reduces the quantity of solutions to four. When it comes to the limits painted on the side, you should know the exact railway practice for the era.   

Bee

Edited April 28 by What About The Bee

[Going Spare]

As far as I can recollect, in England there has never been anything (putting aside weights below an ounce) in general imperial measure other than 16 ounces (oz) to the pound, 28 pounds (lb) to the quarter, 4 quarters (qtr) to the hundredweight and 20 hundredweight (cwt) to the ton, plus in human weights 14 lbs to the stone.  Thus, 1 ton is 20 x 4 x 28 (2240) lbs.  Buses, for example, showed their legal unladen weight such as 8 tons, 4 cwt, 2 qtr.

[What About The Bee]

Hello Going Spare

I have no technical discussion that can conflate your assertion.  For 20th century England, what you assert is the standard.

For my interest and era, many standards were not standard or were in the infancy of becoming a standard.

From: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ton

"Before the 20th century there were several definitions. Prior to the 15th century in England, the ton was 20 hundredweight, each of 108 lb, giving a ton of 2,160 pounds (980 kg). In the 19th century in different parts of Britain, definitions of 2,240, or 2,352, or 2,400 lb were used, with 2,000 lb for explosives; the legal ton was usually 2240 lb." [Emphasis added]

From: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundredweight

"The hundredweight has had many values. In England in around 1,300 different hundreds (centum in Medieval Latin) were defined. The Weights and Measures Act 1835 formally established the present imperial hundredweight of 112 pounds (50.80 kg)."

Bee

Edited April 29 by What About The Bee
Missing "

[Going Spare]

@Bee - Most interesting, as your posts always are, but a little (about a century) before my time and that of the 16 ton mineral wagon!

[What About The Bee]

Fair point @Going Spare

[What About The Bee]

From: https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co205956/16-ton-mineral-wagon-railway-wagon

"Railway wagon, British Railways, 16T mineral wagon, No B227009, 1955 ... capable of carrying up to 16 tons of product."

~~~

With the standards portion of the question completely settled by Going Spare, the conclusion is simply to add 16 tons to the tare weight.

Example: tare listed 7T 15cwt.  Gross weight is 16T + 7T 15cwt = 23T 15 cwt

Bee