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It could well be that parts of East Anglia maintained links to cheap pantiles for longer than other areas.  The inland ports would have been unsuitable for the modern iron hulled boats, and the Low Countries were close enough that traditional barges could still make the trip economically possible.  Thus ballast would still be required. 

 

Once the ballast pantiles stopped it did not mean an end to pantiles, just that they had to be brought in like any other cargo and paid for like any other cargo.

 

I agree that steam railways were a major part of replacing the old means of transport - horse and tramway or possibly gravity tramway and horse return (Festiniog) - then coastal ship. 

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... Slate does start to appear on vernacular buildings in Norfolk from the late 1880s though it never becomes universal. Now even brand new houses have to have pantiled roofs and some token flints glued on! But that's a planning issue.

Interesting. I was reading an old planning application (don't ask) for a new house in lovely Brancaster: the architect had produced a rather startling modern design with a crisp slate roof. The parish council wanted it scrapped and some pastiche ye olde worlde-style house instead.

 

The planning officer's report included a rather fair assessment that, while the majority of the village is pantiled, there is a significant minority of buildings, dating from the late nineteenth century on, with slate roofs, and therefore either material could be considered part of the vernacular.

 

The architect won. The house is now, I think, a rather nice addition to a very picturesque seaside village.

 

Paul

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I was going to comment on the Bridgwater tiles. Our bungalow is roofed with plain clay tiles stamped with the Bridgewater Tile co  logo in a circle.  Sadly the company is no longer around so I am having to go elsewhere for additional tiles. There are at least two bungalows here with Pantiles possibly from the same source.

When living on the Wenlock Edge we had to re-build the cottage roof. The local limestone (the Edge is a 25 mile long limestone ridge) is hard to work and most cottages had brickwork  quoins. Although some old farmhouses had Limestone Slates the term is used advisably as the 'slates' were really just somewhat flat slabs of stones and must have been really heavy. Our cottage was roofed with handmade plain clay tiles. The Nibs to hold them on had been clearly made with a thumb. We took 6 ton of them off the roof by ladder cleaned them up and having replaced all the rafters took them back up again. At that point it was evident that the tiles had warped and it was like some nightmare jigsaw trying to find a tile that would sit well with its fellows. Not far away was Broseley known for tile manufacture and brickworks  there were lot more across the river all now parts of Telford. However even there Slates were used in later days presumably brought by rail.

In regard to ballast. The Wenlock Edge cottage had some large timbers with extraneous holes these were believed to have been old ship timbers used as ballast in the Severn Trows which would come up to Broseley and Coalbrookdale. Whatever their origin these were good timbers while the rafters (Oak three inches square so before they realised deeper narrower rafters were better) had been so eaten by woodworms they were in danger of falling to dust, the big timbers were barely touched. Mind you any attempt to screw into them resulted in a sheared screw so the worms probably blunted their teeth. 

 

Don

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Just a brief "hello", I will catch up on the fun stuff later!

 

I would say "least said, soonest mended", but sadly I do not think anything will get mended on this occasion. Suffice to say that one of our valued contributors to this thread appears to have deleted all his contributions to this topic, amounting to a net loss of 7 pages.  Clearly it is a shame that he did so.  I had been baffled by growing cantankerousness from this quarter in recent weeks, and commented openly on this to the person concerned, but hoped and believed that this aggravation had subsided.  I cannot honestly account for the withdrawal of the content en masse, and, obviously, I regret that this has happened.

 

We all have our woes in life.  I am humbled sometimes when I learn of some of the crud many RMWebbers have to contend with in their real lives, and, yet, manage to pursue their hobby and contribute to this community.  I cannot know whatever issues this individual may be battling with, but whatever they are, I sincerely wish him the best and I am sorry he is no longer here.

 

So, forgive my earlier gloomy comments, because, weary as I am from my own fight, this regrettable incident did get me down.  

 

I have had some time away from the topic to reflect, and, now would like to continue with CA and this topic. 

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Good decision.

 

Has this come to your attention? http://www.hattons.co.uk/173658/Oxford_Rail_OR76MW4001_4_plank_wagon_in_North_British_Railway_grey/StockDetail.aspx

 

Hatton''s photo makes it look a bit average, and the brake lever is not fitted correctly, but I just saw better photos in a mag in the reading room at WHS, and it looks oks very good indeed,a genuine r-t-r pre-grouper; a bit out of area, but there must have been some weird cargo that could justify it.

 

K

Edited by Nearholmer
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Some early 1900s colour photos that I think are useful for painting women, and for the general atmosphere. Most of them seem to have been taken in Britain.

http://www.vintag.es/2015/11/women-in-autochrome-breathtaking-color.html

http://mashable.com/2016/05/21/warburg-autochromes/

http://mashable.com/2015/04/23/autochrome-photos-ogorman/

 

 

I followed that second link at the time you posted it, and discovered that you can buy framed prints of John Cimon Warburg's autochromes from the Science and Society Picture Library. So I now have one of his pictures of Whitby hanging up in my living room. It's rather nice, in a slightly fuzzy autochrome kind of way. 

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Has this come to your attention? http://www.hattons.co.uk/173658/Oxford_Rail_OR76MW4001_4_plank_wagon_in_North_British_Railway_grey/StockDetail.aspx

 

Hatton''s photo makes it look a bit average, and the brake lever is not fitted correctly, but I just saw better photos in a mag in the reading room at WHS, and it looks oks very good indeed,a genuine r-t-r pre-grouper; a bit out of area, but there must have been some weird cargo that could justify it.

This is a standard NBR mineral wagon.  Not sure what you mean by the brake lever not being fitted correctly.  The wagon has a single brake shoe on the left hand wheel, common practice in Scotland, at least, at the time, and activation is by means of a push rod .  The pivot of the brake lever is therefore slightly back from the shoe hanger, with a vertical lever activating the push rod.  The CR tended to have a more direct action, with the hanger and the brake lever sharing the pivot.  the pivot was therefore nearer the wheel.

 

Nothing weird about the load, coal, iron ore or any other such commodity.  The hoop hinges on the end door are rather strangely represented, however.  They should continue round onto the inner side of the door to form an almost complete circle.  This was the arrangement used by both the CR and NBR for end doors on mineral wagons well into the 20th century.

 

Jim

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And scottish wagons did travel about a bit too. In one of the Great Eastern Journals there is a picture of somewhere near Yarmouth of a Highland Railway Meat van. One would imagine that that wagon was delivering some nice bit of beef.

 

Andy G

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Jim

 

The brake lever looks to me as if it has been incorrectly fitted during assembly, behind the rear part of the "pin down thingy" (it must have a proper name), rather than between the front and rear plates of said " thingy".

 

And, by "weird load", I meant something special enough to merit transport all the way from NB territory to WNR territory. I'm thinking that coal probably wouldn't fit that description, being available from nearer at hand, at lower price, by sea or rail, and I couldn't think of anything else either - but I admit to deep ignorance about what minerals originated in NB territory, due at least in part, to deep ignorance of the extent of NB territory.

 

Were the shale-oil distilleries on the NB? Barrels of oil certainly would be valuable enough, and in demand, to merit the trip.

 

The wagons in the photo below certainly have the hoop hinges.

 

[Edit: I'm onto something here! Yes, the NB did serve shale oil distilleries, and not only sent oil south, but Pintchs gas too, specifically to the GE, which was one of the railways that used it for carriage lighting.] [edit: no, they sent gas oil to Stratford, for final distillation to create Pintsch gas ....... presumably by the tank car, given the quantities that must have been needed. But, barrels of lamp oil seem entirely appropriate for a rural area.]

 

Kevin

post-26817-0-09787500-1478624489_thumb.png

Edited by Nearholmer
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Just a brief "hello", I will catch up on the fun stuff later!

 

I would say "least said, soonest mended", but sadly I do not think anything will get mended on this occasion. Suffice to say that one of our valued contributors to this thread appears to have deleted all his contributions to this topic, amounting to a net loss of 7 pages.  Clearly it is a shame that he did so.  I had been baffled by growing cantankerousness from this quarter in recent weeks, and commented openly on this to the person concerned, but hoped and believed that this aggravation had subsided.  I cannot honestly account for the withdrawal of the content en masse, and, obviously, I regret that this has happened.

 

We all have our woes in life.  I am humbled sometimes when I learn of some of the crud many RMWebbers have to contend with in their real lives, and, yet, manage to pursue their hobby and contribute to this community.  I cannot know whatever issues this individual may be battling with, but whatever they are, I sincerely wish him the best and I am sorry he is no longer here.

 

So, forgive my earlier gloomy comments, because, weary as I am from my own fight, this regrettable incident did get me down.  

 

I have had some time away from the topic to reflect, and, now would like to continue with CA and this topic. 

 

Edwardian,

 

It doesn't look like anything personal.

 The person in question has removed all their posts in my topic also.

 

Each to their own!

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Edwardian,

 

It doesn't look like anything personal.

 The person in question has removed all their posts in my topic also.

 

Each to their own!

 

They seem to have removed all their posts from my thread as well. Definitely nothing personal.

 

Gary

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No idea who we are talking about. Do all the posts get renumbered? And what happens to post quoting a deleted post? could make a real mess of any references. Still unlike Magazines which can be found years later our electronic world is very ephemeral. I suppose all this could disappear at the whim of Warners. It would seem that my subscription to Garden Rail digital version will cease as Warners having taken it over wish to change platform, and I will lose the lot.

 

Don 

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The quoted posts from the unnamed person are still in the quotes with said persons name however the originals are not there, and yes all the posts seem to get renumbered. It could cause some real continuity issues if reading through the threads.

 

Gary

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Elsewhere, both London and Bristol are port cities, and, of course, Bridgewater, mentioned in the link you sent me, was an inland port. 

 

 

Bridgwater - incorrectly spelt in your link - with an 'e' in the middle its from that place with the canal up north - was no further inland than Bristol or London - but the River Parrett is somewhat narrower than the Avon or the Thames. It had been making pantiles from at least the 1700s. So Bridgwater tiles would have been locally made. Production took a dive in the inter-war period when the London Brick Company started to monopolise brick production.

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POWsides do rub-down transfers for the F Warren livery.  They specify the wagon body is red in colour. 

 

DSCF3005_zpsqhfczoad.jpg

 

Of course, when I built mine I managed to fluff up the transfers, so I've said it was damaged in a zeppelin raid in WWI and painted parts over to suggest new planks and a rudimentary paint job just sufficient to get it back in traffic. 

 

Excellent wagons.  I note POWSIDES offer the kit in 4mm.  When next in funds .... 

 

Those pesky Zeppelins!

 

 

Turton volume 5 also has a section on Coote & Warren including the above photo. Keith Turton's caption says "The wagon appears to have a red body with white letters shgaded black and black ironwork, albeit that the ironwork looks a different hue to the shading on the lettering". There is also an offocial view from the builder's catalogue (Pickering) of the same wagon with the top door open though it is much touched up.

Coote & Warren was not formed until 1908 though Turton states that before that date each family was represented on the other company's board of directors. The original Mr Coote appears to have been quite a man. Despite finding time to have 13 children (though presumably more time consuming for his wife than for him) he was also Deputy Leutenant of Cambridgeshire and High Sheriff of Huntingdonshire and Cambridgeshire. By comparison Mr Warren seems to have been perfectly normal (all from Turton).

BTW there are at least two downloadable indexes of private owner wagon references in books, one a PDF and the other an Excel file.

Jonathan

 

Helpful and fascinating, thanks.

 

In 7mm POWSIDES do the wonderfully named P. Softley, coal factor at Massingham (M&GNJ).  I wondered if I might do a 'take' on this, in the spirit of the Norfolk Fish Oil & Guano and produce a P. Softley, Coal factor, Achingham.  

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Good decision.

 

Has this come to your attention? http://www.hattons.co.uk/173658/Oxford_Rail_OR76MW4001_4_plank_wagon_in_North_British_Railway_grey/StockDetail.aspx

 

Hatton''s photo makes it look a bit average, and the brake lever is not fitted correctly, but I just saw better photos in a mag in the reading room at WHS, and it looks oks very good indeed,a genuine r-t-r pre-grouper; a bit out of area, but there must have been some weird cargo that could justify it.

 

K

 

This is a standard NBR mineral wagon.  Not sure what you mean by the brake lever not being fitted correctly.  The wagon has a single brake shoe on the left hand wheel, common practice in Scotland, at least, at the time, and activation is by means of a push rod .  The pivot of the brake lever is therefore slightly back from the shoe hanger, with a vertical lever activating the push rod.  The CR tended to have a more direct action, with the hanger and the brake lever sharing the pivot.  the pivot was therefore nearer the wheel.

 

Nothing weird about the load, coal, iron ore or any other such commodity.  The hoop hinges on the end door are rather strangely represented, however.  They should continue round onto the inner side of the door to form an almost complete circle.  This was the arrangement used by both the CR and NBR for end doors on mineral wagons well into the 20th century.

 

Jim

 

Jim

 

The brake lever looks to me as if it has been incorrectly fitted during assembly, behind the rear part of the "pin down thingy" (it must have a proper name), rather than between the front and rear plates of said " thingy".

 

And, by "weird load", I meant something special enough to merit transport all the way from NB territory to WNR territory. I'm thinking that coal probably wouldn't fit that description, being available from nearer at hand, at lower price, by sea or rail, and I couldn't think of anything else either - but I admit to deep ignorance about what minerals originated in NB territory, due at least in part, to deep ignorance of the extent of NB territory.

 

Were the shale-oil distilleries on the NB? Barrels of oil certainly would be valuable enough, and in demand, to merit the trip.

 

The wagons in the photo below certainly have the hoop hinges.

 

[Edit: I'm onto something here! Yes, the NB did serve shale oil distilleries, and not only sent oil south, but Pintchs gas too, specifically to the GE, which was one of the railways that used it for carriage lighting.] [edit: no, they sent gas oil to Stratford, for final distillation to create Pintsch gas ....... presumably by the tank car, given the quantities that must have been needed. But, barrels of lamp oil seem entirely appropriate for a rural area.]

 

Kevin

 

The Oxford NB wagon, yes, I would like that.  I was pondering, though, how I could justify it so far away from its native heath?

 

E.g. I have invested in a Cambrian Kits Cambrian Railways wagon for Welsh slate traffic.

 

Pre-Grouping interests/projects range from LSWR in North Devon to GER in Norfolk to the SE&CR and LB&SCR mainlines.  I wonder if Kevin has seized upon the answer?  Barrels of shale oil!  Not seen that on a model before!!!

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Before American, Persian and Russian lamp-oils came to GB, from about 1890, but much more so after 1900, lamp oil from Scotland, plus clean-burning animal fats, like whale-oil, were very important for illumination.

 

GB had uniquely restrictive laws about lamp oils, because there were many terrible fires caused by people burning what we would now call petrol, in lamps in the 1860s/70s. The laws placed very tight controls over "low flashpoint" fuels, and, alongside excise laws around alcohol, are what caused GB to be very into pre-Diesel "heavy oil" engines, whereas the continent and the US tended to favour engines, which burned "petrol" or alcohol. (More, tedious, detail about early internal-combustion engine fuels is available on request!)

 

Whether or not a market town in Norfolk could justify a whole wagonload of barrels of lamp oil, all at once, I'm not sure, but perhaps CAs oil merchant is stock-piling for the long winter ahead.

 

K

post-26817-0-59695200-1478635683_thumb.png

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Before American, Persian and Russian lamp-oils came to GB, from about 1890, but much more so after 1900, lamp oil from Scotland, plus clean-burning animal fats, like whale-oil, were very important for illumination.

 

GB had uniquely restrictive laws about lamp oils, because there were many terrible fires caused by people burning what we would now call petrol, in lamps in the 1860s/70s. The laws placed very tight controls over "low flashpoint" fuels, and, alongside excise laws around alcohol, are what caused GB to be very into pre-Diesel "heavy oil" engines, whereas the continent and the US tended to favour engines, which burned "petrol" or alcohol. (More, tedious, detail about early internal-combustion engine fuels is available on request!)

 

Whether or not a market town in Norfolk could justify a whole wagonload of barrels of lamp oil, all at once, I'm not sure, but perhaps CAs oil merchant is stock-piling for the long winter ahead.

 

K

If it's of any interest to the WNR, Lynn was a whaling town in the nineteenth century (something never much mentioned in local histories produced in the second half of the twentieth century, though gaining more prominence now). We discussed guano before - have we done whale oil already?

 

Paul

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Not a material particularly associated with the West Country, but see the picture below of Bristol in 1866. 

Looking at photos of Georgian & Victorian buildings in Bath and Bristol, there were plenty of pantiled roofs. Houses on the Somerset levels and in places like Highbridge and Burnham-on-Sea that seems to have been the roofing material of choice. Even in the medieval City of Wells, some of the substantial timber-framed buildings have pantiled roofs.

I imagine that where there were brickworks, they were likely to make tiles as well. There were three brickworks in the couple of miles between Highbridge Wharf and Burnham; with their own sidings off the S&D line. In Geoffrey Maslen's 'Around B-o-S & Highbridge in old photographs' there is a photo of the management and workers of Pitts Brickyard where bricks, tiles and drain-pipes were made from the 1860s onwards. It says that the products were mostly not for local use, but transported away by train.

If Bridgwater tiles are quoted in a directory of roofing materials they must have had a fairly large market, over quite a large area. They had been making them from at least the 1700s. 

I think we often underestimate the level of self-sufficiency communities had. To paraphrase the 'where there's muck there's brass' saying, 'where there's mud there's brick'. You use your own resources for your own needs and if you have excess, then you trade it for stuff you don't have.

One final thought  - one of my fondest memories of my early modelling days in the early '60s, was an article entitled 'Madder Valley makes bricks' with a photo of John Ahern's model brick kiln. I had that magazine for years - alas no more.

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Good picture of a nice model. There were some of these where I lived as a kid, (donw area) used for production of bricks, tiles, and earthenware pipes, so there were stacks of these, plus a few broken ones lying around. The low arches at the sides of the kilns were for coal fired furnaces, so the ground here wouldn't be as clean as the model. Once the firing was done, the fires would be raked out and barrowed off to a tip. The kids of the poorest families nearby would be picking round the tip for partly burnt coal, which would be carried off in a sack on an old pram or bike to the family home for their fire. (Just open grate fires in a house then)

Paraffin. Back to childhood again, and carrying a rectangular tin, about a gallon capacity, with a screw top, down to the village grocers. You went in, and asked for everything, which was fetched off the shelves by the assistant and placed on the counter. (No helping yourself from the shelves then) The paraffin,however, was in a store at the back, a large square tank, I dunno, several hundred gallons, and my tin was filled from this, then back for lamps, going round some sheds and disabled uncles. Those were the days, eh?

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If it's of any interest to the WNR, Lynn was a whaling town in the nineteenth century (something never much mentioned in local histories produced in the second half of the twentieth century, though gaining more prominence now). We discussed guano before - have we done whale oil already?

 

Paul

 

Indeed, this is why the Norfolk Fish Oil & Guano Company is based in Bishop' Lynn.  As zoological precision was probably not a priority for either the Norfolk or Scottish companies, I did wonder if "Fish Oil" referred to wale oil.

 

Now, if the side doors of my tank wagon mean it is for guano sludge rather than liquid fish oil, do I need another tank wagon?  A rectangular job would be fun.

 

 

Whether or not a market town in Norfolk could justify a whole wagonload of barrels of lamp oil, all at once, I'm not sure, but perhaps CAs oil merchant is stock-piling for the long winter ahead.

 

 

 

So, what about oil for carriage lighting?

 

The WNR 'mainline' stock of modern 6-wheelers is gas light, but the Achingham and Wolfringham branch sets, 4-wheelers of the '70s and '60s respectively, are certainly still oil lit.    

 

The beauty of my in-built inconvenience is that the feeder lines from Wolfringham (coastal trade, coal) and Bishop's Lynn (general merchandise, guano and fish oil, coal, possibly Baltic timber, etc), Achingam (agricultural produce, beer etc),  all have to go, via Flitching Junction, to Castle Aching before they can reverse and travel north to the Birchoverhams and the link with the M&GNJ.

So, goods travelling to CA are not necessarily destined for CA.

 

Shale oil, fish oil, wale oil?  We're getting a bit slick!

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