Castle Aching

[runs as required]

'As it 'appens..' (who used to use that as a wireless catchphrase?)

I just happen to have to hand a delightful reprint of a GCR summer timetable for 1903 with pale green 'Through Communication summary pages'. Pages 98 & 99 shew 'Through carriages to and from Great Northern Stations'

Manchester London Road to Norwich City - of which there are 6 in each direction on weekdays (none on Sundays).

The shadows on the gable bargeboards of the house behind suggest mid afternoon; the rounded corners of carriage windows exclude LNW.

I can offer arriival from Manchester 2.55pm (departed 8.00am); departure 3.15 (arrived Manchester 10.56pm)

 

Now I really must go back to the tedious job of seeking the best car insurance renewal price  for an octogenarian monocular Mondeo driver!

 

dh

 

Edit: striking out of mis-remembered window corners while texting, (don't have any Premier Line timetable until last year before grouping - but which way would that have been routed from M&GN - via Peterborough and Northampton? Or via GN to Stafford?)

Edited September 9, 2017 by runs as required

[Donw]

Interesting photo and I ptrfer Edwardians explanation that it is the WNR's through coach. Howeever if there is evidence to show it is not WNR, LNWR or MSLR do seem the most likely (although Edwardian may have details of the timing of the WNR through coach to Manchester!). There is no mention of the location of the photo which might help.

I do know Bob Essery and had someinteresting chats with him. Unless I seriously underestimated his age his knowledge of matters Midland is not first hand but from research so may have errors. He was LMS loco crew mostly out of Saltley so his focus on loco matters is natural, although I would agree Lamp Iron positions are not the most interesting facts about the loco. On matters relating to other railways I believe Bob is not so reliable.

Don

[Nearholmer]

Quick look at Bradshaw for 1910 ......... blow me, is it confusing!

 

I think it's telling me at GCR through carriages went via the M&GN, and LNWR through carriages got to Norwich, but not via the M&GN ...... but I wouldn't swear to it without further study.

[Nearholmer]

Well ...... one thing the M&GN section of my 1910 Bradshaw is clear about is that there was a train that reached Melton Constable in early evening, conveying through carriages: Birmingham and Leicester to Cromer, Norwich, Yarmouth, and Lowestoft.

 

I'm guessing that this was a Midland Railway train, and it must have been a right old shunting exercise. Return working mid mornings.

 

Ahrons says that there were two such trains each day, but maybe that was in the summer only.

 

This was followed shortly after by The Cromer Express, with through carriages Kings Cross to Cromer.

 

But, the GCR table might be read to say that there were also through carriages from Nottingham to Yarmouth Beach, on a train that arrived there in late morning ...... I'm really struggling with the way the tables are laid out, because they don't seem to differentiate very well between connections and through carriages.

 

Ahrons mentions coaches in GN and Midland liveries, and 'joint' teak, but makes no mention of any through carriages from other railways.

 

Could the photo be taken somewhere that LNWR or GCR Carriages reached via a non-M&GN route? My knowledge of the railway geography is limited ....... I was very surprised to see railway bridges in the middle of nowhere when I cycled around the WNR.

 

Anyway, means that I only have to watch Jurassic Park, which my son and nephew have decided is good for a rainy afternoon, with one eye. Doesn't it look retro!

Edited September 9, 2017 by Nearholmer

[Echo]

Your search in the timetables may be in vain. It might, for example be a family saloon or some other similar vehicle, not a regular working.

[Nearholmer]

Yes, I'd already wondered about that.

 

What I now want to know is how Holmes could find trains to obscure places in Bradshaw so very quickly. I'm beginning to suspect that Sir ACD might have introduced an element of fiction iinto the stories.

[runs as required]

I'm reverting to it being a GCR through carriage (a composite) from Manchester London Road.

Reasons: 1) all the LNW square corner windowed stock I've been wasting time checking have their white panels running vertically unbroken right up to the cant rail.  2) the window proportions don't look as narrow as the LNW, resembling more MS&LR proportions.

 

My summer 1903 GCR summer time table suggests running via Guide Bridge, Sheffield Vic, and Retford The through coach transferred onto the GN at Retford, with stops at Newark and Grantham. This probably means reversal and transfer to an M&GN train at P'boro North and a split of a Norwich City portion from the Cromer and Yarmouth Beach main train at Melton Constable.

So does the position of the mystery coach by the water column at the north end of Norwich City's platforms  signify arrival at the rear of the train - or departure at the head of the train?

 

Later edit:

I suggest it having arrived in Norwich at 2.55pm, being attached to the rear of the longer train departing from P'boro, and left behind with the Norwich portion after the main train left for the Norfolk coast.

 

..ah! ...but on the other hand there would also have been through carriages off the GC & GN from the north (and Leicester Belgrave Rd ?) for the coastal resorts attached to the M&GN train departing P'boro.

...time for tea methinks -and would those through carriage passengers have benefitted from a dining car?

 

dh

.

Edited September 9, 2017 by runs as required

[webbcompound]

The carriage is not any kind of LNWR carriage as the upper body panels go all the way to the roof on these, and the panel beading would in any case be much narrower.

[Echo]

Agree its definitely not LNWR.

 

MS&L (later GC) coaches were characterised by curved tops to the windows though. The ones in the photo look square. Square windows and panelling at window level and curved panelling elsewhere are an unusual combination, I think.

Edited September 9, 2017 by Echo

[runs as required]

OK. so a  Knotty (North Stafford) coach perhaps ?

 

dh

Edited September 9, 2017 by runs as required

[Echo]

OK. so a  Knotty (North Stafford) coach perhaps ?

 

dh

All the panelling is square on that coach!

[BG John]

Ah, timetable experts.

 

Voice Over: (John Cleese) That was an excerpt from the latest West End hit 'It all happened on the 11:20 from Hainault to Redhill via Horsham and Reigate, calling at Carshalton Beeches, Malmesbury, Tooting Bec and Croydon West'. The author is Mr. Neville Shunt.

 

(Shunt sitting among mass of railway junk, at typewriter, typing away madly.)

Shunt: (Terry Gilliam, typing) Chuff, chuff, chuffwoooooch, woooooch! Sssssssss, sssssssss! Diddledum, diddledum, diddlealum. Toot, toot. The train now standing at platform eight, tch, tch, tch, diddledum, diddledum. Chuffff chuffffiTff eeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaa Vooooommmmm.

 

(Cut to an critic. Superimposed caption: 'GAVIN MILLARRRRRRRRRR')

Art Critic: (John Cleese) Some people have made the mistake of seeing Shunt's work as a load of rubbish about railway timetables, but clever people like me, who talk loudly in restaurants, see this as a deliberate ambiguity, a plea for understanding in a mechanized world. The points are frozen, the beast is dead. What is the difference? What indeed is the point? The point is frozen, the beast is late out of Paddington. The point is taken. If La Fontaine's elk would spurn Tom Jones the engine must be our head, the dining car our esophagus, the guard's van our left lung, the cattle truck our shins, the first-class compartment the piece of skin at the nape of the neck and the level crossing an electric elk called Simon. The clarity is devastating. But where is the ambiguity? It's over there in a box. Shunt is saying the 8:15 from Gillingham when in reality he means the 8:13 from Gillingham. The train is the same only the time is altered. Ecce , ergo elk. La Fontaine knew his sister and knew her bloody well. The point is taken, the beast is moulting, the fluff gets up your nose. The illusion is complete; it is reality, the reality is illusion and the ambiguity is the only truth. But is the truth, as Hitchcock observes, in the box? No there isn't room, the ambiguity has put on weight. The point is taken, the elk is dead, the beast stops at Swindon, Chabrol stops at nothing, I'm having treatment and La Fontaine can get knotted.

[Nearholmer]

In fear of becoming Mr Neville Shunt, I'm going to make this my last throw.

 

I think that the train from Birmingham and Leicester may have combined with one from Manchester and Nottingham, possibly at South Lynn, then trundled to Melton Constable, before being distributed N, E & S. ...... but I might still be getting connections muddled-up with through carriages.

 

If I'm right about this, the five minutes allowed at Melton Constable to sort everything out, from 6:2pm to 6:7pm, must have exhausted all concerned!

[runs as required]

All the panelling is square on that coach!

I noticed that just as I clicked on 'Post'

Suppose I now suggest they graduated to neat rounded corners once they'd learned how to use a Silhouette cutter...

 

dh

[DonB]

I found an 1920's Bradshaw in a work's clear-out of old office desks. It had lost it's covers and the first ten or so pages were missing or ripped, most of the rest were tattered and creased. I thought that no-one would want such a tattered item and threw it back into the skip! 

Reading the above posts I can't make up my mind if that was a good decision... think of the head - scratching I may have prevented. 

[Echo]

The North Staffordshire graduated to LNWR styling after the square cornered era. I have looked through several books and see nothing that shows a similar kind of styling to the photo at all.

 

My betting is still that its some kind of family saloon, or similar. It appears to have a compartment at the LHS as the view through the windows is very dark and a saloon on the right, as you can see windows and scenery beyond. The carriage looks in really good condition too - maybe newly-painted even?

[Compound2632]

I agree with my esteemed fellow compound that it's certainly not LNWR.

If we believe the 1896 date, the field seems to be very narrow: I understood that Manchester Sheffield & Lincolnshire carriages were teak, the two-tone livery only coming in in early Great Central Days. 

When did the Caledonian adopt white upper panels? I thought this was very late 19th century, in imitation of the LNWR.

Likewise, the Furness' blue and white was a relatively late innovation, carriages having previously been reddish. Later carriages had LNWR style panelling; earlier carriages had conventional panelling, not in the unusual style of this photo. Besides, there's no diagram in Rush's Oakwood Press book that corresponds.

I don't believe I've ever seen a photo of a Maryport & Carlisle carriage!

The preserved North Stafford carriages, dating from the 1870s, have quite different square-cornered panelling; again, the earlier livery was claret, when did the Victoria brown and white come in?

Cambrian panelling seems to have been conventional; likewise Brighton (more-or-less). Again, when did the two-tone liveries come in?

 

I think we're forced to the conclusion that this is a WNR carriage. This presents Edwardian with a problem: he can no longer freelance - thorough prototype research is required, at least if he aspires to have his application to the Subscriptions Committee of Pre-Grouping Pedant accepted.

 

But back to the really interesting point about this photo: those lamp irons on No. 12. The frontispiece of Clark's Illustrated History shows a sparkling No. 5, possibly brand new, with three lamp irons equispaced across the bufferbeam and one at the top of the smokebox, which seems to be the typical arrangement. Does No. 12 have the Midland lamp-iron layout because it was used for through workings onto the Midland - as far as Peterborough, I believe.

[wagonman]

My problem is the location. I've searched in vain for a station that could accommodate an M&GN C class and a loco coal wagon – so likely to be on the M&GN system rather than somewhere 'foreign' – and has an enormous granary/maltings as a backdrop. Not Yarmouth Beach, not Cromer, not Norwich, certainly not Melton...

Edited September 9, 2017 by wagonman

[Edwardian]

It is, indeed, intriguing.  That coach is quite a distinct design when you look closely, and the livery style rules out a number of possibilities.

 

In the meantime, following a couple of posts suggesting that the location is unknown, I repeat, "Below is a detail from one of the pictures in the book.  It is a fine portrait of the Joint's Johnson 4-4-0 No. 12, at Norwich, c.1896.  Imagine her in colour, wearing "golden gorse"!

 

The 2 western 'portals' through which the mystery coach could emerge onto the MGNJ were (a) Peterborough (London traffic - from GNR King's Cross) and (b) Saxby/Bourne/Spalding (Midland traffic from the Midlands, usually Leicester, but also potentially Nottingham and Manchester).

 

Incidentally, the connection between the M&GNJ and the WNR near Great Massingham (nearest MGNJ station is Massingham on the Lynn-Fakenham line, and nearest WN station is Massingham Magna on the main Castle Aching-Birchoverhams line, which runs along a fold in the map) means that all or any of this traffic can run through to the WNR, reversing at Castle Aching for the Birchoverhams.

 

No, I cropped to the left, not the right, so that is all you get of the loco coal wagon. The "Jt." prefix is the original abbreviation, as used on locos too, but the size and font is interesting.  Usually it's smaller - applied to 4-planks - and look at that skinny 'T'. Has a rather 'home made' look to it.

[Northroader]

It would seem that the coach is GCR from Manchester, out of interest I looked at a LNWR map for a route for a Birmingham Norwich coach, and it would be through Rugby and Peterborough, whereas a MR coach from Brum would go through Liecester and Bourne. I was wondering if there's a change of level in the Norwich yard, the coach seems to be sitting very low?

Edited September 9, 2017 by Northroader

[Nearholmer]

I just had a look at nls maps, and the only building that I can see that might be the one in the background is across the river , behind the loco shed, which would put the carriage on a siding round the back of the shed. If that is where the photo was taken, it must have been with a long lens, to give the degree of compression.

 

Anyway ....,., in my ignorance,I didn't know what an amazing edifice Norwich City station was. What school of architecture do you call this? Is iy rundbogenstil? It looks as if it was designed by a German, as a kursaal.

Edited September 9, 2017 by Nearholmer

[Compound2632]

You will find that a lot of these "authors" are loco fanatics and nothing else.  Same with Ted Talbot and the LNWR.

 

More than a little unfair, I think. the Essery and Jenkinson oeuvre includes (either individually or together) The LMS Coach, Midland Wagons, Midland Carriages, LNWR Carriages... They pioneered the Illustrated History type of volume nearly forty years ago which have been the cornerstone of any modeller's library (their own volumes for the LMS, Midland, &c, others have followed in their footsteps). They were interested in producing books that would help the modeller, so it is true that they focused on external appearance. Thus much of their work has been superseded (or perhaps one should say complimented) by subsequent authors; for example, Lacey & Dow's Midland Railway Carriages provides much more detail, drawing on the archives at Kew. We've had the monographs in the LMS Locomotives and Midland Engines series, from which you could practically go away and build your full-size working replica, and Coates' Lancashire and Yorkshire Wagons and the LNWR Society's LNWR Wagons, continuing the trend to reproduce works drawings rather than just diagrams. I've not done more than skim CRASSOC's various publications, the Caley being really outside my sphere of interest, but they seem to exemplify the depth of research we are treated to these days. By these standards, Essery & Jenkinson's volumes can seem superficial, but they were the pioneers in the field. Without the success of their books, it's unlikely that publishers would be willing to issue the sort of book we've come to expect today. Yes, they were interested in the external appearance of locomotives - but isn't that the starting point for most of us? I doubt many were inspired by LNWR 4-bolt chairs, 1870-1923, even if we've now reached the point where we would add such a book to our collection!

 

Yes, Talbot's list includes An Illustrated History of LNWR Engines but several of his other books do include more on the operation and social history of the LNWR.

[Echo]

Britain From Above suggests a maltings building just across the river from Norwich loco shed with buttresses a bit like those in the mystery photo. Unfortunately the building was largely destroyed by bombing in WW2 so no longer has a roof in the BFA photos.

 

See https://britainfromabove.org.uk/en/image/EAW024415

 

or 

 

https://britainfromabove.org.uk/en/image/EAW024401

Edited September 9, 2017 by Echo

[Caley Jim]

Can't say what it is, but it's definitely not Caledonian. Wrong shape of ventilator and square cornered paneling rule that out.

 

Jim

[£1.38]

I wonder if the coach is actually a grounded body. As has already been pointed out, it is sitting quite low compared to the coal wagon. Looking at the OS map for the era there is something looking suspiciously like a coach body shape, off the rails and in roughly the right place