Castle Aching

[runs as required]

Bonjour, c’est moi, your leetle cheese eater Routier du Nord, avec un autre leenk, zis time for ze Necropolitaines. (Not me sat uses zem, heureusement) au ‘voir.

http://forum.e-train.fr/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=77417&start=375

Go and wash your mouth out!

We'll have no 'Cheese Eating Surrender Monkies' here !

[Martin S-C]

I seem to recall being told by a school friend who's farther was a farmer in Wensleydale that it still illegal to produce Wensleydale cheese in Wensleydale.

 

This was punishment for supporting the Royalist side in the Civil War if I recall correctly.

You would have to be fairly elderly to be punished today for supporting the Royalists in the 1640s and 1650s therefore I expect this law is in fact rarely invoked.

Edited September 29, 2018 by Martin S-C

[Tom Burnham]

I have posted before on Wensleydale and how the cheese was a product, well into the railway age, of the relatively isolated dale that could not get its milk out to the wider market. When the railway came, late in the Nineteenth Century, to the Dale, it killed the cheese. A dedicated bottling plant was established at Northallerton, where the line reached the ECML, and the Dale's entire milk out put was devoted to export to London.

 

As an example of how everything connects on CA, the chairman of the Wensleydale Pure Milk Society, which built the rail-served dairy at Northallerton, was Sebastian Meyer of York, who was the promoter (and in some cases self-styled engineer) of various Edwardian light and minor railways in northern England, including the East and West Yorkshire Union Railways, the Isle of Axholme Light Railway, the North Sunderland Railway and the Cawood, Wistow and Selby Light Railway, amongst others.

https://www.amazon.com/Light-Railway-King-North/dp/0901461156

[Edwardian]

The West Norfolk Regiment - Military History Re-Written

 

Introduction

 

In the Nineteenth Century there were two county infantry regiments associated with Norfolk; the 9th (East Norfolk) Regiment of Foot and the 54th (West Norfolk) Regiment.

 

The West Norfolks had only a single battalion. This caused the regiment to be affected by the reforms of the 1870s and to lose its identity and territorial links completely through amalgamation in 1881. As part of the Cardwell Reforms of the 1870s, where single-battalion regiments were linked together to share a single depot and recruiting district in the United Kingdom, the 54th was linked with the 95th (Derbyshire) Regiment of Foot, and assigned to district no. 26 at Normanton Barracks in Derbyshire. On 1 July 1881 the Childers Reforms came into effect and the regiment amalgamated with the 39th (Dorsetshire) Regiment of Foot to form the Dorsetshire Regiment. 

 

The East Norfolks had two battalions, and, so, faired differently. The regiment was not fundamentally affected by the Cardwell Reforms of the 1870s, which gave it a depot at Gorleston Barracks in Great Yarmouth from 1873, or by the Childers reforms of 1881 – as it already possessed two battalions, there was no need for it to amalgamate with another regiment. Under the reforms the regiment became The Norfolk Regiment on 1 July 1881. It had two regular battalions (1st and 2nd) and two militia battalions (the 3rd and 4th - the latter formed from the East Norfolk Militia). It inherited all the battle honours and traditions of its predecessor regiment.

 

Thus, it will be seen that, effectively from around 1870, there ceased to be a second country regiment based in Norfolk, and, when the 5th was amalgamated in 1881, the old 9th Regiment adopted a new title, reflecting the fact that it was now the only Norfolk regiment.

 

History Re-Written

 

Second Battalion, 54th (West Norfolk) Regiment

 

To change history for the West Norfolks, we need to ensure three things.  First, we will need to go some way back to ensure that the 54th had two battalions as an established fact by the time of the Cardwell Reforms. It could, thus, retain its presence and its dépôt on Norfolk and, in 1881, it would pass unscathed through Childers Reforms.  The corollary of this would seem to be a slight change to the subsequent history of the 9th Regiment; it would not have become the Norfolk Regiment in 1881, but would have changed simply from the 9th (East Norfolk) Regiment to the East Norfolk Regiment.  Otherwise, its expansion with the inclusion of Volunteer Battalions from former East Norfolk Militia and Rifle Volunteers would remain the same.

 

For the West Norfolks, a logical point in time to look for the advent of a second battalion is the Napoleonic Wars, when the regular army was, in terms of numbers of regiments and battalions, at its greatest extent. This will involve a certain amount of pre-history for the expanded 54th Regiment, providing a record for its fictional second battalion in the decades leading up to the reforms of the 1870s and 1880s.  Delving into the real history of the 54th Foot, I find that a second battalion was indeed raised, in May 1800, but the two had amalgamated in 1802.  Perhaps this was a result of reductions in our forces during the Treaty of Amiens, or it could have been that one or other of the battalions was understrength and could not be maintained.  For our purposes, we simply assume that the 54th continued as a two-battalion regiment. In our fictional history the regiment, which had been designated “West Norfolk” in 1782, has an expanded territory to sustain it as a two-battalion formation.

 

West Norfolk Militia & Volunteer Formations

 

The second requirement is that there are some specifically West Norfolk home-defence units that can become the Volunteer Battalions of the re-constituted and re-named West Norfolk Regiment in 1881. Here I suggest that we, again, indulge ourselves. 

 

The date of the Castle Aching and Achingham drill halls fits with the Volunteer Rifle movement of the 1860s, which has been explored in earlier posts, so this would suit the Norfolk Volunteers. I believe that there were at least three battalions of the Volunteers in Norfolk. We may posit a fourth, based primarily in the areas served by the WNR.

 

It was typical of the volunteer rifles to wear grey uniforms.  The painting below is of Norfolk Volunteers: The 1st Administrative Battalion of the Norfolk Volunteers at Gunton Park, by Claude Lorraine Richard Wilson Nursey. Note the uniform style of the period makes them similar to regulation uniforms of the American Civil War; the initial inhabitants of Castle Aching Drill Hall would have looked exactly  like this. The picture is held by the National Army Museum, and the art.org website provides the following notes:

 

Administrative battalions were formed mainly in rural areas, to provide staff and headquarters facilities for widely scattered volunteer units. This particular unit was formed in 1861, and in 1883 became the 3rd Volunteer Battalion, the Norfolk Regiment. The painting depicts the Battalion encamped at Gunton Park in Norfolk, family seat of the commanding officer, Lord Suffield.

 

As we have a couple of Volunteer Battalions to station around our expanded Norfolk, I suggest we also include the West Norfolk Militia in our history.  The Norfolk Militia was created at the time of the Seven Years war, and the first regiment raised pursuant to the Militia Act of 1757. By 1758 it comprised the 1st Battalion Western Regiment of the Norfolk Militia (West Norfolk Militia) and the 2nd Battalion Eastern Regiment of the Norfolk Militia (East Norfolk Militia). Between 1797 and 1798 there was also a 3rd Battalion of the Norfolk Militia, but this was not re-raised in 1803.

 

In reality, in 1881, the West Norfolk Militia became the 3rd Battalion of the Norfolk Regiment, and the East Norfolk Militia became the 4th Battalion.  We have to assume that the two regular regiments, East and West, subsumed one militia battalion each, together with local volunteer units and artillery militia. 

 

I admit that I do like the idea of creating the North Norfolk Fencibles, a unit dating from that earlier period of invasion scares, the 1790s. A real unit, the Norfolk Artillery Militia, was formed in 1853, but I suspect confined the East Norfolk, it was I think based in Gorleston Barracks, Great Yarmouth.

 

The West Norfolk Regiment, Campaign History, 1873-1905

 

The third element necessary to our historical deception is to create two battalions-worth of campaign and garrison history for the West Norfolks, from the 1870s to 1905. The West Norfolks seem to have been wherever the east Norfolks were not, for instance, in the 1850s the East Norfolks were in the Crimea and the West Norfolks served in the Indian Mutiny.  The West Norfolk’s last overseas posting was also in India, in 1871.

 

By 1879, when the East Norfolks were engaged in the Second Afghan War, the West Norfolk was in its moribund phase in Derbyshire.  In a re-written history, one of its battalions was doubtless facing “Zulus! Fousands of ‘em!”  Perhaps, though, at least one battalion should maintain the tradition of postings to India.  The 1880s and 1890s saw plenty of action on the North West Frontier. That fictional after-life for the regiment would need to be continued up to 1905 and, like the Norfolk Regiment, could have involved recent service in South Africa for the volunteers.

 

Birchoverham Barracks

 

A part of the post-1881 history is that the West Norfolk Regiment would require a permanent dépôt in the west of the county and, logically, this fictional barracks should reside somewhere in the expanded Norfolk, perhaps near the coast, so the WNR will serve a regular army garrison, perhaps somewhere up towards the Birchoverhams.

 

Conclusion

 

So, we can have a lot of fun with this. In case anyone thinks this is a pretty extreme length to go to in order to provide a back-story for a single building on the layout, it will be appreciated that the fictional history of the West Norfolk Regiment, both the regular and volunteer battalions, in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries, will be entwined with the people and places associated the West Norfolk Railway, and, so, is another pillar supporting the whole fictional edifice of CA.

 

If anyone has managed to stagger through all this, thank you and well done!

 

[Martin S-C]

I love that last picture, it reminds me of some of the romantic prints of American militia regiments painted just before the American Civil War turned from a jolly fun party into a grisly bloodfest. early on some regiments of both sides wore grey - and dark blue, leading to some unhappy incidents at First Manassas and other early skirmishes.

Also - well done on the alternative history. In terms of railway traffic might you be able to bring in long cattle trains for the (wagon) horses, horseboxes for the officers (better quality) horses or fodder wagons?

[DonB]

As an example of how everything connects on CA, the chairman of the Wensleydale Pure Milk Society, which built the rail-served dairy at Northallerton, was Sebastian Meyer of York, who was the promoter (and in some cases self-styled engineer) of various Edwardian light and minor railways in northern England, including the East and West Yorkshire Union Railways, the Isle of Axholme Light Railway, the North Sunderland Railway and the Cawood, Wistow and Selby Light Railway, amongst others.

https://www.amazon.com/Light-Railway-King-North/dp/0901461156

An alternative source (UK) of the book see:-

www.bookfinder.com

[corneliuslundie]

Yes, I can see considerable traffic generated for the railway, not just moving troops but also supplies. All those people would eat a lot and so would their horses. Would local sources of straw etc be sufficient or would it have to be imported? And uniforms, ammunition etc etc. 

All of course passing through CA.

Jonathan

[Andy Hayter]

There would be significant importation of food for personal and stock.  Not sure of the status pre-WW1 but during and afterwards contracts with suppliers were set up to ensure a constant supply.  

[Nearholmer]

What we really need is a ‘goods book’ from a roughly comparable place, the ledger kept by the goods clerk to record consignments in and out, plus the arcane calculation of charges.

 

I think there are few in places like the NRM collection, and there might have been articles summarising findings from them in the more serious magazines and journals.

[Edwardian]

As an example of how everything connects on CA, the chairman of the Wensleydale Pure Milk Society, which built the rail-served dairy at Northallerton, was Sebastian Meyer of York, who was the promoter (and in some cases self-styled engineer) of various Edwardian light and minor railways in northern England, including the East and West Yorkshire Union Railways, the Isle of Axholme Light Railway, the North Sunderland Railway and the Cawood, Wistow and Selby Light Railway, amongst others.

https://www.amazon.com/Light-Railway-King-North/dp/0901461156

 

Very interesting.  That is a book I must get hold of.

 

Meanwhile, work begins on the WNR's standard open wagons ....

[Edwardian]

Not that I need a large architectural project not immediately related to the Castle Aching scene, but some inspiration may be found in ....

 

Britannia barracks, Mousehold Heath, Norwich, as the dépôt  for the Norfolk Regiment between 1885 and 1887.

 

Now a prison.

 

 

[Compound2632]

Very interesting.  That is a book I must get hold of.

 

Meanwhile, work begins on the WNR's standard open wagons ....

 

Slater's Gloucester 5-plank side if I'm not mistaken. WNR using 4 planks to the same depth, a la LNWR?

[Compound2632]

History Re-Written

 

I'm enjoying this but there's so much nineteenth-century military historical fiction around that it's surprising the characters don't turn up in each other's novels. Waterloo is the worst case... 

 

I feel sure that if the West Norfolks were in India during the Mutiny* Col. Erstwhile would have had a run-in with Flashman...

 

*Period terminology used.

[Andy Hayter]

I have posted before on Wensleydale and how the cheese was a product, well into the railway age, of the relatively isolated dale that could not get its milk out to the wider market. When the railway came, late in the Nineteenth Century, to the Dale, it killed the cheese. A dedicated bottling plant was established at Northallerton, where the line reached the ECML, and the Dale's entire milk out put was devoted to export to London.

 

Yet, by the Edwardian period they had realised that there was an external market for the Dale's cheese. Quite how the creamery cheeses since produced, and produced to this day, in the Dale differ from the pre-railway farmhouse cheeses is another matter, but the railway did allow some local cheeses to prosper and to be available nationally.

 

As to

 

At the same time, factories in the cities started to use leftover milk to make standardised cheese on a large commercial scale (the first factory to do so in 1870).

 

 

 

I seem to recall being told by a school friend who's farther was a farmer in Wensleydale that it still illegal to produce Wensleydale cheese in Wensleydale.

 

This was punishment for supporting the Royalist side in the Civil War if I recall correctly.

 

I may be talking absolute arse though, it was along time ago I had this conversion!

 

If it is illegal then someone had better have a word with the Hawes creamery 

https://www.wensleydale.co.uk/shop/yorkshire-wensleydale/

 

They have been cashing in on Wallace and Gromit for years.

 

But seriously I think in WW2 the farmers were stopped from legally using the local bacteria to produce Wensleydale cheese in order to improve the nutritional values [iIRC it was to produce a more solid less moist cheese with better keeping qualities].  They had to use imported bacteria.  I am not sure if that has ever been rescinded and it may be that that you are remembering..

[Hroth]

Cracking cheese!

[Edwardian]

As an example of how everything connects on CA, the chairman of the Wensleydale Pure Milk Society, which built the rail-served dairy at Northallerton, was Sebastian Meyer of York, who was the promoter (and in some cases self-styled engineer) of various Edwardian light and minor railways in northern England, including the East and West Yorkshire Union Railways, the Isle of Axholme Light Railway, the North Sunderland Railway and the Cawood, Wistow and Selby Light Railway, amongst others.

https://www.amazon.com/Light-Railway-King-North/dp/0901461156

 

Required reading, I feel, as I, for one, know nothing of the guiding hand behind these various railways.

 

Slater's Gloucester 5-plank side if I'm not mistaken. WNR using 4 planks to the same depth, a la LNWR?

 

The idea is to show progression. Inspiration is the GER, which, like most companies, built these recognisably modern standard wagons for general merchandise from the 1880s and into the new century.  Often, we would see a change from 4 to 5-planks as part of the evolution, but it does not follow that the 5-plankers were any taller than the preceding 4-planks.  You can see this from the picture of the two GER wagons below.

 

Whether the WNR's standard evolved further and adopted steel underframes is another matter; I suspect not.

 

The WNR will have some odds and ends - including older wagons still in service, including some dumb-buffer examples, and some GE hand-me-downs - but these 4 and 5 plank 1880s and 1890s types will be the standard type (I hope!).   

 

EDIT: I should point out that the Gloucester design was chosen as the basis as it has no external diagonal strapping, which should distinguish the WN types a little from the GE and many other mainline types.

Edited October 1, 2018 by Edwardian

[corneliuslundie]

Unless you intend the WNR to have bought its wagons from Gloucester, I should if I were you be wary though about using the Gloucester brake levers with attached V hangers as the V hanger is a distinctive Gloucester style not seen much on other wagons.

Of course four planks is a bit modern if you are the GWR or MR. Still plenty of three plankers around in 1905  - and later.

I have  read somewhere that in at least some companies there was a gradual change from four to five planks because it became more difficult (= expensive) to obtain wide enough planks. In all probability this change would have been made in the workshops without a new drawing being produced. Is it the book on NSR wagons which says this? And I suspect that it would have happened more during the First World War than earlier.

So there is obviously a PhD dissertation waiting to be written on the widths of planks in railway company open wagons before the First World War.

Jonathan

[Nearholmer]

"So there is obviously a PhD dissertation waiting to be written ......"

 

Yes, one that like the vast majority of such things would probably go largely unread.

[Edwardian]

Unless you intend the WNR to have bought its wagons from Gloucester, I should if I were you be wary though about using the Gloucester brake levers with attached V hangers as the V hanger is a distinctive Gloucester style not seen much on other wagons.

Of course four planks is a bit modern if you are the GWR or MR. Still plenty of three plankers around in 1905  - and later.

I have  read somewhere that in at least some companies there was a gradual change from four to five planks because it became more difficult (= expensive) to obtain wide enough planks. In all probability this change would have been made in the workshops without a new drawing being produced. Is it the book on NSR wagons which says this? And I suspect that it would have happened more during the First World War than earlier.

So there is obviously a PhD dissertation waiting to be written on the widths of planks in railway company open wagons before the First World War.

Jonathan

 

I agree, Jonathan.  I had thought to trim the 'V' off the solebar face (brakes one side only, of course) and replace with parallel vertical strips (like later RCH and others).  I also think there are some Gloucester markings on the face of the axleboxes and the solebar maker's plates are quite distinctive. The latter could be removed and replaced by something rectangular on the lower body. The GE had pairs of oval plates on the wagon sides, and later a single rectangular plate.

 

All these little amendments will help them not be too Gloucester.  I think the coupling hook plate and the door bang plate can also be changed.  Subtle differences, that's all. 

 

The evolution on the GER was

 

(1) Pre-diagram 4-planks, wooden underframe (1883)

(2) Diagram 16 5-planks, wooden underframe (1885 or 1887)

(3) Diagram 17 5-planks, steel underframe (1893 (test batch 1886)) 

 

Diagram 17s were built up to 1903. 

 

From this, it will be seen that in the picture posted above, we see a pre-diagram 4-plank and a Diagram 17 5-plank. 

[Guy Rixon]

... Of course four planks is a bit modern if you are the GWR or MR. Still plenty of three plankers around in 1905  - and later. ...

 

 Yes, but these MR and GWR wagons were different beasts. The MR ones were drop-sided wagons with medium-width (7"?) planks and these were useful enough that the LMS built them too. IIRC, the LMS inherited enough fro the MR for the specific traffics that needed them and built no new ones until the MR vehicles wore out. The GWR wagons were fixed sided wagons with central doors: i.e. general merchandise wagons. I think their planks were wider. At any rate, the GWR stopped building them.

[Edwardian]

Moving forward into the Grouping era, here's a good view of Britannia Barracks in 1931, from which it can be seen that the Norfolk Regiment was on the Norwich tram route!

 

Don't worry, I won't get all Craig & Mertonford and introduce electric trams.  It is just possible that the burgeoning seaside resort of Birchoverham Next the Sea could have developed a modest tram line - there were trams in Yarmouth and Gorleston, as well as Norwich - but I somehow think this is not quite right for the character of expanded West Norfolk, which might lose something from attempts to over-develop it.  

[Hroth]

Any sort of tram would probably be viewed as desperately modern in CA, but some of the more cosmopolitan places on the system might run to horse-drawn trams, With the "projected" seaside resort, a tramline from the station to the promenade via the town might be a handy amenity.  However, 1905 is getting close to that period where any such facility would be outclassed by the flexibility of the bus so a tram system would be in its final golden age....

[Nearholmer]

One thing that might fit the developmentally-conservative nature of eWN is a horse tramway, from the station to the 'prom', and to its extremities, straggling off as a sort of branch-line at one end, to a terminus in the dunes (Summer Sundays and Bank Holidays only; cars will terminate at the Hotel Splendide in inclement weather.

 

It could be very simple and low-key from a modelling point of view: a scene in the station forecourt consisting of one car, a horse chomping in a nose-bag, two members of staff loafing, and a tiny, but ornate, hut by the fence for the inspector to lurk in.

 

In France it would be a 'Decauville', with baladeuse coaches and a tiny tank engine, but we never got those here.

 

Single-horse tram-cars are usually very small, the cars in Douglas are unusually large. A serious challenge to model in 00, although maybe a kit for one of the Corris coaches adapted, given that they started life as pretty bog-standard 4W horse cars, before being paired-up on bogie under-frames.

 

Here's one that I think should inspire http://www.hythehistory.org/maps%20names%20and%20places/tramway/Tramway.html

 

Snap!

Edited October 1, 2018 by Nearholmer

[Guy Rixon]

How good are the roads in the towns? If already good enough for buses, I reckon that they'd go either for horse buses because cheap or electric trams because shiny. The only reason to use horse trams is if the tramway is cheaper than improving the roads.

[Regularity]

In France it would be a 'Decauville', with baladeuse coaches and a tiny tank engine, but we never got those here.

 

Don’t give him Ideas!