More Pre-Grouping Wagons in 4mm - the D299 appreciation thread.

[Compound2632]

I suspect the cattle traffic was seasonal, with little movement in the winter months - only five wagons received during those four months, though some of the the 41 empties for loading might be cattle - at least covering those Monday morning pigs. It's difficult to pick out from Marx's text what period he's writing about for each point; he's only specific on dates for a couple of examples. At a guess, I'd say he's probably not got verbal accounts from earlier than the 1930s, if that. That is what makes Jonathan Abson's article so interesting: it's a specific time frame and based on documentary evidence, not memory.

 

@Andy Hayter, interesting thoughts on the decline of rural populations. Some of our current housing problems might go away if people were prepared to tolerate the household sizes of a century or more ago!

[Nearholmer]

I don’t think that the Weald ever significantly depopulated, Nutley as an example: 
 

The population of Nutley in 1871 was 799; in 1891 was 990; in 1901 was 967; in 1911 was 1,109; in 1921 was 1,059; and in 1931 was 1,090.

 

Basically, things ticked along at the level that could be supported on a very local economy based on sheep/cattle roaming the forest (which is heath), farms with very small fields, and lots of woodland, then grew once better communications were available.

 

There might have been some small fall in the late C18th and early C19th, due to loss of iron making to coal districts, but not a great fall I think.

[Northroader]

A probable local user of the coke being supplied would be a blacksmith.

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

I don’t think that the Weald ever significantly depopulated, Nutley as an example: 
 

The population of Nutley in 1871 was 799; in 1891 was 990; in 1901 was 967; in 1911 was 1,109; in 1921 was 1,059; and in 1931 was 1,090.

 

Basically, things ticked along at the level that could be supported on a very local economy based on sheep/cattle roaming the forest (which is heath), farms with very small fields, and lots of woodland, then grew once better communications were available.

 

There might have been some small fall in the late C18th and early C19th, due to loss of iron making to coal districts, but not a great fall I think.

 

Regional variations. I had been thinking in terms of a decline in the rural population after the second war but I see the population of Nutley at the 2011 census was around 1,255.

[Compound2632]

2 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

A different ‘coal number’ that I’ve seen advocated and used is 1cwt/household.week, which seems to work as an average across households from the huge country house to the poor lone widow.

 

So 1,000 tons a year would equate to around 400 households, which if it also equals 1,000 inhabitants, gives a rather low number of inhabitants per household. But these are very rough estimates.

[Asterix2012]

32 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

So 1,000 tons a year would equate to around 400 households, which if it also equals 1,000 inhabitants, gives a rather low number of inhabitants per household. But these are very rough estimates.

Was the sawmill steam driven?

[Nearholmer]

39 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

Regional variations.

The variation in this case being commutability to London, plus a factor that began in the late C19th, which is around gentrification, with lots of arty types, then BBC bods, academics, musicians etc moving to the area. Subsistence farming progressively replaced by subsistence Media-biz.

 

A A Milne was following a pre-existing drift when he moved down after WW1.

Edited October 25, 2020 by Nearholmer

[Nearholmer]

1 minute ago, Asterix2012 said:

Was the sawmill steam driven?

Yes, but I should imagine fired to a large degree on slash.

[billbedford]

3 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

@Andy Hayter, interesting thoughts on the decline of rural populations. Some of our current housing problems might go away if people were prepared to tolerate the household sizes of a century or more ago!

 

The butt and ben that we, as a family of four, nicely filled,  held 15 in the 1851 census. 

[Compound2632]

I'm afraid I had to look up "butt and ben": a Scottish two-roomed cottage, with a single door to the outer room - the butt or kitchen - from which access is gained to the inner room - the ben. Sounds cosy for four, let along fifteen. 

 

Aprops of those North Staffordshire area wagons in the 1898 Wellingborough train and fitting in with the discussion of traffic to Sheffield Park, here's a NSR wagon label, Midland Railway Study Centre Item No. 14494, for a load of coal from the Midland Coal Coke & Iron Co.'s Apedale Colliery to Cranbrook on the South Eastern Railway's Hawkhurst branch, via Burton, Hendon, and Blackfriars on 3 March 1894. I can't quite make out the consignee's name but the wagon number appears to be 35907, so it's almost certainly a Midland D299, despite the point of origin being off the Midland system.

 

The Hawkhurst branch had only been open six months and already it was seeing D299s!

Edited October 26, 2020 by Compound2632

[Regularity]

2 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

I'm afraid I had to look up "butt and ben": a Scottish two-roomed cottage, with a single door to the outer room - the butt or kitchen - from which access is gained to the inner room - the ben.

If it’s any consolation, I mentioned the same phrase to me partner a few days back, and despite being Scottish (and of Highland stock, too) she hadn’t heard of it. Probably what happens when families (hers, a couple of generations or more) move into the cities.

[Asterix2012]

14 hours ago, Regularity said:

If it’s any consolation, I mentioned the same phrase to me partner a few days back, and despite being Scottish (and of Highland stock, too) she hadn’t heard of it. Probably what happens when families (hers, a couple of generations or more) move into the cities.

If anyone has read “The Broon’s” by DC Thompson about a city tenement dwelling Scottish family they go on holidays sometimes to the “Butt and Ben“

[Compound2632]

16 minutes ago, Asterix2012 said:

If anyone has read “The Broon’s” by DC Thompson about a city tenement dwelling Scottish family they go on holidays sometimes to the “Butt and Ben“

 

The Dundee-based publishers of The Beano. We subscribed to that for several years but I've not seen The Broons. I have the impression that its appeal south of the border may be limited to expatriate Dundonians. 

[Compound2632]

@Nick Holliday has very kindly sent me a copy of Jonathan Abson's Sheffield Park article from the Brighton Circle magazine - the reference seems to be Vol. 8 pp. 106-114. This doesn't add a great deal more to what's already been said, though @Nearholmer will I think agree with the conclusion that "the almost complete lack of foreign vehicles leads one to suppose that both for the sophisticates at Sheffield Park and the rural bumkins in Fletching the local economy was all but self sufficient, and when Lewes couldn't provide what was wanted, 'Lunnon' could." 

 

The exceptions seem to be coal and beer. Despite breweries in Lewes and Tunbridge Wells, beer seems to account for a high proportion of the "foreign" traffic - a wagonload every two weeks, with those three SECR box vans coming from Canterbury (point to @Nearholmer) and Burton beer in Midland opens. Fortnightly over a four-month period is eight or nine deliveries so, less the three SECR vans, that's nearly all the Midland merchandise wagons accounted for! Vide those D299s and D305s seen carrying empty barrels home to Burton at Wellingborough in 1898. It's possible that the one-off LNWR covered goods wagon might also have been bringing beer from Burton.

 

Some of the LBSC wagons were arriving from non-LBSC goods stations - Angerstein Wharf (LBSC) and St Pancras (MR); the box vans - two a week - came from Kemp Town (biscuit traffic is suggested but I can't find evidence of a buscuit factory at this date - see 1909 OS 25" map) while the handful of cattle wagons all came from Willow Walk (Bricklayers Arms).

 

The sawmill was receiving timber in from Lewes - half-a-dozen bolsters per week, counting double bolster wagons as two!

 

Abson reckons there would be around 16 wagons in the yard every day. Adjusting his analysis slightly, if one was modelling this, one might want two day's worth of wagons. In which case you're allowed three non-LBSC wagons: two for coal, one PO and one Midland, or LNWR if you really want to push the boat out, and one Midland open loaded with Burton beer barrels - which at least look the same full or empty! If modelling a fortnight's traffic, there's room for a bit more variety but not all at once.

 

He has a plan of the station which resolves one puzzle I had from the OS 25" map. What I took to be a private siding to the creamery had no obvious connection to the rest of the trackwork (the OS surveyors were not faultless in their representation of track); Abson shows this as a 2'0" gauge milk trolley line, running to the rear face of the up platform. 

 

Where is this Goods Register now?

[Regularity]

3 hours ago, Asterix2012 said:

If anyone has read “The Broon’s” by DC Thompson about a city tenement dwelling Scottish family they go on holidays sometimes to the “Butt and Ben“

She has read them, and indeed is Dundonian, but didn’t know the meaning of the phrase!

Quote

The Dundee-based publishers of The Beano.

Indeed, have even been inside their offices!

Edited October 27, 2020 by Regularity

[wagonman]

Here's a Butt & Ben cottage from East Lothian. Typically quite substantial construction – though the attic conversion is not original. My great-grandfather (the one who worked for the Caledonian Railway) lived in one. 

[Penlan]

Further to an earlier post re the distribution of pre-group stock,

I have posted this before somewhere, but here we are again....

 

Edited October 27, 2020 by Penlan

[Penlan]

2 hours ago, wagonman said:

Here's a Butt & Ben cottage from East Lothian. Typically quite substantial construction – though the attic conversion is not original. My great-grandfather (the one who worked for the Caledonian Railway) lived in one. 

My understanding, and my Father was born in Dundee and the basic family is from the Arbroath & Montrose area, is that a Butt & Ben is only two rooms.  Certainly where I lived in Inverkeilor there were a a number of Butt & Ben's that various members of my family (Grand Mother & me, Cousins, Uncles/Aunts etc., ) lived in, water from the pump at the end of the lane, toilet t'other end of the garden....... this was the 1940's to mid 50's.
That bungalow is similar to the one the Village Nurse lived in, proper posh.

 

Edited October 27, 2020 by Penlan

[Jol Wilkinson]

Courtesy of Wikipedia.

 

"But and ben (or butt and ben) is an architectural style for a simple building, usually applied to a residence. The etymology is from the Scots term for a two-roomed cottage. The term describes a basic design of "outer room" conjoined with "inner room" as a residential building plan; the outer room, used as an antechamber or kitchen, is the but, while the inner room is the ben."

 

I believe the greeting "Come ben" in the Highlands invited the visitor into the inner room, a sign of welcome.

 

Back to railways, Penlan's chart shows how widespread goods vehicles travelled. Almost anything goes from a modelling viewpoint.

[wagonman]

 

13 hours ago, Jol Wilkinson said:

 

Back to railways, Penlan's chart shows how widespread goods vehicles travelled. Almost anything goes from a modelling viewpoint.

 

Don't forget that Penlan's chart is after the introduction of various common user agreements (mostly dating from WW1) whereas the Sheffield Park data refer to c1900.

Edited October 28, 2020 by wagonman
wrong date

[Brassey]

1 hour ago, Penlan said:

Further to an earlier post re the distribution of pre-group stock,

I have posted this before somewhere, but here we are again....

 

C = crippled?

[Compound2632]

Yes, the Bristol survey, like the Crewe Tranship shed survey that @Nick Holliday posted:

is for the post Great War situation, where wagon pooling was in operation. So as @Jol Wilkinson said, anything goes - up to a point. Rather than complete diffusion, with a distribution according to the size of each company's wagon fleet (or rather the pooled portion thereof), we see a substantial fraction of the "home" company or, in the Bristol case, companies - GW, Mid, LNW (though I suspect the data my be for GW yards only) - with a distribution according to fleet size for "foreign" companies sitting on top of that "home" population. It's notable that at Bristol, the cattle wagons are all GW - were they pooled at this date?

 

The Sheffield Park data, for the winter of 1899/1900, is for the period I'm interested in - definitely pre-pooling.

[wagonman]

Cattle wagons were not pooled in 1920. They were later though the GWR soon pulled out again. They also excluded their vacuum fitted opens and Minks from the pool. Generally the GWR stock was more modern and in a better state of repair (according to A, B, H & T at least) than the others which caused problems as the GWR was a net recipient.

[Compound2632]

Some Goods Department documents to look up once the Midland Railway Study Centre is accessible:

 

Item Number: 17726

Category: Goods Manager's Circular (Numbered)

Circular No:- 1827
Date:- DECEMBER 3RD, 1897.
Title:- LOADING OF WAGONS.

 

Item Number: 17747

Category: Goods Manager's Circular (Numbered)

Circular No:- 2015
Date:- JUNE 14TH, 1901.
Title:- LOADING OF WAGONS.

 

Item Number: 17748

Category: Goods Manager's Circular (Numbered)

Circular No:- 2049
Date:- February 7th, 1902.
Title:- LOADING OF WAGONS.

 

Item Number: 17756

Category: Goods Manager's Circular (Numbered)

Circular No:- 2115
Date:- NOV. 20TH, 1902.
Title:- Loading of Ordinary 8 ton Midland Wagons.

Edited October 31, 2020 by Compound2632

[Compound2632]

A new toy pricks my conscience:

 

 

Apologies to both @TurboSnail and @Skinnylinny that their kits are languishing unfinished. With @TurboSnail's Cravens and Birmingham RC&W Co Open As, I stuck at the sheet bars. The parts from the Parkside O11 kit weren't suitable; I have a way forward but haven't done anything about it yet. I'd fitted plasticard footboards to @Skinnylinny's Billinton brake van but found they came out over-wide. I ordered another size of Evergreen strip but typically I'd moved on by the time it arrived...

 

I've just realised I've left out the Open A I backdated from the Cambrian kit. There's also that Smallbrook cattle van that started all the Brightonry off; that needs another good looking-at.

 

The Billinton E4 is an anachronism for my c. 1902/3 target period as it stands. Apart from the umber livery, which No. 579, formerly Roehampton, acquired in October 1912 together with the extended smokebox and new boiler with the dome further back*, it wasn't even built until July 1903. The earliest class members were turned out in 1897, so there's hope - depending on whether I can screw up my courage. Others have been there...

 

*I'm naively supposing that these engines were repainted umber at the time they were fitted with new boilers and extended smokeboxes, although for some that seems to be as early as 1906. I'm also trying to work out if there's any pattern to which ones got passenger livery and which got goods livery. 

Edited October 5, 2022 by Compound2632
image re-inserted