Private owner merchandise wagons?

[Compound2632]

What I found most interesting there was the salt being loaded directly into the wagon - I suppose it's self-sterilizing to an extent but also makes one realise exactly why dedicated wagons were needed for this traffic! I'd assumed it would all be bagged - surely it must have been to travel in a side-door van?

[Nearholmer]

I'm thinking that, like lime, there might have been different uses, with differing transport requirements. Maybe bulk, fairly coarse, salt as a feedstock to chemical works (Chance & Hunt were a wider chemical producer, so possibly it is somehow split to get the sodium for one purpose and the chlorine for another; I think that's why Cheshire is a big chemical-making area, and it seems that Stafford had some chemical industry in the past too), and bulk salt for pottery-glazing; perhaps finer bulk cargo, kept dry, for big food factories; then smaller shipments in sacks for small bakeries, grocers selling by the pound etc; and, finally packaged salt for domestic use. These days, even a special granular size for water-softeners, and another for dishwashers!

 

This is why I like old wagons: they make you think about all sorts of things that gradually build-up a picture of the logistics of Britain in the coal age.

 

 

[Fat Controller]

David Larkin's two volumes on 'Non-Pool' Freight stock have quite a few images of both salt and lime wagons. For lime traffic, there were both apex-roofed wagons, and 5 plank opens, some with a raised rounded end and a primitive fixed 'sheet-supporter', which was simply a length of 4" by 4", nailed in place.

[PatB]

Having had some professional involvement with the vast salt harvesting operations in North-Western Australia, the vast majority (possibly all) of their production goes to chemical feedstock for  variety of processes. Salty though we western humans like our grub, I suspect that this has always been the case for salt producers.

[Andy Kirkham]

11 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

It didn’t seem fair to hog the Shaka salt wagon, so here it is - superb isn’t?

 

this photo is, if anything, better than the soott and whitewash in the magazine - at least you can enlarge it. I think the script at lower RHS says something like “Empty to Stafford Common (L&M Region) British Railways - For repairs advise Manger’s Salt Works Stafford”.

 

If I'd seen that as a model I'd have been inclined to dismiss it as pure fiction.

 

[Compound2632]

4 hours ago, PatB said:

Having had some professional involvement with the vast salt harvesting operations in North-Western Australia, the vast majority (possibly all) of their production goes to chemical feedstock for  variety of processes. Salty though we western humans like our grub, I suspect that this has always been the case for salt producers.

 

A quick scan of the Wikipedia article on salt confirms my expectation that at least until well into the industrial revolution, the principal use of salt was as a food preservative or additive. Europeans would not have reached Australia without it! It was a very valuable and scarce commodity, worth its weight in gold. The salt taxes and government monopoly on salt production imposed by the East India Company and later the Raj were major contributors to the rise of the independence movement in India.

 

I suppose that by the late 19th century, Britain, Germany, and the United States were on the cusp of the chemical industry becoming the major user, with more efficient extraction methods coming into play. 

Edited October 29, 2019 by Compound2632

[Nearholmer]

Chemicals, electrical power, and the internal combustion engine. The second wave of the industrial revolution, starting c1870. That’s when salt extraction become a really big thing.

[PatB]

3 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

A quick scan of the Wikipedia article on salt confirms my expectation that at least until well into the industrial revolution, the principal use of salt was as a food preservative or additive. Europeans would not have reached Australia without it! It was a very valuable and scarce commodity, worth its weight in gold. The salt taxes and government monopoly on salt production imposed by the East India Company and later the Raj were major contributors to the rise of the independence movement in India.

 

I suppose that by the late 19th century, Britain, Germany, and the United States were on the cusp of the chemical industry becoming the major user, with more efficient extraction methods coming into play. 

 

Errrr....well, yes. "Always" was perhaps a bit of a stretch. "Since large scale industrialisation" would have been better, which, would correspond fairly closely to the widespread use of rail to transport it from producer to end user.

[hmrspaul]

16 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

It didn’t seem fair to hog the Shaka salt wagon, so here it is - superb isn’t?

 

this photo is, if anything, better than the soott and whitewash in the magazine - at least you can enlarge it. I think the script at lower RHS says something like “Empty to Stafford Common (L&M Region) British Railways - For repairs advise Manger’s Salt Works Stafford”.

The RCH post nationalisation list suggests this was built in 1912, regd GN 24443. They will have had many similar wagons at nationalisation.

 

Paul

[hmrspaul]

4 hours ago, Andy Kirkham said:

 

If I'd seen that as a model I'd have been inclined to dismiss it as pure fiction.

 

Why?  Thousands of Salt wagons continued in private use after 1948. It took the RCH about 65 pages to list them in May 1950.

 

Paul

[Steamport Southport]

Here's another photo I found of salt wagons being loaded.

 

https://middlewichdiary.com/2012/02/loading-salt-at-seddons-brook-lane.html

 

 

 

Jason

[Compound2632]

57 minutes ago, Steamport Southport said:

Here's another photo I found of salt wagons being loaded.

 

https://middlewichdiary.com/2012/02/loading-salt-at-seddons-brook-lane.html

 

 

Blocks of salt being loaded into the van.

[Andy Kirkham]

1 hour ago, hmrspaul said:

Why?  Thousands of Salt wagons continued in private use after 1948. It took the RCH about 65 pages to list them in May 1950.

 

Paul

 

Because I don't know as much about wagons as you 

And because a wagon painted with the branding of a familiar household item is uncommon in real life, as well as being just the sort of thing that some RTR model manucfaturers like to produce.

Edited October 29, 2019 by Andy Kirkham

[Compound2632]

Truth can be stranger than fiction.

[Fat Controller]

8 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

A quick scan of the Wikipedia article on salt confirms my expectation that at least until well into the industrial revolution, the principal use of salt was as a food preservative or additive. Europeans would not have reached Australia without it! It was a very valuable and scarce commodity, worth its weight in gold. The salt taxes and government monopoly on salt production imposed by the East India Company and later the Raj were major contributors to the rise of the independence movement in India.

 

I suppose that by the late 19th century, Britain, Germany, and the United States were on the cusp of the chemical industry becoming the major user, with more efficient extraction methods coming into play. 

It's also used as a glaze on earthenware, and has been for a long time.

[Compound2632]

14 minutes ago, Fat Controller said:

It's also used as a glaze on earthenware, and has been for a long time.

 

That would be another reason why Stoke on Trent is where it is.

[Fat Controller]

2 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

That would be another reason why Stoke on Trent is where it is.

Indeed, though not one normally cited; the pot-banks using salt-glazes nowadays are those producing 'retro' kitchen ware, such as Mason-Cash at Church Gresley.

[Penlan]

Here's one I did 30+ years ago - Yes a made up livery.
No, I don't think they had PO wagons, but I think the Company was in a listing of Private Sidings.
The Company DID exist, certainly in late Victorian times, and I wanted something the RTR market might not produce 
(Uhmn, somebody seems to have stolen one of the couplings)


 

Edited October 29, 2019 by Penlan

[Compound2632]

4 minutes ago, Penlan said:

No, I don't think they had PO wagons, but I think the Company was in a listing of Private Sidings.
The Company DID exist, certainly in late Victorian times, and I wanted something the RTR market might not produce 
 

 

There are so many firms with PO wagons registered, of which nothing else is known than that they existed, and so many otherwise unknown PO wagons glimpsed in the background of photos of engines, that frankly I'd be prepared to take your model as as good evidence that such a wagon existed as any!

[Penlan]

Thank you, 
The transfers, if I remember correctly, were Woodhead's.