Sorting out the regions

[mikesndbs]

Hi guys

 

Wonder if someone will help me out here.

 

I have started to work out the regions my collection of rolling stock would have worked on.

 

I've made this database https://1drv.ms/x/s!ApEnxB7cVbjZgmZjo4xeKCfL08JIand have entered details that i have found so far.

 

But I am confused as some areas seem to come under more than one region.

Example GWR and Midland.

 

The link will let you edit the database.

 

Could someone have a look and sort me out please?

[Quarryscapes]

Hi guys

 

Wonder if someone will help me out here.

 

I have started to work out the regions my collection of rolling stock would have worked on.

 

I've made this database https://1drv.ms/x/s!ApEnxB7cVbjZgmZjo4xeKCfL08JIand have entered details that i have found so far.

 

But I am confused as some areas seem to come under more than one region.

Example GWR and Midland.

 

The link will let you edit the database.

 

Could someone have a look and sort me out please?

 

Truth is some areas were served by trains from more than one company, Have a look at various Railway Clearing house maps on google. 

[Regularity]

It is not as simple as that.

Whilst the Midland started in the (East) Midlands, it wanted to gain access to major centres, so built or bought many other lines, ending up with interests in South Wales, Essex, etc, and lines to many places outside the “Midlands” as a region, either geographical or railway. The 1921 Act concentrated largely on the major areas of operation for the constituent compsnies, hence the Midland went into the LMS and not the GWR or LNER, but the LMS retained those lines.

When the railways were nationalised, there were initially some “penetrating lines” where one region had a direct route into another’s “territory”, but otherwise operated a more or less self-contained service, but over time theses were removed.

 

You best bet is yo get hold of a copy of the Pre-Grouping Atlas and Gazetteer for a few quid, e.g.

https://www.worldofbooks.com/british-rail-pre-grouping-atlas-and-gazetteer-by-w-philip-conolly-gor002643663.html?keyword=&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI1Z68mtni2QIVBqwYCh21HgkfEAQYAiABEgK8xvD_BwE

[Andy Hayter]

I am a bit confused Mike, your database seems to show LMS as a pre-grouping company, which of course it was not.

 

You have a list of towns - where have these come from?  Is it from the sides of PO wagons?

 

Also you have York as LMS - it was always LNER (post grouping previously NER) although the LMS had running rights into the station (previously many pre-grouping companies had running rights - I think only Carlisle had a greater selection of companies with direct access).

 

Your 1922 date would be better as 1923, which was the start of grouping.  Before then you can forget LMS, LNER and SR - although GWR will be right for some locations.

 

http://www.railmaponline.com/UKIEMap.php

 

This link will give you some idea of the ca. 1920 companies and who owned what and where.  You can zoom in and in some cases almost see groups of sidings.  Many lines if clicked on will give a brief resume of the line and a link (usually to Wiki) to get more information. 

Edited March 10, 2018 by Andy Hayter

[mikesndbs]

Many thanks for the replies.

 

The data comes from many weeks of study and research using a few databases, Google etc.

Private owner wagons and locking down the actual merchant or colliery address, it's been remarkably informative and I am now just trying to get the railway companies sorted ready to put the database out there for others.

 

So that rail map is a fantastic thing to be sure! using Leighton Buzzard as an example that came under LNWR territory, so what would it have come under after the big four? LMS?

 

 

LOL scrub that, worked it out, Rail Map is great, many thanks. Have redone the first part of my file and will crack on with the rest of it at a more social time.

Edited March 11, 2018 by mikesndbs

[Caley Jim]

It's interesting to note that the most Westerly station on the British mainland (Mallaig) was part of the LNER.

In parts of Central Scotland LMS and LNER lines criss-crossed, and even ran alongside, one another. Notably along the north bank of the Clyde.

 

Jim

[mikesndbs]

Hi guys, OK I have edited the whole thing, can you check and see if it makes more sense now?   https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?resid=D9B855DC1EC42791!358&ithint=file%2cxlsx&app=Excel&authkey=!AGOjjF4oJ8vTwkg

 

Thanks

Edited March 11, 2018 by mikesndbs

[Andy Hayter]

We have now lost the headings Mike but some comments:

 

Column E is either post grouping - in which case LMS, GWR, LNER and SR are correct but no LNWR, LYR, MR etc - or pre-grouping in which case the LMS, LNER and SR markings are wrong.

 

Column D - in some cases you show more than one company which can be quite legitimate, but then show only one in column E.  Sometimes this will be right - LYR/LNWR becomes LMS - but sometimes it is not completely right MR/GNR becomes LMS in your sheet but in fact becomes LMS/LNER.  You also have for Cambridge GER becoming LNWR (no, but they could have operated perhaps in tandem with the GER) becoming LNER (yes)

 

To give you some ideas from the main companies and how they amalgamated at grouping:

 

GWR was made up of:

GWR

Cambrian

various Welsh valley lines - TVR, RR and several others

 

SR was made up of:

SECR (which in turn was a late 19th century combine of the SER and LCDR)

LBSCR

LSWR

 

LMS was made up of:

LNWR

MR

LTSR

LYR (actually combined with LNWR in 1922)

CR

GSWR

HR

GNoSR

 

LNER was made up of

GNR

GER

NER

HBR (amalgamated with the NER in 1922)

NBR

GCR

GNoSR

 

I will certainly have missed some companies out from the above lists.

 

Then there were a few lines that were built/run as joint ventures before grouping and after grouping belonged to more than one grouping company and therefore retained their joint operational status

 

Midland and Great Northern (as the name suggests jointly owned by LMS and LNER after grouping when the MR went to the LMS and GNR went to the LNER)

Cheshire Lines Committee - originally GNR, MR, GCR joint venture and was at grouping owned 2/3 LNER and 1/3 LMS

 

I will stress again that this is a very simplified overview.

 

For your spreadsheet, I think it would be useful to include the name of the private owner company on the wagons.

Edited March 11, 2018 by Andy Hayter

[brack]

Just a tiny correction - the GNoS went to the LNER at grouping, not LMS.

[Andy Hayter]

Thanks - just shows how easy it is to make a mistake with the complexities of grouping.

 

I have adjusted the original post.

 

I should perhaps apologise now to all of those who I have offended by leaving out "your" company

Maryport and Carlisle, 

Furness Railway

North Staffs

etc.

 

 

and many, many more.

Edited March 11, 2018 by Andy Hayter

[TheSignalEngineer]

I agree that owner names would be useful for the wagons. For example in the Birmingham area I occasionally worked for a coal merchant who had siding on both Midland and LNW lines. Bilston steelworks had connections to the GWR and LNW lines.

[mikesndbs]

Hi guys, thanks again.

 

I did not want to share the full works until I had removed all the bugs etc.

 

I have enjoyed building this

 

https://1drv.ms/x/s!ApEnxB7cVbjZgmjrG4GBHylBZoWf

[Flying Pig]

Hi guys

 

Wonder if someone will help me out here.

 

I have started to work out the regions my collection of rolling stock would have worked on.

 

 

I'm a little puzzled by this thread and I think you may be barking up the wrong tree in considering regions based on railway companies when trying to work out where a P.O. wagon would appear. It's more about what locations the wagon worked between and what route it took between them, though the latter might well depend on which railway company conveyed the wagon. You may find the following thread useful (there have been other discussions, particularly of coal traffic on RMweb which are worth searching out).

 

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/94803-just-where-did-private-owner-wagons-go/

[mikesndbs]

I'm a little puzzled by this thread and I think you may be barking up the wrong tree in considering regions based on railway companies when trying to work out where a P.O. wagon would appear. It's more about what locations the wagon worked between and what route it took between them, though the latter might well depend on which railway company conveyed the wagon. You may find the following thread useful (there have been other discussions, particularly of coal traffic on RMweb which are worth searching out).

 

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/94803-just-where-did-private-owner-wagons-go/

 

 

Well my reasoning was that you have to have a starting point, as most PO wagons belonging to merchants had the siding within the area of a railway company it feels reasonable to assume that it would be that railway company that would convey the wagon on at least most of its journeys.

Again the colliery wagons originated within an area and must have at least been tripped to a yard by that company.

What I was hoping was that I could make up trains of wagons hauled by appropriate locos??

[Caley Jim]

I'm a little puzzled by this thread and I think you may be barking up the wrong tree in considering regions based on railway companies when trying to work out where a P.O. wagon would appear.

I've similarly been puzzled. To me it's a bit like trying to work out where the driver of a car lives from the registration plate!

 

 

Apart from rural areas only served by one company, many colliery companies had several pits which might not all have been served by the same company (there was fierce competition for lucrative coal traffic) so their wagons might be registered by different companies. Also many fleets of wagons were hired or leased and would be registered by their owner rather than the hirer.

 

Jim

[mikesndbs]

I've similarly been puzzled. To me it's a bit like trying to work out where the driver of a car lives from the registration plate!

 

 

Apart from rural areas only served by one company, many colliery companies had several pits which might not all have been served by the same company (there was fierce competition for lucrative coal traffic) so their wagons might be registered by different companies. Also many fleets of wagons were hired or leased and would be registered by their owner rather than the hirer.

 

Jim

 

Cheers Jim, yes all true, I used many historic records to lock down the locations, where there was more than one company I had to look deeper to see where the siding was located, often a company will be registered somewhere but the sidings located else where, it's been a fascinating journey conducted over a couple of weeks now. I hope I am at least part way there lol

[pH]

It's interesting to note that the most Westerly station on the British mainland (Mallaig) was part of the LNER.

In parts of Central Scotland LMS and LNER lines criss-crossed, and even ran alongside, one another. Notably along the north bank of the Clyde.

Jim

Minor correction - Arisaig station is west of Mallaig station, but that doesn't affect the point of your post. Edited March 11, 2018 by pH

[Andy Hayter]

Mike

 

Forget the company registration address.  Sometime it can help - often it is a confusion,

I worked 15 years for a company registered in Luxembourg. 

Did we have any production units there?  No

Did we employ a massive staff there to administer the business? No

Just a tax advantage with perhaps 2 people who regularly visited the office - a secretary and a lawyer - out of more than 10.000 employees.

 

OK, back then the factors were different but the factors you need to consider:

 

Coal merchants - would receive coal from a number of locations and disperse them from their facility/facilities.  They probably need to local to your model location, or potentially en route from a colliery to another location if you have a through station.

Colliery wagons would delivery wherever there was a market - but you need to consider that the likelyhood of say a Yorkshire colliery wagon delivering to say a town in the Welsh valleys would be very small - local coal would be cheaper and in the minds of local folk better.  

 

However despite that remember that coal is not just coal.  It came in many different grades and different grades were used for different purposes.

Household coal was different to steam coal (used in boilers and locomotives) was different to anthracite used where the highest grade coal was needed - with many grades between.

[Nick Holliday]

I'm a little puzzled by this thread and I think you may be barking up the wrong tree in considering regions based on railway companies when trying to work out where a P.O. wagon would appear. It's more about what locations the wagon worked between and what route it took between them, though the latter might well depend on which railway company conveyed the wagon. You may find the following thread useful (there have been other discussions, particularly of coal traffic on RMweb which are worth searching out).

 

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/94803-just-where-did-private-owner-wagons-go/

I have to agree with Flying Pig.  This seems like an aweful lot of work to achieve very little, although the exercise is obviously giing you a few pointers, and I'd advise reading the thread FP has given would be a good way to progress, and there is penty more like that tucked away within RMweb.

Just taking your example of Bognor (Regis) which appears several times in your list.  Certainly any coal wagons delivered to that town would have been hauled by an LBSC, later SR loco.  But away from the immediate district almost anything would be possible,  A local trader would have the pick of the coalfields of England and Wales to send his wagons to to get either the best price or the correct type of coal his customers required, so at some stage his wagons might be pulled by GW, LMS or LNER locos, but he might get his coal from shipments to Shoreham, so those wagons would never see anything but LBSC loco haulage. Conversely coal could be delivered to Bognor in Colliery owned wagons, Railway company owned wagons or larger Coal Merchant owned wagons, and these could, again, come from any of the three regions, or even the Kent coal field.

The only thing you are unlikely to see, particularly at Bognor, would be wagons from local coal dealers away from the immediate vicinity. So a Joe Bloggs of Walsall wagon probably would not appear in Bognor, but it may well have been in the same train as a Bognor Coal Agency wagon for part of its journey, so a lot really depends on where you envisage your layout being located, which would immediately determine the likely motive power.

[CKPR]

A quick heads up in the case of the Cambrian and the various lines in West Cumberland, as in both cases the relevant societies (Welsh Railway Records Group and the Cumbrian Railways Association) have already collated a lot of information about PO wagon workings in the pre- and post-group eras in these areas of the countries.

[mikesndbs]

Hi guys thanks for the various inputs.

I note all that has been said.

 

This project started because i wanted to form up PO trains with locos that might be appropriate to the origin of the wagon owner, colliery or agent.

 

So for example using the Bognor company, there is clearly no doubt that these wagons would have been seen on the LBSCR and later day SR.

Clearly they could have been seen at other locations when being loaded but again would have returned to this merchant at Bognor for his distribution.

 

This is what I am aiming for.

 

In all cases I have looked up the origin of the wagon and while for example Pugh & Co ltd was registered in London, their coal sidings were in Croydon, this would still seem close enough to say with some confidence that the wagons would have been seen and pulled by again LBSC or SR locos.

 

In the case of the Bristol firm Baldwin, being a major supplier of coal and metals in Bristol I honestly do feel it would be reasonable to say that these wagons would have been seen being hauled by GWR locos within that network.

 

Hope this all seems fair comment? 

[bike2steam]

 

So that rail map is a fantastic thing to be sure! using Leighton Buzzard as an example that came under LNWR territory, so what would it have come under after the big four? LMS?

 

 

 

 

Just caught up with this thread, I'm sorry I'm a bit confused, what period/era you talking about Mike ??

[Poggy1165]

If you're trying to work out where PO wagons would pop up, it's mind-bogglingly complicated.

 

In theory the company that initially registered them was the one they would run over most. But, just for starters, I can think of GC registered PO wagons that would rarely, and certainly not principally, have run on the GC. 

 

There is some useful data about workings in the Turton series on PO wagons, and although I don't have it just to hand there's some more in Coal Trade Wagons by Taverner. This latter includes a one off survey of arrivals at Sheffield Park, and if I recall correctly (and I may not) there were quite a few Yorkshire PO wagons that rocked up there. I believe a Manvers Main wagon was recorded at Penzance.

 

But there are so many ifs and buts and maybes that it's hard to be definitive. Anthracite wagons, for example, could appear almost anywhere, even in other coalfields. In summer, some collieries hired out spare wagons for other uses, and they might therefore show up in places they would not ordinarily appear.

 

A study of photos of relevant trains (where these are available) may be of some help. But in my experience, you're lucky if you can identify more than three or four wagons in a train, and these may or may not be representative of the 20, 30 or 40 behind them. 

[Flying Pig]

...

 

In all cases I have looked up the origin of the wagon and while for example Pugh & Co ltd was registered in London, their coal sidings were in Croydon, this would still seem close enough to say with some confidence that the wagons would have been seen and pulled by again LBSC or SR locos.

 

...

 

Pulled by LBSC/SR locos, yes. But not necessarily in the same train. If your goods train has more than one PO wagon in it, deciding which wagons go together is more complicated than deciding whose loco to use. I think that's the point we're trying to make.

[Caley Jim]

Another factor which has not been mentioned is that during WWI the Railway Executive introduced pooling, after which, in theory at least, any wagon might appear anywhere, hauled by a locomotive of the company on whose metals it was travelling. As time went on, wagons would become more and more randomly distributed, so, to my mind, and especially for the post-1923 period,this is a somewhat pointless exercise.

 

If you want to 'sort out the regions' in order to understand which companies operated where, then the RCH atlases will give you a much more accurate understanding.

 

Sorry to be so negative.

 

Jim

Edited March 13, 2018 by Caley Jim