Regency Rails - Georgian, Williamine & Early Victorian Railways

[Edwardian]

As mentioned, on the Liskeard & Caradon.

 

On Caradon moor, looking to the cheesering.

 

Edited August 20, 2019 by Edwardian

[sir douglas]

probably should add more to that, theres also a replica wagon plinthed at the road side on the track alignment

 

location of wagon

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Silkstone+Waggon+Way/@53.5441799,-1.5655772,222m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x48797d45dc6d6d55:0x4e177288c0c4601a!8m2!3d53.5441783!4d-1.5644829

street view

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@53.5441647,-1.5643853,3a,75y,278.62h,71.45t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sJIyVrJZ64EztHJ08xF6g8A!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

 

photo of wagon

https://www.aditnow.co.uk/Photo/240309-Silkstone-Waggonway-Replica-Waggon-Track_31198/

 

a photo of sets

https://www.aditnow.co.uk/Photo/Silkstone-Waggonway_66601/

 

route map

http://www.bddct.org.uk/maps/tramwaymap.html

[Ruston]

1 hour ago, sir douglas said:

probably should add more to that, theres also a replica wagon plinthed at the road side on the track alignment

 

location of wagon

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Silkstone+Waggon+Way/@53.5441799,-1.5655772,222m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x48797d45dc6d6d55:0x4e177288c0c4601a!8m2!3d53.5441783!4d-1.5644829

street view

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@53.5441647,-1.5643853,3a,75y,278.62h,71.45t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sJIyVrJZ64EztHJ08xF6g8A!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

 

photo of wagon

https://www.aditnow.co.uk/Photo/240309-Silkstone-Waggonway-Replica-Waggon-Track_31198/

 

a photo of sets

https://www.aditnow.co.uk/Photo/Silkstone-Waggonway_66601/

 

route map

http://www.bddct.org.uk/maps/tramwaymap.html

About 15 years ago I tried to walk the route of the Silkstone Tramway but most of it is inaccessible. There was a good section of trackbed with the blocks in situ at the back of what was then The Ring O' Bells pub and another section in a farm track near the Barnsley Canal end.

[geoff_nicholls]

sorry to butt in on this discussion, but I have a query about the hauling of chauldron wagons by steam locos. The drawing below shows these wagons, which have inside frames and therefore narrow spaced dumb buffers, hauled by a loco that has buffers in the 'normal' spacing.  Were barrier wagons normally provided? Or did the wagons' dumb buffers just butt up to the loco/tender buffer beams?

On 18/04/2019 at 16:00, Edwardian said:

modern 'artist's impression' of Rocket and Belted Will, circa 1840, by Sid Barnes:

 

I persuaded David Viewing to blow up one of his 3D printed Bury locos to gauge 3 and am thinking of building some chauldron wagons for it to pull.

 

[webbcompound]

This is an LNWR example but plenty of examples exist of this kind of double buffer arrangement for dealing with chaldron type wagons

Edited August 20, 2019 by webbcompound

[geoff_nicholls]

29 minutes ago, webbcompound said:

plenty of examples exist of this kind of double buffer arrangement for dealing with chaldron type wagons

But is there any evidence for this in the 1840s?

 

[Edwardian]

40 minutes ago, geoff_nicholls said:

sorry to butt in on this discussion, but I have a query about the hauling of chauldron wagons by steam locos. The drawing below shows these wagons, which have inside frames and therefore narrow spaced dumb buffers, hauled by a loco that has buffers in the 'normal' spacing.  Were barrier wagons normally provided? Or did the wagons' dumb buffers just butt up to the loco/tender buffer beams?

 

 

I think locos intended for chaldron work would have a lower, narrower set of buffers - as per Webb Compound's picture; I don't see them being allowed to just bash the buffer beam.

 

Some NER locos - I've seen this on long-boiler types - simply had wooden baulks mounted below the buffer beam to match chaldron buffers, e.g. see the front of this 1001 Class:

 

 

i believe, however, there were converter wagons to allow chaldron and conventional stock to run together.  

 

[Edwardian]

3 minutes ago, geoff_nicholls said:

But is there any evidence for this in the 1840s?

 

 

I'm not sure the issue arises in the case of mineral locos in the NE in the 1820s-1840s, as the buffers were low anyway, they not being designed to run with any other stock ... 

 

[webbcompound]

as Edwardian says, further to the drawing of Rocket and Belted Will. This is a coal line, and only chaldrons will be running. I am not aware of these types of locomotive running tender first, so i suspect the front buffers are really for double heading. The buffers on the tender rear might be double, or might be single but specific to chaldrons. You would need to find a side view, or a drawing of a loco running tender first to clarify these points. A further question relates to the date of your drawing. It is remarkably detailed for an early railway illustration. If it is a later drawing then the front buffer beam arrangement may not be accurate.

Edited August 20, 2019 by webbcompound

[Northroader]

The LNWR loco, standard gauge, shown worked around Crewe works, where there was a narrow gauge system, and the low buffers in this case dealt with moving n.g. wagons, rather than chaldrons.

[webbcompound]

 I'm not convinced Northroader! Whilst these locos were used mainly at Crewe, some worked Liverpool docks. It isn't clear why they had double buffers but they are very unlikely to have been used for the narrow gauge because it was an 18" line, so most of the wagons I have seen are very low on the ground, about 12", and only 3' wide,  and the seven locos used on the system had link and pin couplers but no buffers. However there were SOME wagons which had 2' wagon wheels (so their wheels were larger in diameter than the gauge) which had dumb buffers  at a height of 12"- 24", but these were even narrower at 2'6", and apparently only used in the Joiner's shop, so unlikely to have met the 2'6" tanks as there was only a very short run of standard gauge track, running from an outside wagon turntable, with no significant dual gauge section. There is an amount of dual track in the timber drying shed, so it is possible that the locos met the wagons there.  Talbot's "LNWR Engines" does however make reference to chaldron wagons, though I don't know of any in use at Crewe (but I just used it as a ready to hand image of a loco with two sets of buffers )

[runs as required]

23 hours ago, sir douglas said:

probably should add more to that, theres also a replica wagon plinthed at the road side on the track alignment

 

Thank for a great post on the Silkstone Waggonway near Barnsley. The Google pic of a replica (unbraked) Chaldron on a channel of plate-way track is interesting. It hadn't  occurred to me that a plate way could be strengthened in the y axis for spanning between two blocks by being cast as a channel and presumably also having greater thickness in the x axis to resist punching sheer through the running surface by the cast wheels running over a stone in the channel thrown up by a horses hoof.

So perhaps the benefit of spending more on the first  cost of the heavier cast iron channel rail outweighs the frequency of having to constantly stop the flow of waggons to replace lighter L section rail castings. 

I wonder what the arrangements were when using channels at junctions (using flaps like in millstreams?) and at railing/returning to roadway locations .

dh

Edited August 21, 2019 by runs as required

[Nick Holliday]

17 hours ago, Edwardian said:

 

I think locos intended for chaldron work would have a lower, narrower set of buffers - as per Webb Compound's picture; I don't see them being allowed to just bash the buffer beam.

 

Some NER locos - I've seen this on long-boiler types - simply had wooden baulks mounted below the buffer beam to match chaldron buffers, e.g. see the front of this 1001 Class:

 

In T Pearce's book on Stockton and Darlington locomotives, HMRS, there are a number of drawings and sketches of locos dating from as early as 1837 that show two sets of sprung buffers, even on a couple of types that would seem to be more suited to passenger duties, backed up, to a degree, by photos of those locos, which are obviously well past the period in question. Oversize dumb buffers also appeared, such as on the Head Wrightson vertical boilered loco, which has a rather attractively designed diagonal arrangement.

It should be noted that this wasn't just a north-east foible; in the Lake District the Maryport and Carlisle Railway had a number of goods locos suitably equipped, as did several of the lines that eventually fell into Furness Railway hands, such as the Whitehaven, Cleator and Egremont Railway. I don't know if they actually owned any chaldron style wagons themselves, though. I've also noticed that a number of CR and NBR locos acquired by collieries also have double buffers, but I don't know if they had them from new, or whether chaldrons were used in Scotland.

17 hours ago, Edwardian said:

 

i believe, however, there were converter wagons to allow chaldron and conventional stock to run together.  

 

I don't think there were specific converter wagons. The NER themselves built hundreds, if not thousands, of chaldron type wagons, but all their "normal" coal wagons were built with the end timbers extended below the buffer beam to meet to chaldron dumb buffers, and this continued until at least 1914 and included some steel wagons. As chaldrons were unlikely to run with anything other than coal wagons, at least on NER metals nothing else would be needed.

 

16 hours ago, webbcompound said:

as Edwardian says, further to the drawing of Rocket and Belted Will. This is a coal line, and only chaldrons will be running. I am not aware of these types of locomotive running tender first, so i suspect the front buffers are really for double heading. The buffers on the tender rear might be double, or might be single but specific to chaldrons. You would need to find a side view, or a drawing of a loco running tender first to clarify these points. A further question relates to the date of your drawing. It is remarkably detailed for an early railway illustration. If it is a later drawing then the front buffer beam arrangement may not be accurate.

I would say, judging by the style, that this drawing is from the second half of the twentieth century, and whilst there may be some justification for the front buffer arrangement, I suspect it owes more to the artist's imagination. Many of the early steam locos had no provision for buffers at the front, although some had the double tender arrangement which would have allowed them, theoretically, to work in either direction.

[webbcompound]

The LNWR had quite a lot of chaldrons in Cumberland

[Edwardian]

2 hours ago, Nick Holliday said:

In T Pearce's book on Stockton and Darlington locomotives, HMRS, there are a number of drawings and sketches of locos dating from as early as 1837 that show two sets of sprung buffers, even on a couple of types that would seem to be more suited to passenger duties, backed up, to a degree, by photos of those locos, which are obviously well past the period in question. Oversize dumb buffers also appeared, such as on the Head Wrightson vertical boilered loco, which has a rather attractively designed diagonal arrangement.

 

 

Hence I confined my comments to mineral engines. As for the rest, it's more complicated.

 

The Stockton & Darlington used mineral engines that were initially 4-coupled of the Locomotion/colliery type, then 6-coupled of the Hackworth twin-tender type in the 1820s-40s, with low dumb buffers matched to chaldrons; this was what I had in mind.  These stretch from the inception of the line right through to the last Tory and Miner class locos, finishing about 1847, and the Hackworth types ran in some cases to the late '60s. 

 

From c.1847 these overlapped with the earliest of the new Bouch Stephenson long-boiler 0-6-0 single tender types, e.g. the Commerce Class, and the odd long wheelbase 0-6-0s.  These were the next generation mineral engines and they did feature two sets of sprung buffers.

 

However, if the OP is considering 1840s mixed traffic work, including chaldrons, you are quite right to point out that  Pearce contains a number of drawings that suggest that from c.1837, nominally passenger locos on the S&D featured two pairs of buffers.  The earliest seems to be Arrow in 1837.  

 

I would urge a note of caution here, however. Where rare contemporary illustrations or Works drawings of locos of the period are reproduced, these tend not to show the twin-buffer arrangement, though it might be argued that these were added in service. That begs the question "when?"

 

 

The crude drawings by Theodore West tend to show the twin buffer arrangement, but he started with the NER in 1865, and his sketches were published in 1886, though, presumably made earlier.  Take Arrow.  Pearce reproduces a tidied up version of the West drawing, by George Graham for The Engineer in 1880.  She was withdrawn in 1864.  Assuming that West knew Arrow, she may well have had twin buffers on withdrawal in 1864.  It does not follow that she entered service with them in 1837.

 

 

Note also that the buffers appear to be of a modern type with cast guides. The twin-buffer sets fitted to the pioneering Commerce Class long-boiler mineral engines and the passenger 2-4-0 Rokeby (see below) are of the stuffed horse hair variety. Arrow's buffers are later than these. 

 

Photographs showing passenger types built in this period tend to show them in later, often rebuilt form.  Engravings made for the 1875 celebrations probably also reflect later changes. Neither these images, nor the West drawings, can be a wholly reliable guide to how they appeared in the 1830s and 1840s, in my submission.

 

Another example is the 2-2-2 Meteor of 1842. The 1875 engraving shows her with twin buffers and a cab.  Here, though, we also have an earlier photograph; she has a spectacle plate and appears to lack the lower set of buffers, suggesting they were a later addition.    

 

 

Mineral engines of the new designs adopted twin buffers from 1847. The earliest locomotive illustrated in Pearce that shows the practice on a passenger locomotive "as built" (albeit it's a modern drawing) is No.38 Rokeby, a locomotive also built in 1847.

 

 

Meteor and Arrow, and the other early locos illustrated with twin buffers appear to have buffers of more modern design than the 1847 horse hair type.  Peel, 1852, a mineral engine, photographed in "early condition" has more modern buffers.  I suggest that retro-fitting twin-buffers to pre-1847 locos was probably a thing of the 1850s, after modern buffer designs had come in.   

 

This has only been a brief consideration of what the evidence in Pearce might, or might not, show, but I tentatively conclude that the practice of adding lower inner buffers for chaldrons to both new and existing locomotives was a practice that did not start until c.1847, and that this applied to both mineral and non-mineral engines. From this point, the practice of adding twin buffers to all locomotives appears established, though is, perhaps surprising to see the twin buffer sets on the Bouch large-wheeled passenger 4-4-0s of the 1860s.  The practice seems to end with them, save for mineral locos. Interestingly the passenger 2-4-0 Pierremont of 1855 has timbers mounted on the face of the buffer beam, extending below it, rather than a second set of buffers. 

 

Not all of these twin-buffered non-mineral engine types were S&D house designs.  Some were, for instance, Kitchings or Bury, sold to other railways, which may or may not have had a need for the twin buffer arrangement.

 

Which brings me to the closest I can get to the OP's intentions ...

 

 

Caution should prevail here also.  She is an 1854 product, not withdrawn until 1877 and the engraving is dated 1875.  Based on my musings above, given her build date, she might well have had twin buffers from new, but it does not necessarily follow that such an engine built in the previous decade would have had them fitted any earlier than the 1850s.

 

Of course, other railways ran chaldrons, and in other parts of the country, and there might have been earlier examples of the twin buffer set arrangement.  In terms of Stockton & Darlington practice, however, i cannot see in Pearce any reliable evidence that the practice was adopted before 1847.   

 

 

 

 

Edited August 21, 2019 by Edwardian
spelling and grammar

[runs as required]

Chaldron waggons I

The recent turn of this thread to surviving relics of early railways and the emergence of double buffering for locos, It might be worthwhile tracing out (from the research of others) the emergence of the Chaldron waggon.

It led directly to the loose coupled ‘private owner’ wagon that endured right though mineral haulage on the railways and now into the flourishing era of preserved lines.

 

First off Why a Chaldron waggon?

By Googling I discover Chaldron comes from “cauldron” (derived from the Latin caldaria) first used in Britain in  the C14, the century of the Black Death. It defines a dry volume - presumably something in a cauldron or basin receptacle, 

By the early C15, a Chaldron is a measure, equivalent to 36 bushels, is used in London to buy Newcastle sea-coal . 

I couldn’t visualise a bushel, so here is a pic,The best I could find was the relationship of 2.5 bushels to 1 barrel (lower left) so a chaldron is approx about 14/15 barrels stacked on a quayside :

EXTRACT FROM WIKIPEDIA here

 

Quote

A chaldron (also chauldron or chalder) was an English measure of dry volume, mostly used for coal used nominally until 1963 when it was abolished by the Weights and Measures Act 1963 but in practice until the end of 1835 when the Weights and Measures Act of that year specified that thenceforth coal could only be sold by weight.

 

The chaldron was used as the measure for coal from the 13th century, measuring by volume being much more practical than weighing low-value, high-bulk commodities like coal. It was not standardized, and there were many different regional chaldrons, the two most important being the Newcastle and London chaldrons. The Newcastle chaldron was used to measure all coal shipped from Northumberland and Durham, and the London chaldron became the standard measure for coal in the east and south of England.[1]

 

Many attempts have been made to calculate the weight of a Newcastle chaldron as used in medieval and early modern times. Coal industry historian John Nef has estimated that in 1421 it weighed 2,000 lb (907 kg), and that its weight was gradually increased by coal traders due to the taxes on coal (which were charged per chaldron) until 1678 when its weight was fixed by law at 52 1⁄2 long hundredweight (5,880 lb; 2,670 kg), later increased in 1694 to 53 long hundredweight (5,940 lb; 2,690 kg).[1]

 

A London chaldron, on the other hand, was defined as "36 bushels heaped up, each bushel to contain a Winchester bushel and 1 imperial quart (1.14 L; 1.20 US qt), and to be 19 1⁄2 inches (495 mm) in diameter". This approximated a weight in coal of around 28 long hundredweight or 3,140 lb or 1,420 kg.[2]

The chaldron was the legal limit for horse-drawn coal wagons travelling by road as it was considered that heavier loads would cause too much damage to the roadways. Railways [eventually] had standard "chauldron wagons" which were about 10 ft (3.05 m) and around 6 ft 3 in (1.91 m) high.

The value of a chaldron of coal depended on the size of the lumps of coal and also their water content. Unscrupulous merchants would purchase their coal in lumps as large as possible then sell them in smaller sizes. This was abolished by the Weights and Measures Act of 1835, which legislated that from January 1836 coal was only to be sold by weight.[3]

 

As noted sea-coal was more highly valued in large lumps; but lump coal is  also friable and subject to degradation left out in wintry conditions so it needed to be carefully handled, and even protected from the elements. There would also be large voids in a caldron measure of sea-coal  

Small-coals were discarded along the way, braziers burnt droppings along route from the mine and the cinders used to roughen waggons’ wooden wheels. 

                                                                                                 ---------------------------

 

In my next post I’ll turn to Les Turnbull once more, but from his  “Railways before George Stephenson” a far more wide ranging and substantial work than “Early Railways of the Derwent Valley” that prompted my earlier post about the origins of our local Gateshead roads. 

Here as a taster is the colour pic from the cover featuring both Richard Turner's reconstructive illustrations of a Waggonway Chaldron on the Parkmoor Waggonway at Gateshead and the Causey Arch of 1726 :

NB 

Les Turnbull is lecturing on 'THE RAILWAY REVOLUTION, A study of the Early Railways of the Great Northern Coal Field 1605 - 1830' by Les Turnbull B.A. (Hons), M. Ed., MNEIMME.
SLS Joint Meeting with The North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers to launch a new book of same title.

Edited August 24, 2019 by runs as required
I've substituted a more detailed Wikipedia quote

[Ruston]

6 hours ago, runs as required said:

Seeing the recent turn of this thread to surviving relics of early railways and the emergence of double buffering for locos, It might be worthwhile tracing out (from the research of others) the emergence of the Chaldron waggon.

It led directly to the loose coupled ‘private owner’ wagon that endured right though mineral haulage on the railways and now into the flourishing era of preserved lines.

 

First off Why a Chaldron waggon?

By Googling I discover Chaldron comes from “cauldron” (derived from the Latin caldaria) first used in Britain in  the C14, the century of the Black Death. It defines a dry volume - presumably something in a cauldron or basin receptacle, 

By the early C15, a Chaldron is the measure, equivalent to 36 bushels, that is used in London to buy sea-coal from Newcastle. 

I couldn’t visualise a bushel, so here is a pic,The best I could find was the relationship of a bushel to 2.5 barrels (lower left) so a chaldron is approx 90 barrels stacked on a quayside :

Note it is a dry bushel and also that sea-coal was more highly valued in large lumps. But lump coal is  also friable and subject to degradation left out in wintry conditions so it needed to be carefully handled, and even protected from the elements. There would also be large voids in a caldron measure of sea-coal  

Small-coals were discarded along the way, braziers burnt droppings along route from the mine and the cinders used to roughen waggons’ wooden wheels. 

 

It did make sense to use the same measure from the mine right through to the point of sale in London so even in the days of slow heavy wains drawn by oxen and horses that destroyed the roads, carrying capacity was defined by Chaldrons. A Chaldron approximated to a weight in coal of around 28 long hundredweight or 3,140 lb or 1,420 kg (Wikipedia). We might also recall that the obsolete 20 cwt measure is 1(long UK) ton or 2240 lbs.

 

In my next post I’ll turn to Les Turnbull once more, but from his  “Railways before George Stephenson” a far more wide ranging and substantial work than “Early Railways of the Derwent Valley” that prompted my earlier post about the origins of our local Gateshead roads. 

Here as a taster is the colour pic from the cover featuring both Richard Turner's reconstructive illustrations of a Waggonway Chaldron on the Parkmoor Waggonway at Gateshead and the Causey Arch of 1726 :

NB 

Les Turnbull is lecturing on 'THE RAILWAY REVOLUTION, A study of the Early Railways of the Great Northern Coal Field 1605 - 1830' by Les Turnbull B.A. (Hons), M. Ed., MNEIMME.
SLS Joint Meeting with The North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers to launch a new book of same title.

According to M.J.T. Lewis in Early Wooden Railways a chaldron as a measure of coal, used in shipping, was set at 53cwt. in 1695, originally being 43cwt, in 1616 and so was a larger capacity and weight than the waggons on the early rail ways could carry. This is the Newcastle chaldron, which was a greater measure than the London and other chaldrons. According to Lewis it was only in the second half of the 18th century than waggons caught up in capacity and then the expression 'chaldron waggon' first appeared.

Edited August 21, 2019 by Ruston

[Compound2632]

On 19/08/2019 at 20:56, runs as required said:

It was discovered later that a flexing  track was far more sympathetic to oscilating steam locos than rigid track (eg Brunel's baulk road) and I believe Gooch reckoned the broad gauge singles were a carriage stronger on flexible track!

 

 

That was E.L. Ahrons, Locomotive & Train Working in the Latter Part of the Nineteenth Century Vol. 4 (Heffer, 1953), p. 36: 'The "baulk" road was very stiff, and the engines made what I may term very "dead riding" over it, so much so that the drivers used to say that the engines were "two coaches better" when travelling over the transverse sleeper sections.' - this being in the context of the narrow gauge Wolverhampton expresses. He also mentions that the engines with the old-style sandwich frames rode better than those with iron frames - presumably the flexibility of the sandwich frames compensated for the rigidity of the road. Ahrons was a Swindon apprentice in the early 1880s so had first-hand experience.

 

On 19/08/2019 at 21:20, Gibbo675 said:

Hi Folks,

 

I've just discovered this tread which has been a most interesting read from page 1 and thought you all might like to see my Dapol Rocket and Northumbrian kit bash, the coaches are Keyser Matero coaches slightly modified to give the appearance of L&M coaches.

Rocket.

Northumbrian

 

Gibbo.

 

I do like those L&M trains - a good match for the famous Ackermann prints. I recently visited some relations of mine who are collectors of various things, including antique maps - a subject upon which they have become rather knowledgeable. They have recently acquired a map of Lancashire printed on silk, dated 1835, which depicts upon its four sides versions of the four trains in the Ackerman prints but with interesting differences. I will post on this in due course.

 

Re. Shakespearean railways - is there any reference in the plays or sonnets? 

[Ravenser]

12 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

 

Re. Shakespearean railways - is there any reference in the plays or sonnets? 

 

Not that I'm aware of. The sonnets date from the 1590s so are probably too early for him to have heard anything - and the literary circles they were written for most certainly wouldn't have known about waggonways. Why make a reference that none of your readers will understand?

 

If Shakespeare ever heard of waggonways it will have been when he was at Stratford, and presumably after 1600. He owned a large house in the town , and finally retired there c1611. But again - why mention waggonways in a play for London audiences who would never have heard of them ?

 

Perhaps we should add to our list the Stratford and Morton Railway, which terminated by the bridge in Stratford , about 300 yards from the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. But that was 200 years after Shakespeare's death. 

 

Its sobering to realise that the distance in time between us and the Stratford & Morton is pretty much the same as the distance in time between the Wollaton waggonway and the Stratford & Morton... The waggonway era lasted a very long time....

[Compound2632]

1 minute ago, Ravenser said:

 

Not that I'm aware of. The sonnets date from the 1590s so are probably too early for him to have heard anything - and the literary circles they were written for most certainly wouldn't have known about waggonways. Why make a reference that none of your readers will understand?

 

If Shakespeare ever heard of waggonways it will have been when he was at Stratford, and presumably after 1600. He owned a large house in the town , and finally retired there c1611. But again - why mention waggonways in a play for London audiences who would never have heard of them ?

 

 

Shakespeare was not averse to making some very obscure allusions that he presumably expected at least some in his audience to pick up on - details of the siege of Rhodes, for example. He was also unafraid to include Warwickshire colour for London audiences. But I admit a reference to waggonways would only be likely if they were for some reason topical. A quick search for waggon/wagon in a Shakespeare concordance reveals but three occurrences, none of which imply any form of guidance.

[Northroader]

Puck. Midsummer Nights Dream, talking about Great Western Trains, “I’ll put a girdle around the Earth in forty minutes”? 

[RLWP]

On 21/08/2019 at 10:15, webbcompound said:

The LNWR had quite a lot of chaldrons in Cumberland

 

Ahh, I was going to ask about that - thank you

 

Richard

[runs as required]

19 hours ago, Ruston said:

According to M.J.T. Lewis in Early Wooden Railways a chaldron as a measure of coal, used in shipping, was set at 53cwt. in 1695, originally being 43cwt, in 1616 and so was a larger capacity and weight than the waggons on the early rail ways could carry. This is the Newcastle chaldron, which was a greater measure than the London and other chaldrons. According to Lewis it was only in the second half of the 18th century than waggons caught up in capacity and then the expression 'chaldron waggon' first appeared.

Thank you for your post drawing attention to these points

I do agree that para 4 of my Chaldron post above was far too simplistic – particularly as I gave a link to the Wikipedia chaldron page that does note these differences.

I shall return to edit the post and include these variations.

 

In scheming out my next post on how the waggons evolve from the solid timber wheeled replica at Causey through to the Beamish Chaldrons rescued from Seaham Harbour, I am assembling a matrix of pics that show increased use of metal and the development of convoy braking etc. with a brief commentary

So can I please ask a question about the 1880 ex Seaham ones at Beamish?

 

Their capacity is given as 4 tons. Does that mean in pre 1963 terminology 4 x 20 cwt which equals 80 cwt.? This is only a bit less than one 53cwt Newcastle chaldron for shipping plus one 36cwt. London point of sale chaldron – easily met by nailing on higher top boards. Is this mere happenstance?

dh

[Nearholmer]

There’s a well-known engraving of the Surrey iron railway, showing a waggon of this general type with wooden wheels on one axle and iron wheels on the other, which should aid or confuse your evolutionary essay.

 

weighbridges came into use pretty early, and ‘public carriage’ waggonways seem to have charged by weight for many goods, but hung-on to the volumetric “chaldron” for coal and a few other lumpy things.

Edited August 22, 2019 by Nearholmer

[Gibbo675]

Hi Folks,

 

On the subject of chaldron wagons I'm sure I read somewhere that colliery owners liked chaldron wagons because they are measure by volume and if they filled them with big lumps of coal then they effectively got a better price than a measure by weight.

 

Gibbo.