Regency Rails - Georgian, Williamine & Early Victorian Railways

[Edwardian]

15 hours ago, webbcompound said:

Sorry, just couldn't work out how to embed it. Obviously needed a young whippersnapper to do it.

 

Well worth doing just to be called "young".

 

That happens rarely and with decreasingly frequency!

[Compound2632]

There's been some discussion on the Hornby Rocket thread about early Liverpool & Manchester carriages and the authenticity of the Hornby models - the carriages do seem to be very good models of the 1930s replicas built for the centenary celebrations, but how accurate are those replicas?

 

 

Is it known what sources of information the 1930s replicas drew on? Clearly some compromises were made in the interests of functionality. I have also read that they represent carriages of 1833 onwards, after Thomas Clarke Worsdell had introduced sprung buffers.

 

Also, there seem to have been three each of the firsts and seconds made in 1830, according to this postcard.

 

I've only been able to find photos of two of the firsts together at the NRM - Huskisson and Traveller - or one first, Traveller, with a second and the replica Rocket.

Edited February 24, 2020 by Compound2632

[CF MRC]

Maybe they have different names on each side...

 

Tim

[Edwardian]

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

There's been some discussion on the Hornby Rocket thread about early Liverpool & Manchester carriages and the authenticity of the Hornby models - the carriages do seem to be very good models of the 1930s replicas built for the centenary celebrations, but how accurate are those replicas?

 

 

Is it known what sources of information the 1930s replicas drew on? Clearly some compromises were made in the interests of functionality. I have also read that they represent carriages of 1833 onwards, after Thomas Clarke Worsdell had introduced sprung buffers.

 

Also, there seem to have been three each of the firsts and seconds made in 1830, according to this postcard.

 

I've only been able to find photos of two of the firsts together at the NRM - Huskisson and Traveller - or one first, Traveller, with a second and the replica Rocket.

 

It seems to me that the replicas required a certain amount of interpretation.

 

 

What puzzles me is the difference (supposed or verified?) between Second (with seats) and Third (without seats) and whether there is any correlation between colour and class with these open coaches? Or is this artistic licence?

 

The lower train in the above illustration is captioned as second class, showing two types of open coaches in blue. It may or may not accurately reflect historic reality. The illustration below shows a mix of blue and green coaches, otherwise similar in appearance to those above.

 

 

The latter is a tempting thought, given that differentiating class by colour happened on the L&M at least so far as Firsts were concerned and other early railways did so.

 

The replica at York, blue, has no seats fitted. 

 

[Annie]

Was it incorrectly parked?  I see it's been wheel clamped.

[Compound2632]

Beware that the Ackermann prints come in various editions, as discussed in my post here:

 

 

It's also probably worth remembering that they were hand-coloured in London, so by colourists who had not seen the carriages in the flesh. My understanding is that the L&M didn't at first have third class so the two trains in the print are, as captioned, first class and second class (for outside passengers). 

 

I think the second version in James' post, with blue and green carriages, is the 1894 Leipzig reproduction of the 1831 Ackermann edition.

 

The box-like carriages with central gangway are very strange. The second, 1833, and third, 1834, editions replace them with carriages with a scalloped profile (as well as providing second class with roofs of sorts:

 

 

Further examples of scalloping appear in the ends of the carriages in this painting; these seem to have a central gangway too, so I wonder if they are the boxy carriages seen end on:

 

 

A.B. Clayton, Inaugural Journey of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, c. 1830 Wikimedia Commons. See also a reproduction of the lithograph version and account of A.B. Clayton. Note that the painting shows the train running on the right; the lithograph is reversed. Those familiar with the topography (the bridge is over the Duke of Bridgewater's Canal) might be able to say which is correct but the process by which the lithograph is produced involves copying the artist's drawing onto stone, so the printed image is reversed. So either the artist draws a mirror image of the scene or the lithographer draws a reverse image or the image comes out wrong... The shadows being to the left do suggest the train is heading towards Patricroft on the right-hand line.

Edited February 24, 2020 by Compound2632
Painting c. 1830 not 1930!

[Killian keane]

On 24/02/2020 at 08:04, Compound2632 said:

There's been some discussion on the Hornby Rocket thread about early Liverpool & Manchester carriages and the authenticity of the Hornby models - the carriages do seem to be very good models of the 1930s replicas built for the centenary celebrations, but how accurate are those replicas?

 

 

Is it known what sources of information the 1930s replicas drew on? Clearly some compromises were made in the interests of functionality. I have also read that they represent carriages of 1833 onwards, after Thomas Clarke Worsdell had introduced sprung buffers.

 

Also, there seem to have been three each of the firsts and seconds made in 1830, according to this postcard.

 

I've only been able to find photos of two of the firsts together at the NRM - Huskisson and Traveller - or one first, Traveller, with a second and the replica Rocket.

according to Anthony Dawson, not accurate in the least, the replicas were based on a model which is long since gone having been destroyed in a fire

[Edwardian]

Travelling on the Liverpool & Manchester, or, Club 1830

 

I'm minded to expand my meagre store of stuff from the Earlies with a view to forming some 1830s-1850s trains in due course.  Unfortunately this has not got off to a good start, with two rather expensive issues yet to be resolved: A dead Hornby Rocket and the apparent inability of Shapeways to print all the components necessary to build an 1840s Jenny Lind. 

 

In the meantime, I must plot and plan as best I may.

 

I rather like the new Hornby models.  Rocket is a model of replicas built from 1929 onward (1929, 1935 (part-sectioned), 1979), which are replicas of Rocket's 1829 Rainhill Trials condition. 

 

 

By the opening in 1830, Rocket looked rather different, as the contemporary sketch by Nasmyth (below right) shows. 

 

 

So our starting point is that she would not have hauled these First Class coaches in this guise, even if used on such work.  The lack of any buffers on the 1829 condition model make the pairing absurd.

 

The coaches are also models of the replicas. 

 

 

They do not match the Ackermann and Austen illustrations in some points of detail, particularly underframe and steps, but the detail and understanding of contemporary illustrators was not perfect, or consistent. 

 

 

I am inclined to be kind to the replicas as doing a fair job of interpreting an 1830s coach with its open solebar and buffer pistons. I recently acquired an illustration of early Brandling Junc. coaches (c,1839), which show just such an arrangement.  More on those in due time. I conclude that, for me, I'm perfectly happy to run models of the replica coaches as models of 1830s L&M stock, pairing them with some suitable motive power.  

 

I wonder if the lost model spoken of is this one, which I note is said to be of an 1834 vehicle:

 

 

So, my final thought concerned the names.  I understand that Hornby plan:

 

R3809 set

- Times, Ackermann (1831)

- Experience, subject of a replica

- Despatch, Ackermann (1831)

 

R3810 set

- Globe,

- Renown,

- Wellington, contemporary print (below) 

 

There is also:

 

- Traveller, Ackermann (1831) and the replica coach at the NRM,

- Huskisson, subject of a replica

- Marques of Stafford, Ackermann (1831)

- Treasurer, Ackermann (1831)

 

 

 

 

Queen Adelaide lacked quarter lights to the outer compartments and the Chinese Liverpool coach was of a wholly different appearance. Note the nameless green dismounted road coach!

 

 

 

Edited March 2, 2020 by Edwardian

[Annie]

It's a real pity that your new Hornby 'Rocket' won't work James.  Sounds to me like too many delicate bits that weren't properly tested before being released upon an unsuspecting public.  That might mean though that dead Rockets might shortly turn up on the Bay of Fleas which would be useful for breaking down to make other early engines.  The new coaches are certainly lovely models and should be very useful.

Modelling early railways is difficult as the further back you go good sound information becomes less and less.  1860 would be my own cut off date if I was still making physical models instead of digital ones.

[Edwardian]

Brandling Junction Railway coaches

 

You have to love a railway that's named after people rather than the places served by the line of its territorial ambitions.

 

From the cradle of the railway, came, in 1835, the Brandling Junction Railway, named for its progenitors, the Brandling brothers.  It was a private mineral line, like so many others in the area, and was built between Gateshead and Sunderland. Its best known route nowadays is probably its branch to Tanfield Lea, which crossed another private mineral line, the Pontop & Jarrow, on the level at Marley Hill.  Both railways in this location now form part of the excellent and charismatic preserved Tanfield Railway. 

 

While the P&J remained private, and, from 1932, was also named for a person, as the Bowes Railway, the Brandling Junction Railway was subsumed into George Hudson's empire and was subsequently part of the NER. 

 

The Brandling Junction Railway was opened in stages from 1839 and appears to have run a passenger service from the start.

 

This illustration is said to be of It's coaches: 

 

 

They look like 1830s coaches to me, and I am struck by the similarity with the underframes of the Liverpool and Manchester replica coaches; we see the same open solebars revealing what look like buffer piston rods. 

 

 

For the time, I suppose that this piston arrangement was the alternative to the horse-hair packed buffers often seen.  It crops up in plenty of examples, e.g. here are London & Birmingham Mail and First Class coaches. 

 

 

I would assume that Brandling Junction Railway No.1 was First Class and No.2 Second. In this regard, I refer to the prints of Liverpool and Manchester showing open Seconds fitted with awnings.  The caption to one version refers to a print date of 1833 and another to the appearance of L&M at the year of the Queen's Accession, suggesting that by 1833-1837 the L&M had roofed its open coaches.  The Brandling coach, presumably of c.1839 vintage, might be expected, therefore, to furnish purpose-built covered Second Class accommodation in the late '30s.

 

 

Now the picture below is from a flyer announcing the commencement of passenger services on the Brandling Junction Railway's Tanfield branch in 1842.  I should say that I am roundly sceptical of the illustrations on such announcements, as it seems unlikely that they are faithful representations of the locomotives and stock used.  More likely they are stock illustrations of trains of the period, like Alarmy for wood cuts. I include it because of its similarity to some of the opens shown above in Liverpool & Manchester trains of the 1830s. 

 

The main difference is that this is a 5-'compartment' coach, with passengers facing one another, whereas the L&M have 6 'compartments', but apparently a single bench to each, as all the passengers face the same way.

 

 

It, too, seems to show the open solebar. I also think that is what the Ackermann prints show. Incidentally, we see a step arrangement very like that used on the L&M replica coaches.

 

Thinking about it, your 1830s buffer technology is either (a) leather stuffed with horse hair, or (b) a more modern (to our eyes) metal buffer head, but one which is not sprung like a modern buffer, needing long pistons to contract. In those circumstances, I reckon you'd probably build them like the 1930 L&M replicas, and the Ackermann prints stand as imperfect interpretations of that arrangement.

 

  

Edited March 2, 2020 by Edwardian
spelling!

[Compound2632]

From Hill, op. cit.: "In 1831 after complaints from second class passengers about burnt clothing, the company deigned to provide roofs to second class carriages*. These were of wood or canvass. Further refinements for second class vehicles during the Worsdell era included the fitting of drawbar and buffer springs from January 1833 after the first class carriages had been so equipped."

 

*Roofs first appear in the 1833 second edition of the Ackermann print.

 

By 1833 then, all the essential features of carriage and wagon construction for the next century were established. The only significant advance was to be the bogie.

 

It seems to me that the spring piston-rod style buffers are absent from the carriages in the Ackermann prints; extract from the 1831 first edition:

 

 

- but the design of the open-frame "solebar" made it easy to add the buffers, with a central pair of springs - my interpretation of the L&B night mail carriage drawing is that were seeing a pair of transverse leaf springs with the piston rod ends bearing on the ends of the springs and the yokes joined together back-to-back.

[Annie]

 

[runs as required]

I’d have liked that simulation to emerge out down at Crown Street. 

I used to cycle to’ classes in Abercromby Square past the station (still much of its track work, multiple tunnel openings and turntables in existence in the mid 1950s) off the top of Smithdown Rd without realisation of its significance until several years later.

2

I’ve been a bit “Yonderly” as they say in N Derbyshire, recently. 

So I’ve missed all this research about early underframes and running gear on this thread and just cogitated over the week-end about the CA Friday posts of the new Hornby carriages and the York exhibit (that I reasoned to myself must have been sectioned).

Extract of CA post here:

Quote

 

The image on the right is what I think I see in the pic (lower left) in York NRM  i.e. a U shape casting/forging in which the axle box slides up and down as the spring flexes.

James's beautiful Hornby model (top left) clearly re-creates this exhibit. 

 

What I'd like to ask is this exhibit actually what might have been the waggon on which the carriage work was mounted?

a) there doesn't seem much depth of plating material left to the sole bar framing;

b) the cutaway sections occur where a lady's skirts could get horribly entangled just where she is ascending a pretty perilous pair of steps (which would have been invisible to her looking down as she climbed because of her full skirts.)

 

 

I assume we all must think that, it being the Stephensons, they’ll have settled into a single preferred type of waggon (by keeping a watching eye on emerging practice around them) and made it common to all classes and types of body carried above. 

And despite the danger to full skirted passengers, they didn’t bother with any kind of protection over sole bars, springs etc  when climbing those tiny steps - or the Brandling style continuous footboard.

 

Incidentally the T L Gooch who was the engineer assigned responsibility for the Sankey viaduct masonry design by the Stephensons, (see current ‘Backtrack’) one of the Bedlington family?

dh

 

Edited March 3, 2020 by runs as required

[runs as required]

13 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 ... but the design of the open-frame "solebar" made it easy to add the buffers, with a central pair of springs - my interpretation of the L&B night mail carriage drawing is that were seeing a pair of transverse leaf springs with the piston rod ends bearing on the ends of the springs and the yokes joined together back-to-back.

Am I correct in remembering this to be quite a common way of resolving buffing forces in C19 waggons?

I'd like to ask you 'mech. eng' modellers  whether this might have been an early way of tightening a night mail train buffer to buffer for passenger comfort.

I can still remember the brain numbing crashes one could suffer being given "a late night lift home" in the brake van of a long loose coupled train of empties.

dh

[Compound2632]

6 hours ago, runs as required said:

Am I correct in remembering this to be quite a common way of resolving buffing forces in C19 waggons?

 

Yes, although it became the practice to mount the leaf spring immediately behind the headstock, with the yoke forming part of the drawbar. 

 

6 hours ago, runs as required said:

I'd like to ask you 'mech. eng' modellers  whether this might have been an early way of tightening a night mail train buffer to buffer for passenger comfort.

 

 

The screw coupling was almost certainly in use on the early L&B. Hill, op. cit. "Worsdell devised a method of connecting carriages using rope couplings tightened by a wooden rod in the style of a tourniquet, but it seems that the LMR first class carriages were coupled by loose chains at the time of the opening. In 1837 ... Henry Booth's Patent Connecting Chain involving a screw coupling was adopted for all engines and carriages."

[Anotheran]

On 02/03/2020 at 11:19, Edwardian said:

...

The main difference is that this is a 5-'compartment' coach, with passengers facing one another, whereas the L&M have 6 'compartments', but apparently a single bench to each, as all the passengers face the same way. 

 

I believe that your sentence here refers to the this drawing. If so I don't think that the passengers are all facing the same way in the 6 compartment coaches. In each of the two there are individuals, shown monochrome, who are depicted facing backwards, in all compartments except the front ones. There doesn't seem to be much legroom for it, but I think that it does indicate benches on both sides of the compartments.

[Compound2632]

59 minutes ago, Anotheran said:

 

I believe that your sentence here refers to the this drawing. If so I don't think that the passengers are all facing the same way in the 6 compartment coaches. In each of the two there are individuals, shown monochrome, who are depicted facing backwards, in all compartments except the front ones. There doesn't seem to be much legroom for it, but I think that it does indicate benches on both sides of the compartments.

 

These "toast-rack" carriages first appear in the 1833 edition, replacing the central-access block-like ones in the 1831 edition. To me, they look as if they have backless bench seats, so passengers can face either way, but the artist has drawn them mostly and perhaps unwisely facing the direction of travel. But how faithful these illustrations are to the actual rolling stock is of course the unanswerable question.

Edited March 4, 2020 by Compound2632
Typo corrected

[Edwardian]

39 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

backless bench seats, so passengers can face either way, but the artist has drawn them mostly and perhaps unwisely facing the direction of travel. 

 

That is exactly how I interpret the picture and would model the vehicle. 

[Edwardian]

On 04/03/2020 at 12:50, Edwardian said:

 

That is exactly how I interpret the picture and would model the vehicle. 

 

Addendum: 

 

A contemporary description by James Scott Walker describes a style of coach like "an oblong square of church pews, panelled at each end", which sounds rather like our familiar open Second ...

 

 

However, the description continues, "the rail which supports the back so contrived that it may be turned over, so that the passengers may face either way, and the machine does not require to be turned", which arrangement reminded me of this type of Second. 

 

 

I am also reminded, however, of Anotheran's comment .....

 

On 04/03/2020 at 11:50, Anotheran said:

 

I believe that your sentence here refers to the this drawing. If so I don't think that the passengers are all facing the same way in the 6 compartment coaches. In each of the two there are individuals, shown monochrome, who are depicted facing backwards, in all compartments except the front ones. There doesn't seem to be much legroom for it, but I think that it does indicate benches on both sides of the compartments.

 

6 or 7 passengers are indeed facing rearward, though I find it hard to believe the coach could accommodate back-to-back seating. 

[Ian Simpson]

Perhaps just open benches and you could decide which way you sat facing on them? 

[Anotheran]

5 hours ago, Edwardian said:

 

6 or 7 passengers are indeed facing rearward, though I find it hard to believe the coach could accommodate back-to-back seating. 

I have it... The coach does indeed have the moveable back to the seats and it is set so that passengers look forwards. The monochrome ones that I noted are monochrome because they are simply the ghosts of those who were overcome by the fumes through facing forwards on the outward journey. 

[Edwardian]

Social distancing on the Liverpool & Manchester ...

 

Taking the advice of the Chief Medical Officer, I've decided to refuse to speak to anyone unless they present a letter of introduction ...

 

But such was life in the early Nineteenth Century.  Those plush yellow First Class coaches would not initially have attracted the very upper echelons of Society.  The idea of taking a seat in a compartment with strangers, people to whom one had not been introduced, just because they could afford a First Class ticket! 

 

 

Even later in the Century, the concept of restaurants had to overcome this, and the Orient Express always carried a whiff of sulphur about it, because, on it, one might meet anybody (and frequently did).   

 

Of course, if your blood is too blue to find communal compartments quite respectable, you can have your own road carriage mounted on a flat wagon, and you can be pulled along by an iron horse, still in it. 

 

 

Apparently the Duke of Wellington, who, with his entourage, had his own 8-wheel railway carriage for the opening of the Liverpool & Manchester, eschewed railway travel for the next 13 years until tempted aboard by the young Queen.  When he did travel by rail, he was an inveterate traveller in his own coach, the socially icy Duke cleaving to the practice long after most aristocrats had thawed sufficiently to travel inside railway carriages.

 

But, is seems, the Liverpool and Manchester could offer the socially exclusive an alternative in the form of a "private carriage".  This might have been private both in the sense of affording exclusive accommodation, but, perhaps, also in the sense of a private operator, for such were permitted on the L&M.

 

This "private carriage" I find extraordinary in that no design concession has been made to the fact that it is a railway vehicle.  It appears to be merely a road coach dismounted and bolted to a flat-bed wagon.   I suppose the benefit is that you can take you driver and postilion with you, while they remained, quite literally, in their place.

 

 

And here, perhaps, is it , or something similar, happily in service and seen at Manchester Liverpool Road.

 

 

Of course I suppose it could be a road coach carried on a flat bed, but, if on its own wheels, I fancy it would sit a little higher relative to the closed coaches, so I do think this is own friend, the private coach. The outline is a good match.

[Ian Simpson]

In the fullness of time the Duke of Wellington did have his own railway carriage on the South Eastern Railway (probably a converted London & Croydon composite that had wandered across to the SER when the railways were pooling their stock in the early 1840s). We do have an old black-and-white photo of it, but Chris Cox's model is much nicer:

Basically it's still a traditional coach body for the Duke, but at least his servants now have their own compartments at each end.

 

P.S. If anyone wants a quick-'n'-cheerful conversion to produce a very generic open coach, there's a few photos on my blog.

Edited March 17, 2020 by Ian Simpson

[Northroader]

I like Charles Dickens books partly because of the accounts of journeys, initially by road, then later in Dombey and Son, how at first the London and Birmingham chewed up North London, but after the line opens, Mr. Dombey snr. fits in a journey with his coach by rail to Coventry, then on to Leamington. The book concludes with the toothy Mr. Carker falling foul of the newly opened South Eastern Rly. (spoiler alert)

[Hroth]

The major problem with Dickens novels, especially the later ones, is that like his contemporary Trollope they incline to page-count inflation.  In contemporary terms consider the Young Adult fiction of J K Rowling.... 

 

I've a set of Dickens novels from my grandmother, I'll have a quick flick through D&S.  Is Carker one of Dickens hiss-worthy villains?