S&DJR Wagon Loads

[2996 Victor]

Dear All,

 

does anyone have or suggest sources of information on what a "typical" load might have been for an S&D high-sided open, such as:

 

http://

 

These were basically the Midland Railway D299, which as far as I'm aware could have carried almost anything, including coal. Were the S&D's versions similarly versatile, or were they restricted to general merchandise?

 

Thanks for any clues!

 

Best regards,

 

Mark

[Compound2632]

Many merchandise loads would have been protected in transit using a S&DJR wagon sheet. 

 

I have no idea what markings an S&DJR wagon sheet carried, though I suppose it would be around 21 ft x 14 ft 4 in like most other companies' sheets.

 

 

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

I have no idea what markings an S&DJR wagon sheet carried

 

 

I take that back. S. Austin, Somerset & Dorset Joint Railway: a view from the past (Ian Allan, 1999), p. 28, upper photo. The main subject is 4-4-0 No. 18 at Bournemouth West, probably before 1900. In the background, a row of wagons, including an S&DJR D299 clone complete with the solid wooden door-stop (on the non-brake side. There's also a covered goods wagon with X-framing; this could be a Highbridge-built vehicle but given the location, it's equally likely to be LSWR. Between these two, a sheeted open. It isn't a D299 type - it looks higher-sided (that could just be the way it's loaded) and has longer wheelbase but does seem to have Ellis 10A axleboxes. This wagon is covered with two overlapping sheets, that are laid with their long dimension crossways: the load goes up to the height of the roof of the covered goods wagon and the sheets come down almost to the bottom of the wagon sides. The nearer one carries a number, 1075, in large serif numerals - approx 15" (scaled by comparison with the height of the side of the D299 wagon) - on both the visible sides, i.e. the long side and the short side of the sheet. All these numbers are about as far in from the edge of the sheet as they are high - i.e. about 15". On the long side, about 12" above the number, are some large serif letters - about 18" - 21" - S D J - though it's only the J I'm 100% confident of. These initials are spread across the width of the wagon - about 7 '6". On the further sheet, only the number is visible but not decipherable.

 

In 1902, Derby built eighty 6-plank wagons (MR D301) for the S&DJR, Nos. 1122-1201, for loco coal; the Somerset collieries seem to have favoured using their own wagons, so my guess would be that a smaller proportion of the D299-type wagons were used for coal than was the case with their Midland brethren. However, they did account for getting on for half of the S&DJR wagon fleet, so must have been used for all types of general merchandise that didn't warrant a more specialised vehicle.

Edited November 4, 2019 by Compound2632

[2996 Victor]

Stephen,

 

many thanks as always for your delving! I don't have a copy of Austin's book, so will probably seek one out in the near future. As you say, many merchandise loads would be sheeted for transit, which does rather limit potential for modelling interesting loads! Also very interesting is the Highbridge D299, with the door stop on the non-brake side.

 

A Highbridge D301 is on my "to-do" list (I realise Mousa do an etched brass kit, but mine will be scratch-built in styrene) and, as you say, as most of the Somerset collieries used their own PO wagons, the S&DJR's D299s are more likely to have been seen carrying general merchandise, and so sheeted, rather than coal/mineral.

 

Best regards,

 

Mark

[Compound2632]

Returning like a dog to it's you-know-what, I realise I ducked @2996 Victor's question as to loads. The S&DJR version of the Midland standard 5-plank open, as built at Highbridge, has feature that are more in common with the Midland Lot 29 wagons, Drg. 402 of 1879, the external features being the chunky wooden doorstop and long brake lever; less obvious, the lack of bottom doors. They may also lack continuous drawgear and may have the buffer springs amidships rather than between the headstocks and middle bearers. (Sorry, I'm thinking aloud here.) Whether that applies to those built by the trade (as some were) is unclear. Anyway, the lack of bottom doors suggests that they weren't intended for coal traffic. 

[PenrithBeacon]

I suspect that the loads were primarily agricultural because that would reflect the two counties primary economy. But, there were manufacturers in Somerset and Dorset too not to mention the harbours at Highbridge and Bridgewater. The Burnham jetty connection seems to have been for people and cattle rather than goods or minerals. 

I have often wondered just what economic activity justified the river branch at Bath, but that was more likely to be for the Midland. 

Interesting topic 

[Compound2632]

17 minutes ago, PenrithBeacon said:

I have often wondered just what economic activity justified the river branch at Bath, but that was more likely to be for the Midland. 

 

I think you're right that that was Midland rather than S&DJR. The quay there, with goods shed, is downstream of the junction of the Kennet & Avon Canal with the river, so I presume the original intention was exchange of rail and water-bourn traffic. I believe the Midland had waterside depots at Bradford-on-Avon and Trowbridge, and a small fleet of narrowboats to serve them, though I can't just now find the photographic evidence I am thinking of for that, only for narrowboats in the West Midlands.

 

The Distance Diagrams and the OS 25" map show the Bath Riverside Branch serving a couple of sawmills and a stonemason's yard by 1902.

[PenrithBeacon]

1882

1902

1936

[Compound2632]

The Victoria Saw Mill went up in the world - "Engineering Works" by 1936.

[keefer]

And the Midland Saw Mill doing well enough to justify a travelling crane up to the railway.

Edited October 23, 2021 by keefer

[phil_sutters]

On 22/10/2021 at 15:52, PenrithBeacon said:

I suspect that the loads were primarily agricultural because that would reflect the two counties primary economy. But, there were manufacturers in Somerset and Dorset too not to mention the harbours at Highbridge and Bridgewater. The Burnham jetty connection seems to have been for people and cattle rather than goods or minerals. 

I have often wondered just what economic activity justified the river branch at Bath, but that was more likely to be for the Midland. 

Interesting topic 

Highbridge imported coal from as far away as Saundersfoot and the Forest of Dean, as well as the South Wales coalfields. A lot was loco coal for its own use and for the LSWR/Southern Railway. Likewise there was considerable traffic in rails from South Wales steel works for both railways. Highbridge also received very large amounts of timber from Scandinavia, which passed through John Bland's sawmill and wood yard, before being transported out in open, partly sheeted wagons. Flour was another import from up the Bristol Channel. There were also three or four brickworks with sidings off the line to Burnham. In the photos in Chris Handley's 'The Maritime Activities of the Somerset and Dorset Railway' there are a surprisingly large number of cattle wagons right on the quayside. Given the huge range of the tides in the harbour I wonder how easy it was loading and unloading cattle at different water levels. Nearby was the local cattle market and the Highbridge Bacon Factory, both of which created traffic for the S&D as well as the GWR. Within the wharf area was the substantial concrete building that initially processed peat from the Somerset Levels and subsequently manufactured smokeless fuel briquettes from culm - anthracite and coal dust - which seems to have originated from Saundersfoot. Most of these products must have travelled east along S&D metals. The briquettes seem to have required vans, the rail - single and bogie bolsters, coal - a variety of wagons from many different railway companies and the livestock also travelled in a variety of companies' wagons. What the period photos do not show is more than a handful of private owner wagons.

Incoming traffic also included steam-rollers for the local road making and repairing company of W.W.Bumcombe - eight arrived in one consignment from Babcock and Wilcox. As Buncombe's had 150 steam rollers working across the country, there must have been a fair traffic in their rollers.

Edited February 24, 2022 by phil_sutters
Additional info

[Compound2632]

9 minutes ago, phil_sutters said:

Within the wharf area was the substantial concrete building that initially processed peat from the Somerset Levels and subsequently manufactured smokeless fuel briquettes from culm - anthracite and coal dust - which seems to have originated from Saundersfoot. Most of these products must have travelled east along S&D metals. The briquettes seem to have required vans, the rail - bogie bolsters, coal - a variety of wagons from many different railway companies and the livestock also travelled in a variety of companies' wagons. What the period photos do not show is more than a handful of private owner wagons.

 

Do you have dates for photos showing these activities? (Or, to put it the other way round, can you date these activities from clues in the photos?)

Edited January 2, 2022 by Compound2632

[Nearholmer]

30 minutes ago, phil_sutters said:

Highbridge also received very large amounts of timber from Scandinavia, which passed through John Bland's sawmill and wood yard, before being transported out in open, partly sheeted wagons.

 

Which raises a more general, not specifically S&DJR point, if I may.

 

In what form was Scandinavian timber generally imported? By which I mean, did it come as un-sawn trunks, or sawn to size, or sawn to large baulks, or was it a mixture of the foregoing? It was a hugerailway traffic all around the southern part of the coast, although I don't know about elsewhere, and I've often wondered how the trade worked.

[Compound2632]

29 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

It was a hugerailway traffic all around the southern part of the coast, although I don't know about elsewhere, and I've often wondered how the trade worked.

 

... and also through the east coast ports, I think.

 

See here, Great Yarmouth:

 

 

Caption: "Dockers unloading 940 tons of silver birch from Sweden on to Southtown's Bollard Quay in 1957, to be transported to the Briton Brush Company in Wymondham. - Credit: Archant".

 

[Embedded link to photo in an article in the Great Yarmouth Mercury.]

 

Whereas at Bristol's Baltic Wharf, we see sawn timber.

Edited January 2, 2022 by Compound2632

[phil_sutters]

33 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

 

Which raises a more general, not specifically S&DJR point, if I may.

 

In what form was Scandinavian timber generally imported? By which I mean, did it come as un-sawn trunks, or sawn to size, or sawn to large baulks, or was it a mixture of the foregoing? It was a hugerailway traffic all around the southern part of the coast, although I don't know about elsewhere, and I've often wondered how the trade worked.

The photos in Chris Handley's book show sawn timber being imported. A local history site records that unloading was done manually as it was in the Surrey Docks in London, with 'deal porters' carrying long lengths of timber on their backs, a practice recalled in this sculpture. http://www.ipernity.com/doc/philsutters/25874997 , from the quayside to the timberyard.

The Scandinavian ships were considerably larger than the S&D's own vessels - over 1000 gross tons as against under 200. In the Middleton Press book on the Burnham to Evercreech line, there is a photo which shows timber being unloaded, but in my estimation the location is not Highbridge. The crane track was higher than the railway tracks and of a different gauge and so not connected, as the lines are in that photo. There is also a line of open wagons crossing the back of the scene where there was no track.

[Nearholmer]

Googling around to answer my own question, it looks as if most timber was imported sawn, in a variety of sizes from huge baulks down to surprisingly thin planks, maybe an inch, with the most common being two or three inches by about six or eight, so roughly scaffold-board section. no very fine sections, though, so I reckon those wharfside sawmills cut things down to the classic two by one, two by two, etc., among other jobs. In colliery areas, there were also pit-props, both sawn and rough, ready-sized, coming in.

 

When I was a very small boy, one of the places that always intrigued me was The Baltic Sawmill, in goods station road in Tunbridge Wells, one of several places along there that were behind big gates, through which one could get glimpses of "industrial things", cranes and whatnot.

[phil_sutters]

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Do you have dates for photos showing these activities? (Or, to put it the other way round, can you date these activities from clues in the photos?)

There are photos from early in the 20th century through to the 1930s. Timber and coal seem to appear throughout that period, as does rail. The cattle wagons near the quayside are in a couple of photos from the early 1920s or possibly a bit earlier. The wagons are SDJR stock and they are plastered with limewash.

There are wagons with visible markings from MR, LMS, NE, North Stafford, LBSCR, LSWR, SR & GWR. There are only occasional PO wagons. One, in a later photo I have seen, shows the end of an eight plank open, which I have worked out from the ......AND and Grimsby, must been a Norstand wagon. Richard Kelham in his PO wagons of Somerset doesn't identify any PO wagons based in or around Highbridge and Burnham, despite the numerous PO wagons with local traders names on marketed by the Burnham MRC, which they acknowledge are fictional.

 

[Compound2632]

6 minutes ago, phil_sutters said:

There are photos from early in the 20th century through to the 1930s. Timber and coal seem to appear throughout that period, as does rail. The cattle wagons near the quayside are in a couple of photos from the early 1920s or possibly a bit earlier. The wagons are SDJR stock and they are plastered with limewash.

 

Ex-S&DJR stock - but still in S&DJR livery? Limewash was banned at some date in the mid 1920s - possibly 1927, from memory.

 

6 minutes ago, phil_sutters said:

There are wagons with visible markings from MR, LMS, NE, North Stafford, LBSCR, LSWR, SR & GWR. 

 

In other words, 1920s (after 1922) again, with pooling in force. So any wagon that has migrated into the area.

 

6 minutes ago, phil_sutters said:

There are only occasional PO wagons. [...] Richard Kelham in his PO wagons of Somerset doesn't identify any PO wagons based in or around Highbridge and Burnham, 

 

Which suggests that local coal merchants were mostly getting their supplies by sea. I believe the same is found in the largely fruitless search for Devon and Cornwall PO wagons, Taunton, well inland, being an exception.

Edited January 2, 2022 by Compound2632

[phil_sutters]

3 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Googling around to answer my own question, it looks as if most timber was imported sawn, in a variety of sizes from huge baulks down to surprisingly thin planks, maybe an inch, with the most common being two or three inches by about six or eight, so roughly scaffold-board section. no very fine sections, though, so I reckon those wharfside sawmills cut things down to the classic two by one, two by two, etc., among other jobs. In colliery areas, there were also pit-props, both sawn and rough, ready-sized, coming in.

 

When I was a very small boy, one of the places that always intrigued me was The Baltic Sawmill, in goods station road in Tunbridge Wells, one of several places along there that were behind big gates, through which one could get glimpses of "industrial things", cranes and whatnot.

Although the Bland's would have cut timber to size, they were major importers and stock holders for the mid-Somerset area, so not all the imports would have gone through the saw-mill.

[phil_sutters]

On 02/01/2022 at 18:06, Compound2632 said:

 

Ex-S&DJR stock - but still in S&DJR livery? Limewash was banned at some date in the mid 1920s - possibly 1927, from memory.

 

 

In other words, 1920s (after 1922) again, with pooling in force. So any wagon that has migrated into the area.

 

 

Which suggests that local coal merchants were mostly getting their supplies by sea. I believe the same is found in the largely fruitless search for Devon and Cornwall PO wagons, Taunton, well inland, being an exception.

The cattle wagons are still in SDJR livery. These two photos are not precisely dated and I think could be a bit earlier.

The wagons' owners lists all those shown through a dozen or more photos spread across the period from 1900 to 1937. So the mix does not appear all in one photo.

The COOP had a coal yard on the edge of the wharf. One would need to look at goods trains in the area to see if coal came in from the Somerset coalfield or elsewhere. The S&D and GWR had goods facilities to the east of the wharf, on the other side of what is now the A38. The S&D goods shed I photographed some time after the line's closure.

 

The GWR goods shed is beyond the goods train which would have come from Burnham, the Wharf or the S&D shed which was a hundred yards or so off camera to the left. To the right is yet another of the brick-works in the area, to add to the three off the line to Burnham. One of Dad's photos.

Edited May 6, 2022 by phil_sutters
Photos added

[phil_sutters]

On 02/01/2022 at 18:16, phil_sutters said:

The COOP had a coal yard on the edge of the wharf. One would need to look at goods trains in the area to see if coal came in from the Somerset coalfield or elsewhere. 

 

I have spotted three PO wagons in the COOP siding, in the corner of a wharf-side view. They seem to have different liveries. The nearest one has lettering on the top plank which could be Somerset Collieries Ltd., just from the pattern of the white? lettering on the black plank.  The others are too blurred to even guess at.

The Bridgwater Cooperative Society, of which this would have been a small depot, does not appear to have had any wagons of its own, unlike some COOPs elsewhere in the country.

[Compound2632]

5 hours ago, phil_sutters said:

I have spotted three PO wagons in the COOP siding, in the corner of a wharf-side view.

 

Have you a reference for this photo?

[phil_sutters]

2 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Have you a reference for this photo?

It is on page 128 of Chris Handley's Maritime Activities of the S&DR book. It is from his own collection. It shows the Julia up at the eastern most quay, near the sluice that leads to the Brue's new cut. Looked at more closely there are in fact five or possibly six wagons I think.

[Compound2632]

37 minutes ago, phil_sutters said:

It is on page 128 of Chris Handley's Maritime Activities of the S&DR book. It is from his own collection. It shows the Julia up at the eastern most quay, near the sluice that leads to the Brue's new cut. Looked at more closely there are in fact five or possibly six wagons I think.

 

Thanks. I'm afraid I don't have that. But perhaps an enquiry to the author might lead to a print or higher-resolution scan, which might reveal more.

[phil_sutters]

8 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Thanks. I'm afraid I don't have that. But perhaps an enquiry to the author might lead to a print or higher-resolution scan, which might reveal more.

I have spotted that you can see the photo at https://www.burnham-on-sea.com/news/history-of-highbridge-to-be-revisted-in-nostalgic-afternoon-of-reminiscing/ , although that is no clearer than the version in the book.

The second photo is the one on which I based my model Highbridge - C. box, although I did use others from different angles and dates to try to get a reasonably authentic look to it.

 

Edited February 24, 2022 by phil_sutters
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