“Illiterate “symbols

[CKPR]

I'd forgotten about the NSR ! My thoughts about coal traffic, of which the NSR had plenty, was more about the sheer volume of traffic involved and the amount of re-marshalling involved and the need for very quick' right first time' recognition of rolling stock. I'm sure you're right about 'M   R' being a symbol in its own right rather than just the initials and it makes me wonder whether old-fashioned parsimony was also a factor in the use of illiteracy symbols i.e. it cost less to paint a couple of diamonds [presumably with a stencil ] than 'L N W R' in large letters  ? I'm sure that I've read about the subsequent reductions in the size of wagon lettering being at least partly for economy reasons, which does seem to confirm that cost  as well as function was an important factor in how the ownership of rolling stock was indicated.  

 

Re. the LBSC, I tend to think the use of such symbols by the Brighton may well have been due to different factors.

[Compound2632]

2 minutes ago, CKPR said:

I'm sure that I've read about the subsequent reductions in the size of wagon lettering being at least partly for economy reasons, which does seem to confirm that cost  as well as function was an important factor in how the ownership of rolling stock was indicated.  

 

Yes, and by 1936, with only four companies and a very high proportion of wagons pooled, there was hardly any need to distinguish ownership. 

 

Re. LNWR engines not displaying company initials, I think that was down to it being the Premier Line and quite above the need for such crude advertising. 

[Caley Jim]

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

Re. LNWR engines not displaying company initials, I think that was down to it being the Premier Line and quite above the need for such crude advertising. 

It may have been 'The Premier Line', but the Caledonian was 'The True Line'!  

 

Jim  (sorry, couldn't resist!)

[Andy Hayter]

4 hours ago, sulzer27jd said:

None of which clarifies the purpose of the symbols on railway wagons. It would be nice to know why they were used.

 

John

 

I think that is a very pertinent question John and we might get some understanding if some of the undoubted experts here could indicate when each company started to use the symbols and equally important, if someone can point to when the term "illiteracy mark" first came into use or common usage.

[Compound2632]

24 minutes ago, Andy Hayter said:

 

I think that is a very pertinent question John and we might get some understanding if some of the undoubted experts here could indicate when each company started to use the symbols.

 

I claim no expertise, merely a library. The symbols seem to be of great antiquity, their origin lost in the railway dark ages of the 1850s and 60s. The LNWR diamond is said to go back to "the Egyptian diamond of the GJR, when wagons for destinations on the Liverpool and Manchester line were marked with a diamond..." and "Wagons allocated to the Chester & Holyhead section seem to have been adorned with the Prince of Wales feathers, but a minute of September 1860 ordered this practice to be discontinued." [E. Talbot et al., LNWR Liveries (HMRS, 1985) p. 129].

[sulzer27jd]

4 hours ago, Andy Hayter said:

 

I think that is a very pertinent question John and we might get some understanding if some of the undoubted experts here could indicate when each company started to use the symbols and equally important, if someone can point to when the term "illiteracy mark" first came into use or common usage.

It may also be useful to know when lettering started to be used to identify ownership. Was it perhaps a case of, “well why don’t we just write our name on them?”

 

Another thing that hasn’t really been accounted for are the private owner wagons, many of which had return instructions written in full. Might the term illiteracy mark possibly be a red herring? A creation of the model railway press perhaps? 

[Compound2632]

13 minutes ago, sulzer27jd said:

It may also be useful to know when lettering started to be used to identify ownership. Was it perhaps a case of, “well why don’t we just write our name on them?”

 

As I said above, the first use of large lettering was the 21" M R painted by the Midland on PO wagons bought up from 1882 onwards. This spread to other companies so that it was nearly universal by the Great War. But many companies were using small initials - one plank high, so 5" - 9" - for many years before that, the Great Western being one example.

[Andy Hayter]

1 hour ago, sulzer27jd said:

It may also be useful to know when lettering started to be used to identify ownership. Was it perhaps a case of, “well why don’t we just write our name on them?”

 

Another thing that hasn’t really been accounted for are the private owner wagons, many of which had return instructions written in full. Might the term illiteracy mark possibly be a red herring? A creation of the model railway press perhaps? 

 

That is exactly the point of my second question.  If we find that the marks were installed very early on - as seems to be the case for LNWR wagons - and if the use of illiteracy marks in common parlance is also very early then it strengthens the idea that these are exactly as described.  If we find however there is a major time gap then the term might well be a simple invention of someone's  misunderstanding of their use.  

[BlueLightning]

Finally dug out my copy of Southern Style Vol 2 (LBSC) to look at wagon liveries about the illiterate symbol.

 

pre-1870 The Brighton put the letters LB&SCR on the lower left corner of it's wagons, there is a photo in the book dated 1871 showing this, and a second photo dated 1865 referenced.

 

in 1870 they moved over to what is being called an "illiterate symbol" here, The Brighton called it a totem, and there are also minutes shown from the "Monthly Officers Meeting" dated 16th July 1870, that states no one is to be employed in any role on the railway unless they "can read and write fairly" so from the time that the "illiterate symbol" was introduced, everyone on the LBSC was literate.

 

They then moved over to large letters in 1896, having discussed and rejected it in 1890

 

Gary

[Compound2632]

According to Noel Coates in his Lancashire & Yorkshire Wagons Vol. 1 (Wild Swan, 1990), pp. 66-67, the L&YR's triangle-in-circle mark was introduced in the 1860s, along with the cast solebar numberplate. Coates calls it an illiterate symbol and writes "The device was introduced to enable those yard workers who could not read to identify a particular company's vehicle quickly." But he does not cite any authority for this statement.

[Nearholmer]

A few symbols are being mentioned that I've never heard of before; could we have a list of those known? 

[Andy Hayter]

Stephen

Yard workers of course may well include non-railway employees - carters, stable boys (for stables other than the railway) and probably others.  

 

Gary

regarding ensuring all employees were literate, I wonder what tests were applied - or whether a degree of intelligence was assumed to equal literate.  In the cases I outlined above I can assure you we would not knowingly have employed illiterate or word/number blind people into a warehouse where the entire day to day operation relies on identifying labels on stock and stock locations.  As reported however I found 3 people in my working life who failed the tests we never actually set.  And frankly I could not put hand on heart and say there were no more.  

[BlueLightning]

4 minutes ago, Andy Hayter said:

Gary

regarding ensuring all employees were literate, I wonder what tests were applied - or whether a degree of intelligence was assumed to equal literate.  In the cases I outlined above I can assure you we would not knowingly have employed illiterate or word/number blind people into a warehouse where the entire day to day operation relies on identifying labels on stock and stock locations.  As reported however I found 3 people in my working life who failed the tests we never actually set.  And frankly I could not put hand on heart and say there were no more.  

 

You are right, it would be interesting to know if there were tests, and if not then I'm sure many would have slipped through that were illiterate, however I'm not sure it matters in this sense, because I can't imagine them introducing something to make life easier for illiterate employees, while also having a policy of not employing illiterate people.

 

Gary

[Andy Hayter]

Yes but see my comment about yard workers not always being railway employees.

[kevinlms]

9 minutes ago, Andy Hayter said:

Stephen

Yard workers of course may well include non-railway employees - carters, stable boys (for stables other than the railway) and probably others.  

 

Gary

regarding ensuring all employees were literate, I wonder what tests were applied - or whether a degree of intelligence was assumed to equal literate.  In the cases I outlined above I can assure you we would not knowingly have employed illiterate or word/number blind people into a warehouse where the entire day to day operation relies on identifying labels on stock and stock locations.  As reported however I found 3 people in my working life who failed the tests we never actually set.  And frankly I could not put hand on heart and say there were no more.  

My mother told me that she went out with a guy who couldn't read or write, of which she had no idea. She only found out later.

 

He used to turn up to my grandparents place to pick her up. While waiting (some things never change!), he used to sit at the kitchen table, with his newspaper in front of him and discuss the days news with my grandfather. So obviously he had either spoken to other people or heard the radio, before coming over and memorised it.

[kevinlms]

10 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

I think one has to remember also that before the Great War, which saw the introduction of pooling of railway company wagons, the vast majority of wagons would be of the home company, or PO mineral wagons. Any foreign wagon would be worked back to its home system empty and as soon as possible. Obviously there were exception, such as at exchange sidings, or south of the river, where most manufactured goods would be arriving in the wagons of the northern companies. 

 

 

Is there any real evidence of that, 'the vast majority of wagons would be of the home company'? Surely even quite early, transfer of goods from one railway to another was becoming a feature. It was the whole point of The Clearing House, to expedite the transfer and charging pro-rata of freight traffic over portions of companies travelled.

 

The LNWR built a large transhipment shed at Crewe in 1903 (long before ANY formal pooling) to make this long existing traffic more efficient. Other railways had them too.

 

I always look at photos of model railway layouts and it always amuses me, to see a layout with exclusively home company vehicles and PO coal wagons. In the same way, I check GWR layouts for which way round the Toad is on a train supposedly moving, verandah trailing, check!

 

The more I read this thread, the more I'm convinced that the 'illiterate symbols', were actually intended as logos.

[Compound2632]

9 hours ago, kevinlms said:

Is there any real evidence of that, 'the vast majority of wagons would be of the home company'? Surely even quite early, transfer of goods from one railway to another was becoming a feature. It was the whole point of The Clearing House, to expedite the transfer and charging pro-rata of freight traffic over portions of companies travelled.

 

OK, some photos from goods yards in Birmingham. First the LNWR Windsor Street goods station, here and here; the captions identify the wagons in view - there are a handful of foreigners, but most are LNWR. Second the Midland's Central goods station, mid-1890s, here and here. Only three non-Midland wagons, the van with the X framing on the left edge of the first photo, the sheeted LNWR 1-plank wagon on the left of the second photo, and another X-framed van further down the line of opens.

 

Another source of information is the Railway Inspectorate accident reports. I've analysed all of those I could find that had any Midland goods wagon interest in the period 1880-1910 and discussed several in my wagon building topic. A good example is the collision between GSWR and Caledonian goods trains at Gretna in 1901. Much stock was damaged and hence listed in the report. The vehicles listed from the GSWR train were exclusively GSWR (11) and Midland (6) - this was a train from Carlisle to Glasgow, so the presence of the Midland vehicles can be accounted for by English imports to Scotland. In Caledonian train, coming from Glasgow to Carlisle, the damaged wagons included Caledonian (11), NER (5), LNWR (6), L&YR (5), GWR (1), and NSR (1). Most of the foreign wagons will have been working back empty, although the West Coast partners may have had a mutual back-loading agreement (that's my speculation only). The Caledonian was at this period busy working with the NER to divert traffic away from the latter's East Coast partner, the NBR. These two trains are at the extreme of through-working of wagons, as Anglo-Scottish traffic was necessarily inter-company traffic; nevertheless, the foreign wagons are exclusively from companies in each Scottish company's network of English allies.

 

Another example is the accident to a MR Birmingham - Manchester at Whitacre in 1903; of the damaged goods wagons listed, 11 are Midland, with two Cheshire Lines and one L&YR. Again I think we can presume that these three foreigners were working back empty having been forwarded loaded from Lancashire stations. I could multiply examples indefinitely. 

 

I would suggest that the evidence points to there being a limited amount of through working of foreign wagons. I'm very conscious of this in my c. 1902 wagon modelling. I conceive my location as a Midland line in the Birmingham area over which both the LNWR and GWR have running powers for goods trains, so I have plenty of wagons from those three companies, but I have built quite a number of wagons from other companies - each one needs a back-story to justify its presence.

 

9 hours ago, kevinlms said:

The LNWR built a large transhipment shed at Crewe in 1903 (long before ANY formal pooling) to make this long existing traffic more efficient. Other railways had them too.

 

The LNWR Crewe transhipment shed was for transferring goods from one LNWR wagon to another, the idea being that rather than each station sending out several partly-loaded wagons to different destinations, they would send one fully loaded wagon to Crewe; that load would be split up and redistributed so that a full wagon-load could be sent out to each destination station. There's a superb contemporary description by Fred W. West, the Crewe Goods Agent, reproduced from The Railway Magazine, 1907, in E. Talbot, The LNWR Recalled (OPC, 1987). I suppose this system worked well on a railway such as the LNWR, with its own goods service reaching most parts of the country. The only other railway "such as the LNWR" was the Midland, with equally national reach; the Midland had a tranship shed at Derby St Marys; I'm afraid I don't know anything of its history or method of operation. 

 

9 hours ago, kevinlms said:

I always look at photos of model railway layouts and it always amuses me, to see a layout with exclusively home company vehicles and PO coal wagons. 

 

If these are pre-Great War layouts, then I'm afraid you become the object of my amusement. Martin Nield's Ecclestone in the current issue of MRJ has it right - L&YR set in 1910; most of the non-PO wagons in view are L&YR with a fair smattering of LNWR, a couple of Midland, and one each from the GWR and NER.

 

On the other hand, if you're looking at post-Great War layouts, then I'm with you rolling in the aisles (or at least rolling my eyes). But up to 1940, PO wagons still need to be appropriate to the traffic of the locality and nature of the industry - no anthracite colliery wagons in the gas works siding, please!

 

9 hours ago, kevinlms said:

In the same way, I check GWR layouts for which way round the Toad is on a train supposedly moving, verandah trailing, check!

 

There was a topic discussing this point not so long ago. I think if one maintains that GW brakes always ran verandah trailing, one has to provide evidence of the infrastructure to turn them. These are long wheelbase vehicles that would not fit on an ordinary wagon turntable, so what are the alternatives? Send brakes for turning at the nearest loco shed, or turn them on a convenient triangle? 

 

9 hours ago, kevinlms said:

The more I read this thread, the more I'm convinced that the 'illiterate symbols', were actually intended as logos.

 

I'm inclined to agree; but what is a logo but a symbol to assist in rapid identification?

Edited October 23, 2020 by Compound2632
Typos corrected

[Nearholmer]

Indeed. The way I read it(!) one doesn’t need to assume illiteracy for these symbols to be of practical use, and there doesn’t seem to be any solid evidence pointing to illiteracy as the reason for their adoption.

[Andy Hayter]

9 hours ago, kevinlms said:

My mother told me that she went out with a guy who couldn't read or write, of which she had no idea. She only found out later.

 

He used to turn up to my grandparents place to pick her up. While waiting (some things never change!), he used to sit at the kitchen table, with his newspaper in front of him and discuss the days news with my grandfather. So obviously he had either spoken to other people or heard the radio, before coming over and memorised it.

 

There is a mistaken belief that illiterate people are in some way stupid and in many cases nothing could be further from the truth.  Many develop clever coping strategies which completely hides the fact that they cannot read.  If as suggested 10-15% of the population are to some extent illiterate, do we see one person in six walking round dragging their hands on the floor?  Of course not but it could well mean that at least one person in the supermarket aisle when you go shopping cannot read.   

 

Kevin

evidence that wagons largely stayed local.   In addition to Stephens examples, one of the books I have shows several of the LBSCR goods depots around London and what is really telling is that in the shots of the different depots there is not one single foreign wagon.  In one case I could believe that the shot was staged for some sort of publicity but another shot seems to show another depot in full day to day operation.

We can be misled in our thinking about how business worked in the Victorian age and into the early 1900s by looking at how todays business works.  Back then you were far more likely to find a "local" producer for the goods you required rather than having to order something from the other end of the country.  WW1 and onwards the economies of scale, mass production etc led to a much more concentrated industry and the need to transport goods over long distances rather than relatively short hops. 

 

AS late as the 1950s my Grandfather was operating a traditional brush making business in Wiltshire aimed largely (but not exclusively) at brushes used in the dairy industry in the South West of England.  Look at what happened since then

1.   Plastics came in and replaced the wood support/back of the brush.

2.  Nylon fibres replaced the traditional bristle.

3.  This led to the concentration of brush making from small businesses into larger national plastics converters.

4.  Meanwhile the big dairy firms swept up the small local dairies, concentrated the operations into large factories and shut the local dairies.  (Something that has reversed somewhat in the last 20-30 years with locally made cheeses in particular returning.)  

 

What was happening only 65 years ago would be now unrecognisable to my grandfather were he alive.

[BlueLightning]

10 hours ago, Andy Hayter said:

Yes but see my comment about yard workers not always being railway employees.

 

True, but if a railway company in the 1870's can afford to only employ literate people that is a sign that literacy rates were higher than most people (myself included) would expect during the period. After all, I doubt some of the "lower ranks" had come from a wealthy background able to afford education.

 

9 hours ago, kevinlms said:

The more I read this thread, the more I'm convinced that the 'illiterate symbols', were actually intended as logos.

 

11 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

I'm inclined to agree; but what is a logo but a symbol to assist in rapid identification?

 

Agreed, I have always thought that they were nothing more than logos, much like ones that businesses use today.

[Compound2632]

1 minute ago, Andy Hayter said:

There is a mistaken belief that illiterate people are in some way stupid and in many cases nothing could be further from the truth.  Many develop clever coping strategies which completely hides the fact that they cannot read.  If as suggested 10-15% of the population are to some extent illiterate, do we see one person in six walking round dragging their hands on the floor?  Of course not but it could well mean that at least one person in the supermarket aisle when you go shopping cannot read.   

 

I couldn't find the passage when looking for it the other day but I'm sure that in Terry Essery's Saltley Firing Days he describes senior drivers asking him to read out the shed notices - "left my reading glasses at home" being a favourite explanation. This was in the 1950s.

[Nearholmer]

This is interesting as a way of understanding what proportion of children were receiving at least some sort of basic education in mid-Victorian Britain https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newcastle_Commission

 

A higher proportion than I’d imagined, and high enough for the LBSCR to be on safe ground recruiting only those who were literate by the standards of the day.

[Phil Traxson]

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

 

 

 

 

The LNWR Crewe transhipment shed was for transferring goods from one LNWR wagon to another, the idea being that rather than each station sending out several partly-loaded wagons to different destinations, they would send one fully loaded wagon to Crewe; that load would be split up and redistributed so that a full wagon-load could be sent out to each destination station. There's a superb contemporary description by Fred W. West, the Crewe Goods Agent, reproduced from The Railway Magazine, 1907, in E. Talbot, The LNWR Recalled (OPC, 1987). I suppose this system worked well on a railway such as the LNWR, with its own goods service reaching most parts of the country. The only other railway "such as the LNWR" was the Midland, with equally national reach; the Midland had a tranship shed at Derby St Marys; I'm afraid I don't know anything of its history or method of operation. 

 

 

 

Interesting that nearly 120 years later the road transport businesses operate a very similar "hub" system and yet the complaint with the railway system was that it was not direct door to door because of the multi handling and transfers! 

[Joseph_Pestell]

12 minutes ago, Phil Traxson said:

Interesting that nearly 120 years later the road transport businesses operate a very similar "hub" system and yet the complaint with the railway system was that it was not direct door to door because of the multi handling and transfers! 

 

It's the only way to handle parcels cheaply, so no surprise that it is still being used.

 

The big change, by comparison with the earlier railway era, is computerisation which has allowed easy tracking of parcels and much more automated handling at the hubs and depots.

[Nick Holliday]

On 23/10/2020 at 01:14, kevinlms said:

Is there any real evidence of that, 'the vast majority of wagons would be of the home company'? Surely even quite early, transfer of goods from one railway to another was becoming a feature. It was the whole point of The Clearing House, to expedite the transfer and charging pro-rata of freight traffic over portions of companies travelled.

 

The LNWR built a large transhipment shed at Crewe in 1903 (long before ANY formal pooling) to make this long existing traffic more efficient. Other railways had them too.

 

I always look at photos of model railway layouts and it always amuses me, to see a layout with exclusively home company vehicles and PO coal wagons. I

I think Compound2632 has comprehensively answered most of your points. Just to add a little extra to his reply, I have copied out a table which appears in LNWR Recalled, which itemises the wagon loads received at the 1901 LNWR Tranship Shed at Crewe, during the week ending 16th December 1922.

 

This was a time when pooling had been in operation for several years, and yet nearly 60% of the wagons are from the home company. Another 20% are from companies with a close association to the area, the Caledonian being the LNWR's West Coast partner, and the North Staffordshire and the Great Western both ran services to Crewe, so really part of the home team. That leaves just 22% for "Foreign" wagons! The Tranship Shed had 206 bays, and a fair proportion were labelled with "foreign" destinations, which would indicate the likelihood of of daily loadings to each, but, as with the LBSC to Willow Walk, not necessarily using a "foreign" wagon.

There is a tendency to think that pooling would result in the uniform diffusion of wagons across the UK, but I believe the reality was that in most situations an arriving foreign wagon would be sent back towards its home, and only be sent onward if there were a new load and no other more suitable vehicle was available. Old loyalties and habits lingered all through grouping and into nationalisation, and it made good sense to return wagons so repairs and maintenance wouldn't be a problem, rather than setting problems for a fitter tackling an unfamiliar design.

Just to emphasise the points Compound2632 made, Jonathan Abson of the Brighton Circle had access to a set of Goods registers from Sheffield Park at the turn of the century, and published the results in the Circle's magazine. As can be seen, over 90% of the wagons were home based, and PO wagons and MR provided a further 6.2%. Sheffield Park had a timber mill and hence the large number of bolster wagons. Also note the diversity of PO wagons, mostly colliery or coal factor wagons, with no local traders present.

 

 

It should be remembered that, prior to the arrival of the railways, most areas of England  were fairly self-sufficient, coal probably being the main import, perhaps by canal or sea, and it would be some time before the markets expanded to require major influxes of goods and materials from other parts of Britain.

 

Edited October 24, 2020 by Nick Holliday
Correcting typo in first table (GSWR figure)