"Foreign" wagons - How many would you see?

[Nearholmer]

32 minutes ago, ianathompson said:

Given the size and remoteness of Plaidy I assume that this was done by a local farner's horse as required.

 

Assuming its not uphill, its fairly easy for a couple of guys to push even a loaded wagon, once its moving. To get it moving, a pinch-bar was used, and in skilled hands that seemed to do the job OK. Later, there were strange little motorised wheelbarrows (think Villiers 125cc engine with pull-cord start), the wheel of which rode on the rail-head, for pushing wagons, and there's always gravity, when its in your favour.

 

I can't quickly find a film of a British pinch-bar in use, but here's an American one https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=shunting+with+pinch+bar&&view=detail&mid=AFAC4D3A5C6C3BF42922AFAC4D3A5C6C3BF42922&&FORM=VRDGAR&ru=%2Fvideos%2Fsearch%3Fq%3Dshunting%2Bwith%2Bpinch%2Bbar%26FORM%3DHDRSC3

 

I don't think the trad British version had a ratchet, or a sole and pivot, it was simply a long pole, shod at the end with iron formed into a 'beak' from what I can recall, and it was much more dangerous to use, because it could easily slip at the moment of maximum force, and send you crashing down on your face if you were leaning forward!

 

 

Edited February 27, 2021 by Nearholmer

[ianathompson]

Given the size and remoteness of Plaidy the pushing would probably be done by farm labourers rather than railway staff.

 

I once saw an ideal candidate for this job, a man mountain with a big red beard, playing at centre forward for Clach.

Not quite the local team but I am sure that Deveronvale might have thrown up a likely candidate or two across the years!

 

Ian T

[Compound2632]

29 minutes ago, ianathompson said:

Given the size and remoteness of Plaidy the pushing would probably be done by farm labourers rather than railway staff.

 

You're assuming that these weren't the same people. The agricultural depression of the 70s forced many into taking railway employment while doing the farm-work in their off-duty hours.

[RogerTE]

Only just come across this topic - sorry!

 

My intertest is the Met/GC, with particular interest in the post WW1 period, and a few years ago was shown some photos of the Great Missenden Goods Yard (not sure of date, but pre-grouping, and probably post WW1, as there was a G class loco in background of one photo).

 

There were several (at least 8) horse boxes, apparently all arrived for the local hunt. As well as Met ones there were also GW, and what looked like LSWR ones that could be identified, and (I think) GCR and MR ones.

 

The same photos also showed at least one MR goods wagon in the yard, and an unidentified cattle wagon (definitely not Met.) .

 

Unfortunately the lady who showed me the pictures died and I believe the family destroyed them, as rubbish, when they did the house clearance.

[CKPR]

I was just painting the GWR 'Python' CCT for the 4mm M&CR when I had a thought about why one was photographed in what looks like a post-WW1 M&CR train. The 'Python' is travelling alone without an accompanying horse box and it dawned on me that it might be conveying a  new motor car from Oxford, Birmingham etc. Any thoughts ?

[Edwardian]

18 minutes ago, CKPR said:

I was just painting the GWR 'Python' CCT for the 4mm M&CR when I had a thought about why one was photographed in what looks like a post-WW1 M&CR train. The 'Python' is travelling alone without an accompanying horse box and it dawned on me that it might be conveying a  new motor car from Oxford, Birmingham etc. Any thoughts ?

 

What period are you concerned with, as many GW 'Brown Vehicles' were originally grey?

[CKPR]

Going from the photograph in question, I'm presuming 1918-1925 or thereabouts [I bought a tin of Humbrol 98 chocolate especially for the  'Python'].

[CKPR]

If 'Python' is carrying a new motor car, this suggests a late pre-grouping source of traffic that could be seen anywhere in the country, as automobile manufacturing seems to have been a national industry from its inception.

Edited September 20, 2021 by CKPR

[Nearholmer]

There was a traffic in chassis from the various facrories, to coach buillders all over the place, and from there onward to final customers, as well as complete finished vehicles from factory to customer. At least three coach builders had CCTs that I think that they probably leased from the railway company, with their name and trade painted on them. Mulliner of Northampton and Covent Garden is quite well known; in another thread we identified another (a firm from Nottingham using a Midland van IIRC); and, I think there was an SDJR example too.

 

So, a wandering Python rings true to me.

 

This is the thread where we got into all this before 

 

 

 

Edited September 20, 2021 by Nearholmer

[Compound2632]

Just now, Nearholmer said:

So, a wandering Python rings true to me.

 

There were certainly LNWR and Midland CCTs painted up for particular firms, as well as the S&DJR example:

 

 

Were any Pythons so treated?

 

This pre-dated motor vehicles. In 1895 the Midland built a couple of CCT underframes for the Gloucester RC&W Co. to put their own bodies on - they had quite a substantial business in building road vehicles. It seems rather an odd arrangement, since Gloucester would have been perfectly capable of building complete vehicles themselves.

[Nearholmer]

I reckon that these have got temporary, paper posters pasted onto them.

 

https://www.warwickshirerailways.com/misc/misc_bsa&singer178.htm

 

You could imagineer a Singer poster using inspiration from Grace’s Guide.

[Nearholmer]

A bit later than you want, but interesting views of the loading process here 

https://www.warwickshirerailways.com/misc/austin-motors.htm

 

I hadn't realised that CCTs had those baulks across inside, just like not-C CTs in fact. I'm sure when I saw cars being loaded into them much more recently (1970s/80s) they were secured with pressed-metal wheel-chocks.

[Compound2632]

3 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

A bit later than you want, but interesting views of the loading process here 

https://www.warwickshirerailways.com/misc/austin-motors.htm

 

I hadn't realised that CCTs had those baulks across inside, just like not-C CTs in fact. I'm sure when I saw cars being loaded into them much more recently (1970s/80s) they were secured with pressed-metal wheel-chocks.

 

Unimpressed. The Midland was there in 1905-12 with 50 passenger-rated motor car vans to D414/414A, 31 ft over body, along with 98 goods-rated motor car vans. But the Midland, serving Derby, Birmingham, and Luton, was better placed for the traffic than the Great Western.

[Edwardian]

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

 

There were certainly LNWR and Midland CCTs painted up for particular firms, as well as the S&DJR example:

 

 

Were any Pythons so treated?

 

I do not believe so.

 

The GW seemed fairly averse to this sort of thing.  One thinks of the Palethorpes sausage wagons (1936) but by way of the exception.  Vehicles e.g. the Syphon Fs dedicated to Harris's Calne factory traffic would have presented such an opportunity.  

 

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

 

This pre-dated motor vehicles. In 1895 the Midland built a couple of CCT underframes for the Gloucester RC&W Co. to put their own bodies on - they had quite a substantial business in building road vehicles. It seems rather an odd arrangement, since Gloucester would have been perfectly capable of building complete vehicles themselves.

 

Pythons are just CCTs,  As such, I suspect they might always have been brown, unlike other later 'brown vehicles', e.g. the Y diagram Fruit vans.

 

There were some little shorties in the 1880-90s, but I suspect the ones we're interested in would be the P13 (1905) and similar P14 27' long-w/b 4-wheers with the high cove roof.

 

53 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

I reckon that these have got temporary, paper posters pasted onto them.

 

https://www.warwickshirerailways.com/misc/misc_bsa&singer178.htm

 

You could imagineer a Singer poster using inspiration from Grace’s Guide.

 

 

These, though, are diagram Gs certainly on the grey/freight side of things, DAMOs and, here, ASMOs.  These are for conveying motor cars in bulk from the factory as goods, unlike the traditional CCT role, and were I think built only from the mid-'20s, suggesting that the GW lacked significant car factory traffic hitherto. They were fitted stock, nonetheless.  They were probably intended to work the sort of service represented by the Singer train, showing how interchangeable in reality such stock could be.

 

Pythons, as CCTs, would be used for horse-drawn carriages, and motor cars but also for anything else required, including, I understand, elephants! 

 

Pythons were built to P diagrams as were the open carriage trucks, which had the telegraphic code name Scorpions.  Again, there was a goods equivalent of the OCT in the form of agricultural implement wagons coded Serpents. 

 

 

 

Edited September 20, 2021 by Edwardian
The Missing Link

[Nearholmer]

If you follow the link under the Singer photo, it identifies which batches the Pythons in that photo are from; clearly the Austin ones are later, and different (ASMO) beasts.

[Edwardian]

4 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

If you follow the link under the Singer photo, it identifies which batches the Pythons in that photo are from; clearly the Austin ones are later, and different (ASMO) beasts.

 

In the GW Magazine in, IIRC, 1925, there were long wagons, something akin to bogie bolsters, but roofed and with sheeted sides, to carry either car or car bodies. Damos and Asmos may have been used for a different aspect of the traffic or have superseded them; it's not something I've ever looked into.  

 

One is tempted to see a surfeit of CCTs, including a significant increase in numbers possibly induced by the Great War, leading the GW to draft these passenger vehicles into block fitted goods trains like the Singers as another way to respond to an increase in such traffic.

[Compound2632]

Thinking about Great Western motor car factory traffic, the Warwickshire Railways page clearly deals with the Austin plant at Longbridge, to which the Great Western had access via the joint Halesowen branch; the only other major site would I think be Morris at Cowley, where substantial provision of for rail access seems to date from the early 30s, though the plant was opened just before the Great War.

[Edwardian]

Ah, yes, Oxford, City of car factories .......

 

EDIT, by the way, one wonders if the telegraphic code is inspired thus AuStin MOtor Company?

 

In which case, given it was part of BSA (I've no idea where the cars were made, though) was there also DAimler MOtor Company in mind?

 

 

Edited September 20, 2021 by Edwardian

[Compound2632]

Just now, Edwardian said:

Ah, yes, Oxford, City of car factories .......

 

... the city of screaming tyres, it was said. Though not so much now, or even a third of a century ago, in the city centre. However, for most of the last quarter-century my contact with the city has been limited to sitting in traffic jams on the A34 Western / Southern Bypass. (Making me a poor relation of Cardinal Newman*: "I have never seen Oxford since, excepting its spires, as they are seen from the railway." [Apologia pro Vita Sua, 1864].)

 

*St John Henry Newman, as one should now say.

[Compound2632]

7 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

EDIT, by the way, one wonders if the telegraphic code is inspired thus AuStin MOtor Company?

 

Of course: DAMO would then be DAimler MOtor Company, a subsidiary of BSA, but based in non-Great Western Coventry?

[Edwardian]

Just now, Compound2632 said:

 

Of course: DAMO would then be DAimler MOtor Company, a subsidiary of BSA, but based in non-Great Western Coventry?

 

My edit obviously crossed with your post, thus showing how Fools seldom differ. 

 

I don't know where Daimler cars were made in the 1920s. DAMOs were introduced before ASMOs.  This was 1925, not long before Daimler car production fell off a cliff and then ceased. 

[Nearholmer]

22 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

I don't know where Daimler cars were made in the 1920s.

Coventry, I think.

 

The factory was flattened in the blitz.

 

What these wagons are, apart from what look like some LNWR ones, I’ve no

idea, but again they look as if they might have posters pasted onto them.

https://www.warwickshirerailways.com/lms/lnwrf2077.htm

 

 

Edited September 20, 2021 by Nearholmer

[Compound2632]

Just now, Nearholmer said:

Coventry, I think.

 

That's what I said. At Radford, to the north of the city centre, with a private siding off the LNWR Coventry-Nuneaton line.

[Caley Jim]

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

 the only other major site would I think be Morris at Cowley, where substantial provision of for rail access seems to date from the early 30s, though the plant was opened just before the Great War.

There are two photos in Jack Kernahan's book on The Cathcart Circle showing trains of CCT's delivering Morris cars to maxwell Park goods yard for the nearby Morris agents A & D Frazer.  They are said to be c1925.  The various CCT's appear to be either CR, LNWR or WCJS as far as I can tell, but are not specially lettered.

 

Jim

[Penlan]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

What these wagons are, apart from what look like some LNWR ones, I’ve no

idea,

Well the first two and 6th could be L&Y bar the fact they don't have the destination chalk plate this side of the doors.
The next two look to be Midland, after that they all look like varieties if Ventilated vans similar or the same as the LNWR D445A's.
All E.& O.E.