Frogs

[chuffinghell]

Just a silly thought

 

 

[unravelled]

As a digression, I wondered when the term "common crossing" was adopted, and what terms were used before then.

 

I found this illustration in an 1838 publication, where the term "fixed point plate" is used. The inclusion of the "fixed" might suggest that moving points might occur as parts  in other designs of turnout.

 

Edited to add  that in "Modern Railway Working", 1913, , a diagram refers to the common crossing an ordinary crossing, while the text calls it a point crossing. Frog is mentioned as the American term. Did the term common crossing perhaps come in as part of post war consolidation?

 

Dave

 

 

Edited May 27, 2021 by unravelled

[The Stationmaster]

14 hours ago, unravelled said:

As a digression, I wondered when the term "common crossing" was adopted, and what terms were used before then.

 

I found this illustration in an 1838 publication, where the term "fixed point plate" is used. The inclusion of the "fixed" might suggest that moving points might occur as parts  in other designs of turnout.

 

Edited to add  that in "Modern Railway Working", 1913, , a diagram refers to the common crossing an ordinary crossing, while the text calls it a point crossing. Frog is mentioned as the American term. Did the term common crossing perhaps come in as part of post war consolidation?

 

Dave

 

 

I have come across the term 'common crossing' in a pre war (WWII) book dating I think from the 1930s (in so far as illustrations allow me to date it).

[unravelled]

Yes, I should have said post WWI. Between that and the grouping, there must  have been a lot of incompatable terminology  in use across the industry which needed standardisation. I wonder which committee or group coined the term common crossing?

 

Dave

[The Stationmaster]

Just now, unravelled said:

Yes, I should have said post WWI. Between that and the grouping, there must  have been a lot of incompatable terminology  in use across the industry which needed standardisation. I wonder which committee or group coined the term common crossing?

 

Dave

As the RCH was effectively the industry's 'standardisation' body it might well have been one of the committees running under their procedures although I'm not at sure how far back the PWI was fiounded (someone on here might know?)

[Dungrange]

16 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

As the RCH was effectively the industry's 'standardisation' body it might well have been one of the committees running under their procedures although I'm not at sure how far back the PWI was founded (someone on here might know?)

 

According to their brand guidelines  - https://www.thepwi.org/uploads/pwi_brand_guidelines

 

"Since being Founded in 1884 and Incorporated in 1908, the Permanent Way Institution’s has been synonymous with expertise and knowledge".

[bécasse]

Immediately post the Great War, and perhaps to some extent even before hostilities ended, there were at least three different series of committees looking at how the railways might move forward and, to some extent at least, reap the benefits of at least limited standardisation. The three series were allied to the RCH (obviously), the MoT once it was formed a little after the end of the war, and the various professional institutions. It isn't that clear now how closely these different committees worked together when covering much the same subjects (eg signalling) but given the limited number of relevant officers working within the railway industry even pre-grouping there must have been some overlap. Certainly they do seem to have come to very similar conclusions, although, perhaps inevitably, some of the newly grouped companies took them to heart more than others - the GWR stands out, of course, as the odd ball but even they adopted yellow distant signal arms.

[The Stationmaster]

Signalling (in terms of running signals) changes post WWI (basically subsequent to the Grouping) had nothing to do with the RCH but were a direct consequence of the recommendation os the IRSE Committee which had been set up to considered signal aspects and what form and meaning they should take for running signals.   However the GWR did not take up the recommendation to use the upper quadrant for 2 position signals (possibly because if its use of it for 3 positions signals and not wishing to confuse the two?).  The GWR also later moved away from the Committee's recommendation in respect of the aspects to be used in colour light signals although there is clear evidence that it initially followed that recommendation.

 

The jungle of subsidiary signals and what they meant was basically dealt with through the RCH Rules & Regulations committee meetings and Superintendents' Conferences and that process was still going on until nationalisation when that function passed to the Railway Executive

[jim.snowdon]

On 28/05/2021 at 13:01, The Stationmaster said:

I have come across the term 'common crossing' in a pre war (WWII) book dating I think from the 1930s (in so far as illustrations allow me to date it).

I have two British books relating to permanent way, dating from the 1890s, and both refer to 'crossings', although interestingly, one refers to common crossings as 'single crossings'.

 

Looking up my 1909 multilingual railway technical dictionary, 'crossing' is recognised as the English term, with 'frog' being noted as the American term. It has no direct equivalents in the other languages, ie French, German, Italian or Spanish (and the Russian is beyond me). In fact, the rest of Europe interprets it as being the 'heart' of (presumably) the pointwork, whereas the English term is a literal interpretation of where the rails cross. But, the Germans and the French do use the term 'crossing' to describe what we call a diamond crossing.

 

And just to throw everything into confusion, the term 'frog' is used in British practice to describe the fittings used in tramway and trolleybus overhead to allow the wires to create points and crossings for trolley pole operation.

 

Jim

[bécasse]

21 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

Signalling (in terms of running signals) changes post WWI (basically subsequent to the Grouping) had nothing to do with the RCH but were a direct consequence of the recommendation os the IRSE Committee which had been set up to considered signal aspects and what form and meaning they should take for running signals.  

..................

 

The jungle of subsidiary signals and what they meant was basically dealt with through the RCH Rules & Regulations committee meetings and Superintendents' Conferences and that process was still going on until nationalisation when that function passed to the Railway Executive

I, too, had once assumed that it was the IRSE committee that was, in effect, responsible for the recommendations that led to the changes in running signals (including, inter alia, both the standardisation of some equipment and the use of yellow for distant signals) which came about in the late-1920s once the new grouped companies had had time to "get their feet under the table".

 

That was until I saw extracts from documentation issued by the Railway Executive Committee Standardisation Subcommittee on the subject of recommendations for signalling which had clearly been newly prepared in 1924. The title of that sub-committee tells us a lot because the Railway Executive Committee was the committee set up to oversee the operation of Britain's railways during the Great War, continuing after the war until 1921, latterly under the aegis of the newly-founded (1919) Ministry of Transport. The standardisation sub-committee must have been set up well prior to the abolition of the REC itself to have been given that title, most probably before the founding of the MoT and quite possibly even before the end of hostilities. Once the REC itself was abolished, the sub-committee clearly continued, flourished even since its recommendations were significantly acted on, under the wing of the MoT.

 

Quite what the relationship was between this subcommittee and the IRSE and the RCH is, without a lot of digging in archives, difficult to establish but, as I suggested before, the limited number of suitable committee members will inevitably have resulted in overlap and consequent effective dialogue.

 

It shouldn't be a surprise that the IRSE weren't left to sort things out for themselves. The position of Chief Signal Engineers in pregrouping company hierarchy varied considerably from company to company, with some, even in the larger companies, being a long way down the pecking order, with signalling being seen as a unavoidable cost rather than a benefit in most. Given all the machinations that went on as to who would take what post in the new grouped companies, nobody was going to leave humble signal engineers to determine future standards which might well benefit themselves rather more than their employers. In practice though, the recommendations that emerged, and which were to some considerable extent (even on the GWR) acted on, were to prove sensible and both traffic and cost effective.

[The Stationmaster]

As anything from the REC (which I thought had fallen into disuse by then but I don't have the reference immediately to hand) came in 1924 that aligns directly with the IRSE Committee's final majority report  - in other words the work was done and proposals made by the IRSE Committee. And the results, where applicable, were incorporated in the first MoT (the new title for the relevant section of the Board of Trade) issue of 'the Requirements' which appeared in 1925.

 

Tweedie & Lascelles' book was first published in 1925 and was of course written by two well known signal engineers - it included the 1925 MoT version of the Requirements which incorporated some of the recommendations of the IRSE Committee.   I have incidentally never seen anything in respect of a signalling standardisation committee of the REC and would be interested in any reference to it and its activities although quite how it fitted in with the well established RCH Rules & Regulations Committee and the Superintendents' Conference I really cannot make out.  Both of those, according to the Minute books, continued throughout the Great War so I can't see any justification for a superimposed body to deal with the same subject and why indeed would the IRSE decide to take the matter in hand if someone else was already doing so?

Edited May 31, 2021 by The Stationmaster
For asome reason my posts are coming out in bold and I can't establish why - apologies all round, sorry.

[micknich2003]

 The term "Frog" was used in describing Tram and Trolleybus over head line equipment.

[Pacific231G]

On 26/05/2021 at 18:41, The Stationmaster said:

I presume it was picked up by some early model railway writer from the American and the term has, gratingly in my case, stuck.  any attempt to change it seems to fall on deaf ears and lots of folk don't understand the proper, British, term.

Hi Mike

I'd always accepted that "frog" was an Americanism adopted by railway modelllers but I'm now not convinced for reasons I'll come to shortly.

I've been delving into earlier MRNs from the 1925-1935 and Greenly's pre Great War "Model Railways" magazine  where reference was normally to "points and crossings" (not switches and crossings) generalised to just "points" as in vernacular English (and the OED) . Beal was using the term frog by 1938  and had been looking at the hobby in America but the earliest reference I've found so far was in the June 1938 MRN in pt. 3 of a detailed description of W.S. Norris's magnificent and very fine scale 0 gauge railway. This talks about checkrail clearances on points and crossings but then talks about how the 29mm wheel gauge allows closer checkrail clearances so "the frog-gap is very much reduced in length so that in no crossing on the system, does a wheel drop into the gap...even on frog angles of up to 1 in 15". It also quotes that J.N. Maskelyne (the MRN editor) " remarked facetiously, that there must be something wrong because there was no noise from stock crossing the frogs."  Though this is the first use I've found so far it's clear that the term was very well understood. UPDATE I've since found a reference to "frog" in a 1937 MRN. Also by W.S. Norris but again using it as a well understood term.

 

Railway Modelling,  as a hobby distinct from model engineering, started much later in N. America than here so it seems unlikely that it would have got into British modelling circles that way. 

 

However, what has really convinced me (and this is a slight cross posting from the pet hate idioms topic) that the term didn't come into British use from railway modellers at all, is a 1940 War Office book "Notes on Military Railway Engineering". This refers consistently to frogs and frog angles with just the occasional use of "crossings or frogs". I doubt if American practice would have made much impression on British military engineers by the late 1930s but the term may well have been widely used in the rest of the British Empire. I strongly suspect - not least because of its use in tram and trolley bus overhead wiring- that "frog" is actually a very old and proper British term dropped by British PW engineers, at least officially,  in favour of  "crossing"  or "common crossing" (Heywood spoke of "cast crossings" for his 15" railways in 1894) but that remained in use elsewhere. In its railway meaning, the OED places frog as a 19th C. word but its origin is unknown. Delving through 19th C. railway accident enquiry reports may be informative here.

Edited June 16, 2021 by Pacific231G
update

[Pacific231G]

Updated

A further update. The first reference I've found to "frog" among railway modellers (or anywhere else) was in in the June 1925 Model Railway News. That was in a description of an extensive 00 (3.5mm/ft) layout built by the Rev. H.A Turner. He describes the pointwork in his main station as "being of the correct type with 'frogs' etc. but elsewhere of the the 'continuous rail' type."  The word frog also appears in an editorial article that August and not in quotes. 'Frog' appears several times after that in MRN though others describing track do refer to crossings. A.R.Walkley, the great pioneer of two rail and 00 (also 3.5mm/ft) simply refers to "the centre section" so perhaps there was some doubt amongst modellers of the appropriate term for the thing.  Apart from Greenly's 1909-  "Model Railways" magazine, that's as far back as I can get as, after WW1, MRN was almost certainly the only dedicated model railway journal in the world- cetainly the only one in English and it was in Britain that the hobby was really developed as distinct from both toy trains and model engineering .  

 

 I've not yet found "frog" used in any 19th C. sources (though I may yet) so I'm wondering if it may indeed have originally been an Americanism - based on its resemblance to the horse's hoof frog- but one that got into British vernacular long before Railway Modellers started using it.

Canada may be the source but, given its usage in urban tram and trolley bus OLE, it may have leaked into English from trams and the Underground where there was a lot of Amercan influence (London's Underground used/uses Americanisms such as truck, motorman, car,  westbound eastbound etc. and switch for points though those remained largely perculiar to the Underground) 

When railway modellers started using it they were clearly using a common vernacular term for the things.  The Royal Engineers may have done the same though the Canadian influence on British military railways, particularly the WDLRs,  during WW1 may also have been a factor there.

Edited June 17, 2021 by Pacific231G
rewrite of 1st para following new information

[Pacific231G]

 

 

I've now been through the two volumes of  Henry Greenly and W.J. Bassett-Lowke's  co-edited monthly "Model Railways (and Locomotives)"*,which, so far as I know, was the world's first periodical dedicated to railway modelling (though that included quite a lot of what would now be regarded as model engineering) . In his standards for model railways in vol 1 Greenly duly refers to points and crossings but in vol 2 May 1910 , a short piece, I guess by Bassett-Lowke, "Making points with "Lowko" track material" refers to their cast brass frog plate  with ribs forming grooves into which the V and wing rails could be slotted "to make up the complete frog to the standard dimensions published in our 6d handbook. No two rail electrification in 1910 of course and the frog/crossing was a no. 4 

 

That blows away my theory that the word "frog" may have entered Britain during WW1. Since he used crossing in Vol 1 it doesn't seem likely that it was introduced by Henry Greenly and there's no reason why W.J. Bassett-Lowke would have used it unless, as seems evident, it was a word that was already completely familiar.  

 

This really may be as  far as I can go with this fascinating bit of etymological research but if I find anything else out  I'll add it. 

 

* from vol. 3 1911 Greenly became the monthly magazine's sole editor and changed its name to "Model Railways and Locomotives - edited by Henry Greenly"  and in 1919 changed it to "Everyday Science"  (Everyday Science: Incorporating Models, Railways and Locomotives)  That lasted till 1921 and covered, for adults, the same sort of range (less the Meccano) that Meccano Magazine did for boys.