Logistics of engine shed supply in steam days

[PhilH]

I’m currently reading a book on the logistics of keeping the BEF supplied with essentials on the Western Front during WW1. It should be as dry as old bones but it is a fascinating insight into how things worked backed then.

 

This led me to wonder about how engine sheds were supplied during steam days…how did the coal, corks, cotton waste, oils, overalls etc., the hundreds of things  needed to service and operate steam engines, get to individual sheds. Did everything go to central supply depots to be split up into individual wagon loads, were there long sidings full of loco coal wagons waiting to be tripped to sheds both large and small?

 

If anyone can remember, or point me to sources of reference on this subject I’d appreciate it. Just one thing…if there are any replies could they be fact rather than supposition please!

[Oldddudders]

More supposition than fact, I admit, but based upon my time in BR (1966-96). 

 

For the smaller items, BR, and no doubt its predecessors, had contracts for the supply of consumables. The clerk at the running shed would therefore have been able to issue a Purchase Order or a requisition (contracts varied in requirement) against these contracts. In some cases the Shedmaster would have authority to sign the forms, in many cases it would haver to be signed at District/Divisional Office. 

 

The supplier would have a deal whereby they put completed orders onto the railway via a parcels or freight office, suitably labelled (i.e.with a BR label) so the goods were transferred carriage-free to the destination depot.

 

As for coal, I am less familiar with that, but I recall that firms were major suppliers to individual railway companies. Stephenson Clark comes to mind. 

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, Oldddudders said:

As for coal, I am less familiar with that, but I recall that firms were major suppliers to individual railway companies. Stephenson Clark comes to mind. 

 

The companies south of the Thames used Stephenson Clarke; you'll find that those companies had no or very few loco coal wagons. The companies north of the Thames, all more-or-less serving numerous coalfields, had large fleets of loco coal wagons and supply contracts with collieries, as far as possible ones near the sheds being supplied*, to minimise the distance loco coal had to be hauled. As far as I can work out, wagons designated for loco coal were counted as service wagons (even though usually numbered in with the general wagon fleet). I haven't got to the bottom of this but I think there was an accounting / statutory reporting reason; possibly a tax reason too. But one often sees ordinary railway company or colliery wagons in photos of coal stages, so there presumably weren't quite enough loco coal wagons to go round. I think the reason the southern companies used a factor rather than their own loco coal wagons is probably to do with the high mileage run over other companies' lines.

 

I have no idea how this may have changed following nationalisation of both the coal industry and the railways, or indeed from the railways coming under government control in the war.

 

*The report into the Aisgill accident of 1913 is illuminating on this point: coal for the Midland shed was procured locally, from collieries served by the NER Newcastle-Carlisle line and branches.

Edited October 11, 2021 by Compound2632

[The Stationmaster]

The GWR system seemed to be very straightforward and was probably replicated (to some extent or exactly) on the other railways. The running sheds were under the control of the Locomotive Superintendent/ latterly Chief Mechanical Engineer and that department had peoplke dealing with supply.  And 'supply' meant everything from broom handles and shovels, cotton waste, and clothing right up to barrels of lube oil and coal.  And it was all supplied by rail although obviously the coal came from collieries (various) the oil came from an oil company or companies but most of the other stuff came from Swindon in either wagons or stores vans or specialised vehicles such as ENPARTS.  

 

The only things I wonder about are whether clothing might have come direct from various suppliers - as was the case in BR days (although I'm not sure when that might have started but that was definitely the case in the late 1960s) and whether stationery came from Swindon or from a central point for all stationery but some of the forms were M&EE specific.

[PhilH]

Thank you for the replies. On reflection I suppose what I’m asking about is the ‘micro’ side of the system, eg was a wagon load of, say, oil barrels worked in to somewhere near a shed in a normal goods train, then that single wagon worked in to that shed by perhaps the shed pilot? As for coal, were coal trains worked into a location to be broken up into smaller units for onward distribution to engine sheds which didn’t necessarily need huge amounts of the stuff? (I should say that although a general curiosity my main area of interest is not in areas with nearby collieries but the south of England…my dad worked in the stores at Eastleigh shed. So many things I wished I’d asked him when I had the chance!)

 

I do realise that this many years after the events it’s a bit of a can of worms, but as I say appreciate any insight into the subject

 

 

[Compound2632]

I'm picking out this post from an old topic on the subject of loco coal:

There's stuff in that topic about higher capacity wagons which is really incidental to the question of why loco coal wagons existed at all. Loco coal wagons were not necessarily designed with efficiency or ergonomics in mind; I suspect that it was minimising first cost that led the LNWR to standardise on loco coal wagons without any doors, as seen here at Coventry shed. Labour was cheap in comparison!

Edited October 11, 2021 by Compound2632

[Aire Head]

40 minutes ago, PhilH said:

As for coal, were coal trains worked into a location to be broken up into smaller units for onward distribution to engine sheds which didn’t necessarily need huge amounts of the stuff?

 

I would have thought a consignment of loco coal would have been dealt with the same as any other wagon load traffic. The only difference being rather than say a local coal merchant in a Station goods yard the customer is a railway company engine shed.

 

So the wagons would be sent from the colliery to a local marshalling yard. There they would be marshalled into a train heading towards their destination along with any other traffic heading that way.

 

Once it gets to where it wants to go i would expect it gets taken to a local yard and then tripped from there to the engine shed or it may even get dropped off by a pickup goods train that goes past the shed but I'd expect the former to be more likely.

[Michael Hodgson]

There's a related question of how other uses of coal were delivered - that for station waiting rooms, stoves in huts etc.  You obviously wouldn't send that in an Enparts from Swindon, and it wouldn't warrant a wagonload delivery.  Presumably this was delivered in much the same way as household coal - by the sackfull from local coal merchants, who of course were often based in the station yard?  Discretionary authority of station master, or contract managed by head office? 

 

The miserly attitude of management is evident from all the stories of signalboxes receiving unofficial deliveries from loco tenders.   So I assume the stationmaster still had to pay for coal for his own accommodation even if he was living above the shop.

[Compound2632]

Sometimes loco coal wouldn't reach its destination:

 

 

[Embedded link to catalogue image of Midland Railway Study Centre Item 67056.]

 

That reminded me that whereas on the Great Western loco coal was the responsibility on the Locomotive Department, as Mike tells us, on the Midland it came under the Stores Department:

 

[Paul H Vigor]

5 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

Sometimes loco coal wouldn't reach its destination:

 

 

[Embedded link to catalogue image of Midland Railway Study Centre Item 67056.]

 

That reminded me that whereas on the Great Western loco coal was the responsibility on the Locomotive Department, as Mike tells us, on the Midland it came under the Stores Department:

 

I recall a conversation I had many years ago concerning a derailed 12T coal wagon that deposited its load into a private garden. Apparently the householder was allowed to keep the coal in lieu of compensation for the damage caused. It was some years before they had to buy coal!

[Steamport Southport]

6 hours ago, Aire Head said:

 

I would have thought a consignment of loco coal would have been dealt with the same as any other wagon load traffic. The only difference being rather than say a local coal merchant in a Station goods yard the customer is a railway company engine shed.

 

So the wagons would be sent from the colliery to a local marshalling yard. There they would be marshalled into a train heading towards their destination along with any other traffic heading that way.

 

Once it gets to where it wants to go i would expect it gets taken to a local yard and then tripped from there to the engine shed or it may even get dropped off by a pickup goods train that goes past the shed but I'd expect the former to be more likely.

 

More likely they would send a train of Loco Coal wagons to the main district/area shed and they would sort it out between the lesser sheds. If you look at photos they nearly always seem to be in dedicated trains of only loco coal.

 

That's why the GWR for example had so many different sizes of wagons. Somewhere like Ashburton would be sent a small 10 or 12T wagon full which would last about a week. Old Oak Common which had about 400 locomotives would need thousands of tons.

 

Don't forget many sheds had stockpiles of the stuff so you are just topping up supplies.

 

 

http://www.gwr.org.uk/nondiags.html

 

 

 

Jason

[pH]

8 hours ago, Michael Hodgson said:

There's a related question of how other uses of coal were delivered - that for station waiting rooms …

 

The miserly attitude of management is evident from all the stories of signalboxes receiving unofficial deliveries from loco tenders.  

I’ve seen coal for a waiting room fire delivered that way - a few shovelfuls from an engine bunker onto the platform, by request.

 

About coal to sheds - I remember wagons marked (stencilled? painted? chalked?)

”One journey only - loco coal”.

[Compound2632]

16 minutes ago, pH said:

About coal to sheds - I remember wagons marked (stencilled? painted? chalked?)

”One journey only - loco coal”.

 

Mentioned above and clearly a post-nationalisation thing - when, after years of overwork and neglect, there were plenty of wooden mineral wagons in their last legs. I suspect that the accounting situation had changed, too.

[The Stationmaster]

22 hours ago, Michael Hodgson said:

There's a related question of how other uses of coal were delivered - that for station waiting rooms, stoves in huts etc.  You obviously wouldn't send that in an Enparts from Swindon, and it wouldn't warrant a wagonload delivery.  Presumably this was delivered in much the same way as household coal - by the sackfull from local coal merchants, who of course were often based in the station yard?  Discretionary authority of station master, or contract managed by head office? 

 

The miserly attitude of management is evident from all the stories of signalboxes receiving unofficial deliveries from loco tenders.   So I assume the stationmaster still had to pay for coal for his own accommodation even if he was living above the shop.

Station and signal box coal were completely different from loco coal because they were otrdered by the traffic dept and not the M&EE.  I know that in later years we simply went to a local coal merchant but I would think that in earlier years there were probably central agreements to buy coal from various merchants or coal factors at a pre-agreed price.   I suspect the main reason signal boxes made use of coal dropped off by friendly passing engine crews was either to get some extra or if supplies were awkward.  But it was definitely harder supplying signal boxes once steam had finished although that might just as much have been a symptom of the overall decline in the number of coal merchants and the sheer difficulty of delivering to many 'boxes (or putting it another way it was a s*d of a job if there was good road access to a 'box as was the case with some of mine in the 1970s).

 

14 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Mentioned above and clearly a post-nationalisation thing - when, after years of overwork and neglect, there were plenty of wooden mineral wagons in their last legs. I suspect that the accounting situation had changed, too.

And not just that because as umpteen thousands of steel mineral wagons were delivered and coal traffic declined there was in any case a surplus of wagons for much of the year.  As a result the repair limits were dropped and you might find the cost of repair for a coal wagon (and other types in surplus) limited to 10/- (50p) and sometimes even less or nothing at all and of course the older wagons were the ones most likely to need repair

 

On the GWR there were a number of specifically loco coal, or loco coal empties, trains running to/from colliery areas.  Wagons would be labelled for their destination running shed and would simply be tripped from/back to the nearest marshalling yard which was far more efficent and quicker than distributing them via a principal loco depot.

[Pandora]

Also Water supplies, Steam locos required a  lot of it, Doncaster Carr Loco (36 A )piped a supply located 5 miles south of the shed

[TheSignalEngineer]

7 hours ago, Pandora said:

Also Water supplies

The GWR in Birmingham had a borehole by All Saints Street at Hockley. There was a main through Snow Hill Station and Bordesley Yards to Tyseley Loco and Carriage Shed. Rowington Troughs were fed from the canal north of the Hatton Flight. 

The LNWR had a borehole at Perry Barr and I believe there may have been another at New Street at pne time. There was a large main which ran in a ring feeding Aston shed, Aston Goods yard, Vauxhall carriage shed, Curzon Street yard, New Street station, Monument Lane loco shed, carriage shed and Goods yard, and Winson Green carriage sidings.