Pointless Trivia question

[Rob Haigh]

Interesting question; I think the answer is indeed 'all of the above'!

 

I often wonder about freight/goods, seeing as both terms have combined usage in the UK, e.g. a Fowler 4F employed on a local goods train (a Dean Goods on a mixed freight?), some more officially than others!

Edited October 18, 2021 by Rob Haigh

[Nearholmer]

I think ‘freight’ as applied to railways might have been popularised from the US too. If you look at older official publications, departmental titles etc, they all use ‘goods’, but at some point in the early C20th ‘freight’ began to be increasingly popular as a railway term, and I think it was picked-up from textbooks of ‘scientific management’ written and published in the US, but widely read, and probably used as ‘course books’, over here. By the 1930s it was widely-enough used to feature in the title of at least one management textbook written and published here.

[MR Chuffer]

Curiouser, the L&YR Diagram Book of 1906 referenced "fruit" wagons, half box open wagons from 2' sides upwards and believed to be a corruption of freight by someone who couldn't spell. As the so called fruit wagons go back to Dia. 15 of 1892 and Dia.16 of 1870, whether the term fruit was in use at the time of building or was later used as a description in the 1906 Diagram book is a moot point.

[lanchester]

16 hours ago, melmerby said:

Hence some brake vans being break vans.

 

Also Coach is the US term for the basic passenger car class. (Like standard class in the UK.)

Car is the US term for railway vehicles, also used in the UK from the early 1900s

Freight is the US term for non passenger traffic, imported into the UK by the NER in the early 1900s.

The GWR 1936 general appendix, in the index it uses the term freight for the trains and goods for what they carried , however the term goods train still crops up in the text!

Minerals are only mentioned once, when coupling to a "freight" train

Couple of quick queries - if coach was 'economy class' a) am I right in thinking that in 'stagecoach' days the coach was the outside/on the top seating? and b) what did Americans call vehicles that were superior to coach cars? (I imagine being ever so egalitarian they wouldn't have gone much for First, Second etc).

 

Elsewhere, there is discussion of the differing applications of bogies and trucks. But a tram was a four wheeled colliery truck or tub over here as well as what the Americans call a street car, but their street cars are also called trolleys, but we had trolley buses even though they didn't run on trolleys, trucks, bogies or trams!

 

Oh, and 'tram' is from an Old German name for a beam or shaft, and I think originally may have implied something more like a sledge (ie wheel-less).

 

I don't think 'A Tram/Bogie/Trolley/Tub called Desire' would have worked quite so well for Tennessee Williams, though. Although 'That's why the Lady is a Tram' works quite well?

 

And when you see old accounts along the lines of 'the train was of eight bogies', is that four vehicles running on eight trucks, or is it eight bogied vehicles?

[Nearholmer]

As much discussed in another thread, ‘trolley’ as in car or bus, originated not in what they ran on, but how they collected traction current: by means of a trolley, running on beams or wires, at height.

 

Here is the Elektromote, progenitor of all trolley buses.

 

 

 

 

 

Tram as in beam is sometimes said to relate to trammel, and tramways to have begun as trammel(ed) ways.

 

 

Edited October 18, 2021 by Nearholmer

[melmerby]

5 hours ago, Rob Haigh said:

Interesting question; I think the answer is indeed 'all of the above'!

 

I often wonder about freight/goods, seeing as both terms have combined usage in the UK, e.g. a Fowler 4F employed on a local goods train (a Dean Goods on a mixed freight?), some more officially than others!

 Were'nt some goods locos 2G/3G/4G etc.?

[RichardT]

2 hours ago, lanchester said:

what did Americans call vehicles that were superior to coach cars? (I imagine being ever so egalitarian they wouldn't have gone much for First, Second etc).

IIRC the US did use the term “First Class” (now, inevitably, “Business Class” on Amtrak), but the US also had a myriad of car designations which weren’t  used over here, because so many of their long-distance trains were composed mainly or entirely of sleeping accommodation, some of which  was multi-purpose or convertible for daytime use.  So you get “day coach” as a specific type, “parlour cars” for first class day use, and sleepers aren’t just sleeping cars but are distinguished by whether they contain sections (the oldest type of sleeper, with great comic/farce potential - see “Some Like It Hot”); roomettes, bedrooms, or a mixture.  Then you also have “all Pullman” trains or some Pullmans in a train, where the entire train or a specific set of carriages are essentially a private rolling hotel operated by the Pullman Company but hauled by the railway company under contract and often painted in the same or a similar livery to the hauling company’s carriages. “Pullman cars” in the sense of luxury day-only coaches with a distinct livery are a British thing. 
 

It’s another world of terminology!

 

Richard T 

Edited October 18, 2021 by RichardT
Spulling

[Wickham Green too]

6 hours ago, MR Chuffer said:

..... someone who couldn't spell ........

Hadn't programmed the spill chucker with the new ward more like.

 

( spelling WAS much more fluid back then )

[adb968008]

7 hours ago, MR Chuffer said:

Curiouser, the L&YR Diagram Book of 1906 referenced "fruit" wagons, half box open wagons from 2' sides upwards and believed to be a corruption of freight by someone who couldn't spell. As the so called fruit wagons go back to Dia. 15 of 1892 and Dia.16 of 1870, whether the term fruit was in use at the time of building or was later used as a description in the 1906 Diagram book is a moot point.

The LYR had all number of innovative wagons, the Butter Van is one I find interesting.

[Rob Haigh]

14 hours ago, melmerby said:

 Were'nt some goods locos 2G/3G/4G etc.?

Maybe more recently, referring to their communications equipment  

 

Joking aside, I've never heard of a railway using 2G (for Goods) etc, for power classifications. Which company was that?

[Wickham Green too]

Everything was powered by gee-gees at one time ! 

[melmerby]

2 hours ago, Rob Haigh said:

Maybe more recently, referring to their communications equipment  

 

Joking aside, I've never heard of a railway using 2G (for Goods) etc, for power classifications. Which company was that?

Somerset & Dorset? Midland & GN jt?

I'm pretty sure a railway used a similar system to the Midland but originally used G instead

Edited October 19, 2021 by melmerby

[melmerby]

On 19/10/2021 at 08:58, Rob Haigh said:

 I've never heard of a railway using 2G (for Goods) etc, for power classifications. Which company was that?

 

It was the Somerset & Dorset.

 

The 2-8-0 was rated at 4P/5G by the S & D.

A similar system to the Midland but obviously did not correlate power wise.

[Rob Haigh]

17 hours ago, melmerby said:

 

It was the Somerset & Dorset.

 

The 2-8-0 was rated at 4P/5G by the S & D.

A similar system to the Midland but obviously did not correlate power wise.

 

Thanks! I did find one reference to the '5G' rating on the Wikipedia page for the S&DJR 2-8-0, but not much else. 

[Steamport Southport]

On 18/10/2021 at 13:22, Nearholmer said:

I think ‘freight’ as applied to railways might have been popularised from the US too. If you look at older official publications, departmental titles etc, they all use ‘goods’, but at some point in the early C20th ‘freight’ began to be increasingly popular as a railway term, and I think it was picked-up from textbooks of ‘scientific management’ written and published in the US, but widely read, and probably used as ‘course books’, over here. By the 1930s it was widely-enough used to feature in the title of at least one management textbook written and published here.

 

It's German, it's the anglicised version of fracht. 

 

https://en.langenscheidt.com/german-english/fracht

 

 

Jason

[Nearholmer]

I know, but it’s the application of the word to railways specifically, rather than its etymology or use in shipping, that is under discussion here, and Its that which I think was popularised from the US.

 

What we really need is one of those ‘usage over time’ plots, based on an analysis of railway official documentation, trade publications, and text books. I don’t know about you, but compiling that doesn’t sound like a fun way to spend a fortnight to me.

[Jeremy Cumberland]

Well, there is Google Ngram Viewer. With a bit of judicious picking of terms, it is easy to see that the US favours "freight". In Britain, things are more complicated. "Goods wagon" beats "freight wagon" hands down until about 1970. "Freight locomotive" started appearing in about 1890 and then kept not far behind "goods locomotive" before finally overtaking it in about 1920, since when it has remained more popular, sometimes vastly so.

 

However, none of these are common expressions, and the best results come from "goods train" and "freight train". In Britian, "goods train" was vastly more popular until the 1920s. "Freight train" overtook "goods train" in about 1945, rising to a peak in about 1955 before reaching parity again in the late 1960s and finally forging ahead again.

 

These are from all printed sources, not "railway official documentation, trade publications, and text books", but at least it doesn't take a fortnight to compile.

 

Here is the British English graph for "freight train" and "goods train": https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=freight+train%2Cgoods+train&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=29&smoothing=3

 

Here is the American English graph: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=freight+train%2Cgoods+train&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=28&smoothing=3

[Nearholmer]

Fascinating, and that British plot exactly bears out my understanding of the relative popularity of the two terms here.

 

What this doesn’t prove is my contention that the term was popularised here from the US, but I reckon that if you plotted over those graphs the British sales figures for McGraw-Hill technical publications (can Google find those too?) it might provide circumstantial evidence.

[The Stationmaster]

On 17/10/2021 at 15:47, Ian Smeeton said:

Coaches on the big railway unless they are Pullman Cars or sleeping cars.

Cars on LU

 

Wagons unless they are chauldron waggons, the only trucks are on the road, or bogies in the US

 

Goods and freight, there was an official GWR change, but you would have to ask @Stationmaster, or possibly @Station Master about that.

 

As you say Railway/Train station, I am definitely NOT going there!!

 

Regards

 

Ian

Officially, and generally, - in operational terms - 'goods trains' ceased to exist in the 1930s RCH reclassification of trains although the term hung on and some Companies used the newer term 'merchandise train' to describe the same but not as part of operating terminology.  As far as I can trace from original documents only the SR still officially used (in a 1935 publication) the term 'goods train' to describe the classification of a particular sort of freight train - the term was not used in GWR, LMSR, or LNER train classifications reissued during the mid 1930s.  

 

However in the everyday operating vernacular it lasted much longer although in some cases it was undoubtedly misapplied to trains which were very definitely not 'goods trains' (e.g perishables trains or cattle trains).   The term 'goods' remained in use for much longer as a commercial term as it applied to the classification, and charging, of numerous traffics and it didn't really go out of that usage until the late 1960s/'70s.

 

Like a lot of railway terminology words or phrases hung on everyday use long after they had been officially discontinued or altered.  For example the term 'Pilot Driver', or  even more importantly 'Pilotman' when applied to a Pilot Driver, had vanished from official use by the mid-late 1930s but was still being used in the vernacular, and sometimes even in writing, as late as the 1970s despite it being both ambiguous and potentially dangerously misleading.  The same could be said of the term 'pilot engine'  in relation to an engine attached to the front of a train in order to assist the train engine, which it appears was officially out of use - no doubt again because of the ambiguity - by the 1930s if not a little earlier.   More resilient was the term 'banker' applied to an engine assisting at the rear of a train although it too had officially passed out of use in the 1930s (if not earlier) but it subbornly hung on even in some official documentation - probably because it was more readily said and written instead of the longer official term.

 

One of the most common errors and a a very long lived survivor in that respect - even today among some who should know much better - is the misuse of the term 'fly shunting' which was universally altered in official documentation (where in some cases it had been misused, and was probably clarified at the behest of the RCH Rules Committee) as long ago as the late 1890s!