Big four era - moving wagons from other companies

[Compound2632]

12 minutes ago, Aire Head said:

I'd expect that as new wagons were introduced to the CU pool the older knackered ones would be taken out by the owning company where they would then be used or scrapped as required.

 

Rather, old wagons were withdrawn generally, replaced by new ones. I very much doubt there was a non-pool stage for older wagons.

 

16 minutes ago, Aire Head said:

I think @Compound2632 shared a photo a while back of a number of pre-grouping merchandise wagons which were being used for Limestone Traffic. At a guess they could have been retired from merchandise service having been replaced by newer wagons.

 

I don't remember that. I can imagine (note speculative diction) that once a wagon was in a limestone traffic circuit it might stay there but I don't think its age would have been a particular factor. Remember that c. 1930, the majority of railway-company owned wagons were of pre-Grouping origin. The LMS had nearly 304,000 wagons at grouping; it built 66,000 open merchandise wagons 1923-1930, replacing just over 20% of the fleet; no other types were built in such very large quantities. 

[Nearholmer]

12 hours ago, Wickham Green too said:

The Southern had a number of elderly wagons dedicated to - and boarded for - 'Tarred Stone Only' traffic ............ could some be the wagons at Lydd ? - certainly not common user due to the risk certainty of contamination !

I’ve often wondered how tarred stone was got out of wagons and transported for final use, because it is hellish sticky stuff, and really difficult to manipulate in cold weather. Road gangs used to use forks, a bit like ballast forks, but emptying an entire wagon like that, sheesh!!

 

We went into this a bit in another thread, but in Kent and Sussex tarred stone seems only to have been used on major highways. The usual “dressing” on other roads was pea shingle onto sprayed tar, and latterly hard stone gravel onto sprayed tar, right up to the 1979s. Both bl@@dy awful surfaces, the former especially likely cause to cyclists and motorcyclists to come a cropper, the latter guaranteed to shred your flesh and leave embedded stones if you did. How do I know this? Guess.

 

I don’t think there was a tarring plant at Lydd or Dungeness; the rail-connected ones are identifiable from the Sectional Appendix.

 

BTW, Britain from Above seems still to be in a bad mood, so I can’t test my original hypothesis about a preponderance of SR wagons, which is very frustrating!

 

 

[TheQ]

27 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

I’ve often wondered how tarred stone was got out of wagons and transported for final use, because it is hellish sticky stuff, and really difficult to manipulate in cold weather. Road gangs used to use forks, a bit like ballast forks, but emptying an entire wagon like that, sheesh!!

 

We went into this a bit in another thread, but in Kent and Sussex tarred stone seems only to have been used on major highways. The usual “dressing” on other roads was pea shingle onto sprayed tar, and latterly hard stone gravel onto sprayed tar, right up to the 1979s. Both bl@@dy awful surfaces, the former especially likely cause to cyclists and motorcyclists to come a cropper, the latter guaranteed to shred your flesh and leave embedded stones if you did. How do I know this? Guess.

 

 

 

 

up to the 1979s?

It's still in use now, I've not a seen  many proper remove the surface and replace road reconditions, all most all  are given surface dressing, granite chippings spread onto wet tar.. and if you get a hot day shortly after it's all over everyone's cars...

 

mean while wagons could get everywhere, in a book I have of Inverness station about the time of the grouping  there is a picture of the freight yard,  A high proportion of the opens were GWR and North British.. I'm guessing for the fish traffic..

 

[The Stationmaster]

On 19/12/2021 at 20:17, Aire Head said:

I think we might be getting slightly away from the original question and it may get a bit confusing .

 

 

This would be extremely common, nearly half of all wagons in existence at this period belonged to the LMS and they travelled widely.

 

 

The wagon would be shunted into other companies train.

 

For example we have a load of carpets being sent from a mill town somewhere on the North of England to a town in Cornwall.

 

The Carpets are loaded into a vehicle at the Goods Yard of the dispatching station. Let's say that in this case the station is in LMS territory and one of their wagons is used.

 

This wagon is then worked towards its destination from marshalling yard to marshalling yard. Eventually it reaches the GWR where this process continues until it reaches its destination where it is then unloaded.

 

What happens next depends on a number of factors.

 

If the wagon is common user the GWR is free to use it as though it was their own wagon. Preferably it can be loaded with a new load at its current location and sent on its way (This could be to a Destination on any of the Big fours lines). If a load isn't available but the wagon is required elsewhere the GWR are free to move this wagon to wherever it is required next.

 

If the wagon is non common user the GWR must return the wagon to the owning company (the LMS in this case) as soon as possible. Again if possible the wagon will be returned to the LMS loaded (it's more economical and therefore more profitable) if this isn't possible it will be relayed back from marshalling yard to marshalling yard until it reaches LMS territory (sometimes an opportunity to load the wagon is found en-route).

 

This is a rather simplified version of events and requirements but should hopefully give you a basic idea of how this aspect of operations worked.

 

To which you need to add that normally vehicles interchanged between Companies went at some point through a 'boundary' yard or siding where an RCH Numbertaker (and quite likely a Company Numbertaker as well) recorded the details of all wagons 'crossing the border.  For example at Oxford there was double ended siding at Oxford North called 'the exchange' and it was origibnally the sifding through which vehicles were exchanged between the GWR and LNWR and vice versa.  This obviously became inadequate and by the inter-war years excghange took place at the marshalling sidings at Yarnton Jcn - north of Oxford on the OWW route - and then finally via the new yard at Hinksey, south of Oxford.

 

Using the records of interchange allowed for the 'balancing' of common user wagons between Companies and the important element of payment plus of course it enabled tracking of non pooled wagons.

[kevinlms]

On 20/12/2021 at 02:35, Aire Head said:

 

Non-common user stock would still travel in foreign company trains however it had to be returned to its owners as quickly as possible once it had been unloaded.

 

 

True they had to return the wagon as soon as practical, but it could be loaded, IF the load was going to it's parent company. No rules generally existed to return the wagon empty, unless it was labelled for a specific traffic circuit.

 

The wagon could AIUI, be given back anywhere on the parent system and not necessarily the same location. If for an extreme example, the LMS handed a wagon over to the LNER in Glasgow, the LNER could in theory hand it back in London somewhere convenient to them. As long as it was on LMS territory, it had been handed back!

[kevinlms]

3 hours ago, Aire Head said:

 

I'd expect that as new wagons were introduced to the CU pool the older knackered ones would be taken out by the owning company where they would then be used or scrapped as required.

 

I suspect they had enough trouble with potentially dodgy P.O. wagons, without having their own roaming the countryside.

Repair or scrap!

[Compound2632]

52 minutes ago, kevinlms said:

The wagon could AIUI, be given back anywhere on the parent system and not necessarily the same location. If for an extreme example, the LMS handed a wagon over to the LNER in Glasgow, the LNER could in theory hand it back in London somewhere convenient to them. As long as it was on LMS territory, it had been handed back!

 

That was not the case in pre-grouping, pre-pooling days. A wagon had to be returned by the route it had arrived by:

 

 

[Embedded link to catalogue image of Midland Railway Study Centre Item 14194].

 

When did the rules change, for non-pool wagons?

[Compound2632]

52 minutes ago, kevinlms said:

I suspect they had enough trouble with potentially dodgy P.O. wagons, without having their own roaming the countryside.

 

It's an anachronism to suppose that PO wagons were more poorly-maintained than company-owned wagons, at least in the period between the establishment of the RCH system of inspection and registration in 1887 and the second world war.

[rodent279]

 

On 21/12/2021 at 13:22, The Stationmaster said:

To which you need to add that normally vehicles interchanged between Companies went at some point through a 'boundary' yard or siding where an RCH Numbertaker (and quite likely a Company Numbertaker as well) recorded the details of all wagons 'crossing the border.  For example at Oxford there was double ended siding at Oxford North called 'the exchange' and it was origibnally the sifding through which vehicles were exchanged between the GWR and LNWR and vice versa.  This obviously became inadequate and by the inter-war years excghange took place at the marshalling sidings at Yarnton Jcn - north of Oxford on the OWW route - and then finally via the new yard at Hinksey, south of Oxford.

 

Using the records of interchange allowed for the 'balancing' of common user wagons between Companies and the important element of payment plus of course it enabled tracking of non pooled wagons.

So how, in those days, would you find out where a wagon was? Let's say someone on the LMS wanted to know where their wagon that was loaded with carpets for Cornwall was? How would they find out, and how long would it take?

[Nearholmer]

My guess is that there was a clerk, deep within the Railway Clearing House, who might be able to find it for them.

 

 

[bécasse]

Wagons did get "lost" but in the main got redirected to their proper destination. If a wagon with an important load failed to arrive, details would, in due course, be included in a circular asking that each station/yard looked for it.

 

incidentally, you would be surprised at the number of wagons with different painted numbers on each side that the implementation of the TOPS project in the early 1970s threw up.

[Compound2632]

54 minutes ago, bécasse said:

Wagons did get "lost" but in the main got redirected to their proper destination. If a wagon with an important load failed to arrive, details would, in due course, be included in a circular asking that each station/yard looked for it.

 

Any load, since compensation would be payable. There were standard forms, of course (search the Midland Railway Study Centre catalogue on "missing" in the category "Goods Department document"). There were also forms for informing another company if you had any of their cripples on hand and forms for obtaining authorisation for, and charging for, repairs to PO wagons - I don't know if these were also used for foreign wagons. 

 

I can't find it in the catalogue just now but reproduced in one of the last numbers of Midland Record was a Great Western circular from shortly before the grouping, giving the numbers of a hundred Midland open wagons that company would like back, please. (My theory is that these were wagons due for withdrawal and replacement.)

 

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

My guess is that there was a clerk, deep within the Railway Clearing House, who might be able to find it for them.

 

Several dozen, I should think.

[rodent279]

So if the LMS sent their wagon on its way to Cornwall on say Monday, it would perhaps arrive on Weds?

Let's say by Friday they want to know where it is-could it be another week or so before they found out?

At which point it could be who knows where?

[jim.snowdon]

2 hours ago, bécasse said:

incidentally, you would be surprised at the number of wagons with different painted numbers on each side that the implementation of the TOPS project in the early 1970s threw up.

Certain railways, amongst them the Metropolitan, believed in only putting painted numbers on their wagons with the result that as their condition deteriorated, wagons would get 'lost' due to the number being illegible. Circulars then had to be sent out to stations to report which wagons they thought they had in an attempt to reconcile the records. Strangely, most Met. wagons had cast plates to indicate the permitted tonnage, which makes the absence of cast number plates all the stranger.

 

[jim.snowdon]

9 minutes ago, rodent279 said:

So if the LMS sent their wagon on its way to Cornwall on say Monday, it would perhaps arrive on Weds?

Let's say by Friday they want to know where it is-could it be another week or so before they found out?

At which point it could be who knows where?

And that is just within one relatively small country. Imagine how it worked in Europe before computers, or how it works even now in the US, where wagons from umpteen companies travelled an entire continent.

 

[Nearholmer]

I can’t imagine the LMS cared much. It put a wagon into the system on a “fire and forget” basis, then forgot about it, unless or until the person waiting for carpets began to pester the supplier, at which point a hunt might begin, after duly waiting for a week to “see if it might turn up”. No different from posting something second class nowadays, really. 

The wagon itself wasn’t an issue, because they could draw from the pool when they needed another.
 

There were multiple premium services, what we’d call “tracked, next day”, for consignments that were valuable/urgent, and where the extra cost could be borne.

 

 

 

 

[Compound2632]

Just now, rodent279 said:

So if the LMS sent their wagon on its way to Cornwall on say Monday, it would perhaps arrive on Weds?

Let's say by Friday they want to know where it is-could it be another week or so before they found out?

At which point it could be who knows where?

 

If it was an ordinary open, so, in the pool, there would be a paper trail. The important thing would be to know that the consignment had arrived - that's where the RCH really came into play, assigning the charge the LMS had made to the sender between the two companies on a mileage basis. The thing to remember is that the wagon the LMS used for the consignment could be a pooled wagon from any of the big four and the GWR could use it to ship goods to, say, an SR destination, without informing the LMS. 

 

However, as @The Stationmaster said, the numbertakers at the exchange sidings between each company would have provided the data for a record of the wagons (of whatever company) that had crossed each frontier point. I'm far from clear what then happened but I imagine that if the GWR, for example, found that there was a net flow of its wagons off its system, some remedial action might be requested. I think that in the pre-pooling era (and for specials thereafter) there must have been a system for charging hire when a wagon was off its parent system, since it was effectively being used to generate revenue for the company over whose metals it was passing. (Quite apart from demurrage charges.) Pooling got round this, much as joint stock carriages did for through passenger services. This is an area I don't really know as much about as I'd like to.

[Nearholmer]

I always tell this tale when this topic comes up, so please forgive me if you’ve heard it before, but at some point in the 1970s a van was found on a bit of isolated and weed-grown track, I think at Eastleigh. It had been there, mouldering for years, nobody taking any notice, and now the track was to be cleared and new sidings laid. It was found to contain a cargo of utility furniture, consigned in the late 1940s.

[Compound2632]

4 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

I always tell this tale when this topic comes up, so please forgive me if you’ve heard it before, but at some point in the 1970s a van was found on a bit of isolated and weed-grown track, I think at Eastleigh. It had been there, mouldering for years, nobody taking any notice, and now the track was to be cleared and new sidings laid. It was found to contain a cargo of utility furniture, consigned in the late 1940s.

 

But that's an exception that demonstrates that almost all the time the system worked. You've only got that one example, from a period when the railways were under their greatest stress. The railways were not littered with abandoned wagons full of undelivered goods.

 

As a counter example, also under conditions of extreme stress, consider the wagon, SR No. 29416, that caught fire causing the Soham disaster. A "careful and laborious search of station records" revealed its previous movements, back to the cargo of sulphur to Luton four weeks earlier, the residue of of which may or may not have contributed to the wagon catching fire.

[Nearholmer]

It wasn’t intended to prove that the railways lost wagons left, right and centre, merely as an amusing anecdote. IIRC, it made it as a story in ‘Rail News’.

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

It wasn’t intended to prove that the railways lost wagons left, right and centre, merely as an amusing anecdote. IIRC, it made it as a story in ‘Rail News’.

 

No indeed; the whole point is that it proves the opposite. It was news, therefore by definition unusual.

[TravisM]

Years ago I was given a formula by a friend, sadly deceased, regarding the makeup of wagons in a freight train prior to 1948.  It would be the home railway, neighbouring railway or railways and private owner wagons, so if we take the GWR for example, it was basically;

 

GWR 50%

Southern 20%

LMS 20%

PO Wagons 10%

 

I’m not saying that it’s correct but when he ran his freight trains, they always kind of looked right.

 

 

[Compound2632]

13 minutes ago, jools1959 said:

I’m not saying that it’s correct but when he ran his freight trains, they always kind of looked right.

 

It's rot, I'm afraid. Your friend clearly had not grasped the implications of pooling. They always looked right? Right compared to what?

 

Some time back on another thread someone commented that pre-grouping (i.e. pre-Great War) modelling was dull because all the wagons would be the same, from the home company; no variety. Whoever that was had understood pooling!

Edited December 23, 2021 by Compound2632

[The Stationmaster]

Basically prior to TOPS (although ATI allowed it to a very limited extent) there wasn't any record of where a wagon happened to be on its journey after 100% invoicing had been abolished, and even with invoicing it woud still have been difficult as the only way it could be traced was going through teh invoices for every train it had travelled on.   Normally if you were interested in a particular and knew where it was supposed to be going somebody would wire the destination and ask them to l advise when it arrived (and in some cases that was required anyway.

 

But no doubt the traffic circulars of the Grouped era weren't much different from those of the 1960s where each weekly General Circular contained a list of missing wagons and another list of wagons on hand without labels (but loaded of course).  Terminals always kept an inwards (received) wagon book for loaded wagons as that information was needed for raising siding rent or demurrage so stations knew what loaded wagons they had received and when they arrived.  There would also be some information on outwards (loaded) wagons as well as that too was needed for charging - and that would have been 100% in the days when all wagons were invoiced.   But what happened in between despatch and receipt was generally not recorded by vehicle number except at Company boundary locations.

 

Incidentally I understand that at one time the RCH had several hundred clerks dealing with inter-Company wagon movements as there were charges there as well (I might find some in the freight accountancy rules?)

[rodent279]

So if a loaded wagon turned up somewhere without a label, how did they find out what is was, and who/where it was destined for?