Just where did Private Owner wagons go?

[Boco_D1]

Hello,

I was recently given a pile of rail books among them was a particular interesting one for me 'Railway Nostalgia around Bedfordshire' by David Eatwell as Bedford is my old stomping grounds. The book is full wonderful pictures but the one I found most curious is a Photo taken from Sandy of a J3 working a freight, the first wagon in the train is owned by C.R.P of Swansea! The wagon is returning empty south where as the S.C owned wagon behind is full. So I assume that an order of welsh coal has been delivered to a town north of Sandy and the wagon is being returned to the mine. I am now wondering if I can widen my collection of wagons for my layout and not restricted myself to the geographical area (in this case East Anglia) So my question is this:

 

Was it quite common to see private owner wagons on lines you might not expect to see them on such as this example of a wagon owned by a company in South Wales served by the GWR to be running on LNER metals? I've been under the impression that if the wagon owner was in Norwich then that wagon would work between the Mine and Norwich in this case on a LNER route. Or is it the case that just because the Coal merchant who owns the wagon is based in Hungerford doesn't necessarily mean you will only see that wagon on the GWR? I am referring to pre-WWII before wagons where all pooled and ended up all over the shop.

 

Thanks for any advise on the subject.

Jimmy

 

 

 

 

 

 

[southern42]

I'm just learning about PO wagons (and post Nationalisation), myself but I have found this link quite a useful start along with info offered by other RMwebbers.

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/gansg/7-fops/007-index.htm#poops

 

I do hope this thread generates some excellent answers for you.

[jwealleans]

You don't say what year the photo was taken (I assume pre-1948 and most likely prewar). It's probably been a delivery of Anthracite, which was mined in South Wales. There are a number of ECML pictures showing welsh PO wagons heading back south - presumably they went to Ferme Park and then one of the cross-London trips to get back to the GW.

[jamie92208]

I am quite happy to be corrected but I think that most of the PO wagns were pooled during the war, apart from specialised ones such as tank wagons.   Ths any wagon could turn up anywhere.   There are pictures taken at Skipton showing PO wagons that wouldn't have got to that area.   I believe that these 'general user'wagons were taken into BR stock and were used until scrapped.  thus there are pictures of them after repair with odd planks that didn't get painted.   Many however survived as internal user wagons in collieries.

 

Jamie

[corneliuslundie]

Many of the collieries in the west Glamorgan area and west of that showed their address on their wagons as Swansea or Llanelly. Wagons from the anthracite coalfield could be seen anywhere as it was used for brewing and other activities where its low arsenic content (I think) was important. The initials C R P are not familiar to me though I haven't got all Keith Turton's more recent books. There were also regular flows from South Wales of bunker coal to other ports though I can't see this being on the ECML or this late. As well as London the GWR passed traffic to the LMS in the West Midlands (even if it was for London, sometimes) and there were also regular trains of coal from South Wales to Salisbury. The anthractite collieries tended to be small and short lived, though over the years they also tended to be swallowed up by two or three big groups such as AAC.

 

But if this is a photo after pooling then standard coal wagons could get anywhere.

[Fat Controller]

Many of the collieries in the west Glamorgan area and west of that showed their address on their wagons as Swansea or Llanelly. Wagons from the anthracite coalfield could be seen anywhere as it was used for brewing and other activities where its low arsenic content (I think) was important. The initials C R P are not familiar to me though I haven't got all Keith Turton's more recent books. There were also regular flows from South Wales of bunker coal to other ports though I can't see this being on the ECML or this late. As well as London the GWR passed traffic to the LMS in the West Midlands (even if it was for London, sometimes) and there were also regular trains of coal from South Wales to Salisbury. The anthractite collieries tended to be small and short lived, though over the years they also tended to be swallowed up by two or three big groups such as AAC.

 

But if this is a photo after pooling then standard coal wagons could get anywhere.

I think the attraction of anthracite was that it produces very little smoke; hence its popularity in the 'Smokeless Zones' after the advent of the Clean Air Act. I hadn't heard about the arsenic, though I wouldn't be surprised as bitumenous coal is a very dirty mix..

The main uses for anthracite prior to that were malting (hence flows to East Anglia) brewing and horticultural fuel (heating greenhouses). It was also used for something called 'suction gas', of which I confess I know nothing!

Pits tended to be small, and short-lived because the geological activity that converted ordinary coal to 'black diamonds' created myriad faults, often with very large 'throws'; there's a reason that some of the earliest work on correlating the Coal Measures was by an inhabitant of Llanelly (as it then was).

In later years, the majority of the pits were owned by Amalgamated Anthracite. Prior to that, there were firms like 'Trimsaran Anthracite', 'Pentremawr', 'Great Mountain', along with many smaller ones. Coal from smaller pits would often be sold to factors like Cory and Stephenson Clarke.

[Boco_D1]

Sorry chaps did forget the date it's 1937 and the wagon does indeed claim 'best anthracite, steam and house coals'. Thanks for the answers so far sounds like i'm not so limited on what I previously thought could go my layout.

 

The example of wagons going from GWR to LMS to get to London was that common? I understand that would have to happen for GWR served collieries produce to get to the midlands and that the southern is going to see wagons from other groups due to the south's lack of coal mines. But I do find that information interesting as that suggests to me that a wagon doesn't always travel on what would appear to be the most logical route.

 

I ask as another interesting photo I came across, again at Sandy is a coal train (possibly the same train as the date again is 1st May 1937) with a wagon owned by Ellis and Everard of Bedford. I bought a model of this wagon just because it was Bedford based but was pleasantly surprised to see it running on the ECML as I would have thought it would have traveled on the MML (as this route serves Bedford).

 

Several things I found unusual and which have made me rethink my understanding of freight workings is the train is apparently being held for a path to London, which would suggest that wagon will not be dropped off at Sandy to take the Cambridge to Oxford line (the shortest route) back to Bedford, so unless it is dropped off at Hitchin I assume the wagon will go up to London transfer over to the midland and travel down to Bedford. Now that seems an awful lot of extra miles and more surprising that the wagon wasn't transferred over to the midland further north and came up to Bedford.

 

I find this all very interesting and my main reason for asking is I wish to strengthen my coal trains but don't want to keep using the same Private owner wagons, there's only so many North Sea Coaling wagons you can have in a rake.

[jwealleans]

There are (let me stick my neck out here) three principal kinds of Private Owner wagon.
 

1. Wagons owned by small coal merchants.  These will work between the merchant's yard(s) and whatever colliery he is buying coal from.
2. Wagons owned by large collieries or groups of collieries.  These will work between any colliery in the group and wherever they have agreed to supply coal.  Manvers Main, Prince of Wales, Vauxhall off the top of my head.
3. Wagons owned by large coal factors.  Here I'm thinking of Stevenson Clarke, for example.  They would buy from collieries all over the country and supply to wherever their agents had sold to.  They supplied all loco coal for the LSWR, for example.  There are many similar companies or groups - JUDBUD, Rickett(s), MOY, Cornwall all spring to mind.

There are other smaller buying groups and organisations - almost any large organisation needed coal and might use or hire its own wagons to procure it.

 

A read through the Powsides website gives an idea of the vast array of different organisations involved in the trade less than a hundred years ago.

 

Edit - just reread the last post - there's no reason at all why you can't have an entire train of wagons belonging to the same owner.  I'd say it's more of a modelling challenge.  I'd also say that single wagons from many different owners are less prototypical than groups, larger or smaller, from a few.

[Fat Controller]

Was the Ellis and Everard wagon definitely carrying coal? I knew them as a speciality chemical firm, with quite a few depots around the country; one, IIRC, was at Stratford Market.

[Boco_D1]

Was the Ellis and Everard wagon definitely carrying coal? I knew them as a speciality chemical firm, with quite a few depots around the country; one, IIRC, was at Stratford Market.

The wagon is fully loaded in larger lumps compared to the other wagons the picture dosn't say if it is coal or not but looks like it to me (but suppose it would in black and white haha) So could be another produce. 

 

Edit - just reread the last post - there's no reason at all why you can't have an entire train of wagons belonging to the same owner.  I'd say it's more of a modelling challenge.  I'd also say that single wagons from many different owners are less prototypical than groups, larger or smaller, from a few.

Now that sounds like an interesting prospect (and a big renumbering job) but certainly food for thought on what you've told me.

[Fat Controller]

Mickey; yes, I discovered this subsequently, and at the same time discovered why my wood-burner goes 'whoosh' if I open the damper after it's been shut down for a while...

Boco;  from your description, it does sound like coal. I suspect E&E might have got into chemicals, like so many early firms, through their involvment in coal and coke. Apparently, they started off as coal and coke factors , possibly in Leicester. What I hadn't realised was that they also started Bardon Hill Quarry, which explains why they were (are?) also builder's merchants. The coal factor side of the business would explain a wagon apparently taking the long way round; it was probably bound for some third party's depot in London.

Jwelleans; A fourth category of private owners comes to mind; the leasing fleets of companies such as Charles Roberts. These might carry the owner's livery, or, if the lease was relatively long-term, that of the user, with a plate or lettering indicating ownership.

There were also large fleets , often of modern types, operated by large industrial users such as Stewarts and Lloyd, and utilities such as Electricity and Gas companies.

[corneliuslundie]

OK, by 1937 most of the anthracite collieries had been swallowed up by AAC, though new ones popped up and not all wagons were repainted immediately. Turton's book on the South Wales anthracite trade has a family tree of the anthracite companies. And as has been stated there were numerous coal factors whose wagons could be seen over a wide area. Some of the smaller South Wales collieries had never had many of their own wagons but used coal factors and shippers almost entirely, What you need to avoid is collieries which only shipped through the South Wales ports. Find out about the coal factors which operated in your area. I know there were three or four big ones but the only name that comes to mind is Moy. They often procured coal from all over the country for clients all over the country such as power stations, gas companies etc.

 

Regarding coal to London via Bordesley Junction, there is an article in Welsh Railways Archive Vol 5 no 3 about a complaint by the Blaaenmawr Colliery, Port Talbot that the the GWR required coal for Somers Town, Midland Railway, to be be labelled via Bordesley Junction..The route was Port Talbot, Cardiff Severn Tunnel Junction, Gloucester, Birmingham, Wigston (near Leicester), Wellingborough, Bedford, Luton and London. Basically, the issue was that both companies wanted to maximise its proportion of the mileage even if the total was greater, and of course going via the shortest route would also have involved a short distance over another company in London.  So normally all traffic between the GWR and MR was exchanged at Bordesley. This was pre-Grouping, but I think the same probably happened later, too.

 

If you want some light reading there are at least 22 books on private owner wagons!

 

Jonathan

[jamie92208]

Some chemical companies and certainly lime producers used to send their products out loaded in their own wagons thenh route the empties to a colliery to bring back coal used in their processes.  However most industrial coal, apart I think from furnace coke, would be quite small often between one and two inch diameter to suit automatic stokers and lime kiln feed holes.

 

Jamie

[jwealleans]

Somewhere on here, Adrian Marks posted a very useful piece based on the fact that he'd spotted a quite unusual PO wagon somewhere in East Anglia, then found that there was some kind of commercial relationship between the owner and the owner of the yard where it was spotted.  So there is the scope for 'foreign' wagons in unusual places.

[Boco_D1]

Somewhere on here, Adrian Marks posted a very useful piece based on the fact that he'd spotted a quite unusual PO wagon somewhere in East Anglia, then found that there was some kind of commercial relationship between the owner and the owner of the yard where it was spotted.  So there is the scope for 'foreign' wagons in unusual places.

I'll have to look for that, it sounds right up my street.

 

Again guys thanks for these brilliant answers to my questions.

[Invicta]

 

Boco;  from your description, it does sound like coal. I suspect E&E might have got into chemicals, like so many early firms, through their involvment in coal and coke. Apparently, they started off as coal and coke factors , possibly in Leicester. What I hadn't realised was that they also started Bardon Hill Quarry, which explains why they were (are?) also builder's merchants. The coal factor side of the business would explain a wagon apparently taking the long way round; it was probably bound for some third party's depot in London.

.

 

Ellis & Everard's business interests were pretty widespread- As you say, they started as coal and coke factors in Leicester, founded in the late 1840s by Joseph Ellis and Breedon Everard, who both farmed near Leicester and had worked on land valuation for the Midland Counties Railway- Ellis was already trading in coal through his company Joseph Ellis & Sons. Ellis & Everard set up coal and lime depots at a number of stations on the Syston-Peterborough line, and the business grew from there.

 

Both Joseph Ellis & Sons and Ellis & Everard continued to trade as separate companies, the two not being merged until the 1960s. E & E concentrated on the East & South of Leicestershire, expanding into Northants, Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire, Lincolnshire etc, while Joseph Ellis and Sons were mainly active in the West of the county and out into Warwickshire. (Incidentally, the tearoom at Rothley on the GCR is a former Joseph Ellis depot). Neither traded in coal in the city of Leicester, which was the domain of Ellis' brother John through his company John Ellis & Sons

 

From a handy book on the Ellis family 'Ellis of Leicester, a Quaker Family's Vocation', by Andrew Moore (Laurel House, 2003):

 

'The main commodity sold was coal....Other items were soon offered, mostly building materials and agricultural items, much the same as the outlets of Joseph Ellis & Sons, and very often the price lists and catalogues were shared.....One commodity that Ellis & Everard sold in large quantities was granite. This came from their own quarry at Bardon Hill, and sold very well for road-making, particularly in East Anglia. Timber was another important line at some depots, and eventually a lime-spreading service was offered. From a warehouse near Wisbech docks, certain imported items like French slates and American and continental cattle feed were distributed. Other animal feeds were made at their own larger depots and artificial fertilizers were purchased from Joseph Ellis' 'Sparkenhoe' works'

 

Both Ellis and Everard, the Bardon Hill quarry and Joseph Ellis & Sons all operated PO wagon fleets- by the Grouping, Ellis & Everard owned about 230 wagons with a further 140 hired. .

[The Bigbee Line]

I remember reading somewhere that wooden coal wagons ended their days in 'LOCO COAL' service.  Is that correct or just something I imagined?? 

[Fat Controller]

I remember reading somewhere that wooden coal wagons ended their days in 'LOCO COAL' service.  Is that correct or just something I imagined??

A lot of them did, then becoming fire-lighting material themselves. As a young child, I remember lines of them around the old Llanelly engine shed, lettered with things like 'Loco Coal- one journey only'

[philip-griffiths]

A lot of Welsh coal reached LNER metals via the Banbury - GCR link. There was substantial trade across this link of Welsh coal. There is photographic evidence of the Welsh sourced wagons at ports such as Immingham - Tredegar wagons. As said elsewhere the use of Welsh coal for shipping was common. Though the Tredegar wagons could have come out of South Wales via the LMS as well as the GWR.

 

The Bedfordshire area may have been a good market for Welsh coal for the brickworks.

 

Regards.

[wagonman]

A lot of Welsh coal reached LNER metals via the Banbury - GCR link. There was substantial trade across this link of Welsh coal. There is photographic evidence of the Welsh sourced wagons at ports such as Immingham - Tredegar wagons. As said elsewhere the use of Welsh coal for shipping was common. Though the Tredegar wagons could have come out of South Wales via the LMS as well as the GWR.

 

The Bedfordshire area may have been a good market for Welsh coal for the brickworks.

 

Regards.

 

The Tredegar pits produced steam coal which could have been used for bunkering ships at ports like Immingham. 

[Buckjumper]

Somewhere on here, Adrian Marks posted a very useful piece based on the fact that he'd spotted a quite unusual PO wagon somewhere in East Anglia, then found that there was some kind of commercial relationship between the owner and the owner of the yard where it was spotted.  So there is the scope for 'foreign' wagons in unusual places.

 

Sorry - It's taken a year to stumble onto this. However, the place was Standon, Herts, and the wagon from Exhall, Coventry, and my post can be found here:

 

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/58892-pre-grouping-brake-vans/&do=findComment&comment=736040

[peach james]

Bunker fuel

 

"

A bonus on the coal I save? Ou ay, the Scots are close,
But when I grudge the strength Ye gave I'll grudge their food to those.
(There's bricks that I might recommend - an' clink the fire-bars cruel.
No! Welsh-Wangarti at the worst - an' damn all patent fuel!)

"

 

http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poems_mcandrew.htm

 

James

[chrisf]

"I was recently given a pile of rail books among them was a particular interesting one for me 'Railway Nostalgia around Bedfordshire' by David Eatwell as Bedford is my old stomping grounds."

 

Boco, we may well have met as I have stomped/lived in Bedford since 1970.

 

In case you had not heard, David Eatwell passed away last month aged 84.  To describe him as a character is to desperately understate.

 

Chris

[unclebobkt]

       ... .

  The example of wagons going from GWR to LMS to get to London was that common? I understand that would have to happen for GWR served collieries produce to get to the midlands and that the southern is going to see wagons from other groups due to the south's lack of coal mines. But I do find that information interesting as that suggests to me that a wagon doesn't always travel on what would appear to be the most logical route.

   ... .

 

 

       But aren't /weren't there coal-mines in Kent, or was their coal of limited suitability?

 

       

[Fat Controller]

But aren't /weren't there coal-mines in Kent, or was their coal of limited suitability?

 

       

There were a handful of coal mines in Kent, the last closing after the miners' strike of the 1980s. They produced high-quality coking coal, which in later years went to coking plants in the North Midlands and North-East (using stock which would otherwise have run empty after bringing down industrial coal to APCM Northfleet and Bowater's plant at Sittingbourne). I don't know if this practice existed in earlier times. Coal was at one point sent from some pits to a loading point at Dover Harbour via a bucket-way from the cliffs above; I wonder where this went to?

Regarding where old wooden-bodied wagons ended their days; in the village we used to live in in the North-East, many garden structures (such as our hen-shed) contained recognisable pieces of wagon-timbering.