Midland Railway Company

[Compound2632]

Indeed, as @Dave Hunt says. I was merely suggesting that the size of the outstation shops was a further contributory factor. 

[Crimson Rambler]

One aspect of Midland operation that maybe has not received the attention it warrants is the company's policy for having extensive separate goods and passenger lines. Connected with this was its practice of widening existing lines.

 

Attached are two extracts of a proposal to sextuple the lines out of London - between Hendon and St Albans. The date I seem to recall is 1912 but I have currently mislaid the other half of the drawing. This incidentally is a scanned portion of an OPC micro print. For background Elstree was my local station as a youngster. 

 

 

 

 

A willingness or even perhaps a preference by the board to invest in infrastructure rather than in larger locomotives in order to increase line capacity is another influence that has perhaps not been considered.

 

The London Extension opened in 1868, was originally two-track, by the late 1890s it was four-track throughout and some way beyond. Indeed at one time this portion of the Midland comprised around 75 miles of continuous four-track - the longest such length in the world. Yet these extracts suggest in the years before the Kaiser's War the Midland was actively considering adding another pair of lines - I suspect they were to be for goods.

 

It is perhaps not incidental that the date of this drawing coincides with the last years of Mountford Deeley/ first years of Harry Fowler which also mark the start of the period when many enthusiasts consider Midland locomotive development ceased.

 

 

Crimson Rambler 

Edited May 22, 2021 by Crimson Rambler
Omission of text in italics

[Tom Burnham]

On the passenger side, I always understood the Midland had a policy of shorter but more frequent trains. Before Cecil Paget's control system came in for goods and mineral traffic it was claimed that a crew could take over a train and book off at the end of their shift without turning a wheel. I guess that when the existing lines were used to run trains rather than park them, it was found that fewer relief lines were needed?

[jamie92208]

In the planning for the West Riding Lines the Midland managed a ruling gradient of 1 in 200 through the same countryside where the LNWR went for 1 in 70 and double heading continued to be mandatory till the end of steam.  Thus saving running expensed.

 

Jamie

[bill-lobb]

23 hours ago, Dave Hunt said:

The last two subjects discussed, Midland engine size and locomotive repair systems, are both quite complex and ones about which I have written at some length in various books and magazines. Without taking a great many pages of this forum, the main reasons for the Midland's so-called 'small engine policy' were weakness of short-span girder bridges, relatively short lie-by sidings, the 1906 traffic control system, and the capital cost of large locomotives that may spend a significant proportion of their time working below capacity versus smaller engines that could be worked in pairs when required. The latter reflected the relative cost of machinery compared with wages. There are, of course, many and varied arguments for and against the Midland's way of working that could, and indeed have, filled many volumes but whatever a present day enthusiast's opinions, the important thing is that the Midland board chose, in the light of the evidence presented to it, the path that we all know. That it was a reasonable way of doing business is shown by the fact that the proportion of its income absorbed in running costs was the best of all the major British railway companies in the years leading up to the Great War with the exception of one year (1911 from memory) when the L&SWR was slightly better. The fact that the great insanity of 1914 - 1918 then skewed the factors involved could not have been foreseen in the early years of the 20th century.

 

As far as the adoption by the LMS of the progressive repair system whereby locomotives were serviced according to pre-planned criteria, unless unforeseen failures occurred, was something that could only be implemented by centralising repairs, with the exception of minor tasks, at main works due to the capacity and equipment state required. Thus it wasn't simply the cost of modernising outstations that was problematic but the fact that in order to effect the progressive system, which as stated in a previous post hereowed much to American practice, the capacity of those sites was insufficient. The reason for the change from the somewhat ad hoc systems that had prevailed pre- grouping was the high percentage of locomotives that were out of traffic at any one time but rather than being attended to and put back into traffic quickly, spent an inordinate amount of time parked in works sidings waiting for attention.

 

As I stated at the beginning, both of these subjects are complex and what I have just written is very sketchy but I hope puts a few things in perspective.

 

Dave

 

I have a bound copy of "The Locomotive Journal" published by ASLEF for the years 1906 - 1907. In it  one F W Brewer wrote a monthly article on locomotive matters. He decried building large locomotives on the basis that it was inefficient to build expensive locomotives that then spent much time working at less than full capacity. If that was the Midland board's view it would seem they were not entirely alone.

 

Bill

Edited May 22, 2021 by bill-lobb

[Winander]

I wrote to the HMRS to question the validity of a drawing they listed as a class 1577. They have now confirmed it is a class 1377 half cab and it has been digitised:

 

0-6-0 Tank Locomotive with 4ft-6½in dia. Coupled Wheels (Class: 1377) - General Arrangement (Midland Derby Drg. 91-3628)

 

Prices are as follows:

 

Digital Image (tiff, jpeg or pdf): £10.00 per image

 

Paper images are:

 

A2 Size £14.00

 

A1 Size £16.50

 

A0 Size: £25.00

[Crimson Rambler]

A small point if I may, general arrangement drawing 91-3628 specifically concerns the batch of 0-6-0Ts Nos 1993-2012 (later 1825-1844) and referred to as the Class N, whereas the GA for the 1377 class is 78-1055. The clue is the prefix - it is the last two digits of the year in which the drawing was made i.e. 1891 for the Class N.

 

Two immediate visual differences between the classes are the differing frame profiles and the absence of clack valves on the barrel, but being Midland there are others e.g. low cabs and boiler mountings etc. A photograph(s) of your chosen engine in the period being modelling is/are essential when attempting to model Midland engines!

 

 

As it happens I am currently part way through building a S7 Class N.

 

 

Crimson Rambler

 

 

[Dave Hunt]

3 minutes ago, Crimson Rambler said:

A photograph(s) of your chosen engine in the period being modelling is/are essential when attempting to model Midland engines!

 

An excellent point, Adrian. In every book I have written about Midland and LMS locomotives I have included just such a warning and have yet to make a model where I have not found some difference, albeit often quite small, from the available drawing(s) revealed in photographs. The late, great, David Tee once said to me that the only standard thing about locomotives from a particular Class was that they were nearly all different in some way.

 

Dave

[Holmesfeldian]

Posted on Social media - it may interest the carriage modellers.

Caption was : "Sarah Bernardt, St. Pancras Station, London, 1894"

[Compound2632]

That's a photo taken by the Midland's official photographer on 28 July 1894, DY 610 [in that link, released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) licence by the National Railway Museum; the Midland Railway Study Centre has a mounted print, item 88-2018-0049]. Her party is standing in front of a 40 ft bogie family carriage, one of six built to Lot 7 in 1879 - the last of the carriages built with Claytons first type of clerestory roof. Excellent sharp details of the carriage, if not of the dogs. Note the type of oil lamps in use by the 1890s - an advance on the early type with a simple perforated cylindrical housing but sitting in the original holes; also the bungs that would sit in the holes when the lamps were removed, currently sitting in the four-legged mounts provided for the purpose.

 

 

[Dave Hunt]

It has been said that Ms Bernhardt was a great fan of the Midland and would insist on travelling on its trains wherever possible. What a sensible lady!

 

Dave

[Compound2632]

2 minutes ago, Dave Hunt said:

It has been said that Ms Bernhardt was a great fan of the Midland and would insist on travelling on its trains wherever possible. What a sensible lady!

 

I'm not sure where I read this but I gather the Midland was popular with touring theatrical companies since it served nearly all the provincial towns and cities that had major theatres.

 

This is also from the mid-1890s, captioned The Gaity Girl Co.:

 

 

[NRM DY 1956, released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) licence by the National Railway Museum.] George Edwardes' musical A Gaiety Girl opened in the West End in 1893 and went on tour the following year - it's not quite clear if there was a provincial tour before the international tour undertaken in 1894; this might be the boat train special. Their theatrical special is clearly a long one, extending beyond the end of platform 4. The clerestory carriages are one of the Midland & South Western* Joint Stock 60ft twelve-wheel dining carriage pairs built in 1893; there were in fact two pairs and a third third, that ran with the prototype Midland first class dining carriage No. 359. Two pairs were in use on the afternoon Glasgow Scotch expresses (1:30pm from St Pancras and from St Enoch), so this will be the spare pair on the day.

 

*G&SW that is, not L&SW!

 

Here's a later theatrical special, posed at Spondon Junction on 3 April 1910. 

 

 

[NRM DY 9254, released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) licence by the National Railway Museum.] The caption in Midland Railway Carriages (Vol. 2 Fig. 577) states that this is for another George Edwardes production, The Dollar Princess, and identifies the vehicles as D431 open scenery truck dating from 1899 or 1904, a D408 open carriage truck, the one-off D405 bogie theatrical scenery van (nominally a covered carriage truck) No. 128 built in 1906, three 54 ft Bain clerestories, and a D530 6-wheel clerestory brake.

[Compound2632]

A completely different question: various photos of new rolling stock taken at Litchurch Lane works, for example one of a line of LMS-lettered cattle wagons, Midland Wagons Vol. 2 Plate 254, have in their background a hip-roofed two-storey office building which I think backs onto London Road. Was this the C&W Drawing Office? 

[Compound2632]

At the Study Centre yesterday:

 

[Tricky]

Can I ask what the likely colour scheme would have been for these doors? They are the inside faces of engine shed doors, as they would have appeared C1907? Many thanks. 
 

[jamie92208]

13 minutes ago, Tricky said:

Can I ask what the likely colour scheme would have been for these doors? They are the inside faces of engine shed doors, as they would have appeared C1907? Many thanks. 
 

They look very good.  Inwould suggest black.

 

Jamie

[Compound2632]

6 minutes ago, Tricky said:

Can I ask what the likely colour scheme would have been for these doors? They are the inside faces of engine shed doors, as they would have appeared C1907? Many thanks. 

 

A couple of photos of Sheffield Millhouses shed (opened 1901), one showing engines with Deeley front ends, the other probably  1905-7 (2-4-0 No. 1521 - pre-1907 number - in large digits on the tender and new coat-of-arms on the trailing splasher) show the insides of doors with the framing a dark shade and the vertical boarding light, which I would interpret as the standard Denby pottery cream and Venetian red structure colours. [C. Hawkins & G. Reeve, LMS Engine Sheds Vol. 2 (Wild Swan, 1981) p. 20 and p. 155.]

[PenrithBeacon]

On 15/06/2021 at 10:20, Compound2632 said:

 

I'm not sure where I read this but I gather the Midland was popular with touring theatrical companies since it served nearly all the provincial towns and cities that had major theatres.

 

This is also from the mid-1890s, captioned The Gaity Girl Co.:

 

 

[NRM DY 1956, released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) licence by the National Railway Museum.] George Edwardes' musical A Gaiety Girl opened in the West End in 1893 and went on tour the following year - it's not quite clear if there was a provincial tour before the international tour undertaken in 1894; this might be the boat train special. Their theatrical special is clearly a long one, extending beyond the end of platform 4. The clerestory carriages are one of the Midland & South Western* Joint Stock 60ft twelve-wheel dining carriage pairs built in 1893; there were in fact two pairs and a third third, that ran with the prototype Midland first class dining carriage No. 359. Two pairs were in use on the afternoon Glasgow Scotch expresses (1:30pm from St Pancras and from St Enoch), so this will be the spare pair on the day.

 

*G&SW that is, not L&SW!

 

Here's a later theatrical special, posed at Spondon Junction on 3 April 1910. 

 

 

[NRM DY 9254, released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) licence by the National Railway Museum.] The caption in Midland Railway Carriages (Vol. 2 Fig. 577) states that this is for another George Edwardes production, The Dollar Princess, and identifies the vehicles as D431 open scenery truck dating from 1899 or 1904, a D408 open carriage truck, the one-off D405 bogie theatrical scenery van (nominally a covered carriage truck) No. 128 built in 1906, three 54 ft Bain clerestories, and a D530 6-wheel clerestory brake.

The locomotive has a a Deeley smokebox door but has retained its Johnson chimney and the photo couldn't have been taken before 1906. Interesting!

[Compound2632]

Just now, PenrithBeacon said:

The locomotive has a a Deeley smokebox door but has retained its Johnson chimney and the photo couldn't have been taken before 1906. Interesting!

 

I think its the early type of flat Deeley door rather than the later standard dished door, but I'll leave it to our locomotive experts to probe further.

 

One has to feel sorry for Deeley, whose reputation has been dogged by his smokebox door design...

[Crimson Rambler]

I think David Hunt has discussed the painting of engine shed doors earlier in this forum.

 

 

Crimson Rambler

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, Crimson Rambler said:

I think David Hunt has discussed the painting of engine shed doors earlier in this forum.

 

Looking back, I think that was doors in general - also in response to a question from @Tricky and arriving at the same answer. But I may have missed a post.

[Crimson Rambler]

Certainly I can say that @David Hunt and I have discussed it in the recent past - I suggest @Tricky contacts David via a pm.

 

 

Crimson Rambler

[Compound2632]

4 minutes ago, Crimson Rambler said:

Certainly I can say that @David Hunt and I have discussed it in the recent past - I suggest @Tricky contacts David via a pm.

 

Yes, but can you two trump the primary evidence from the Millhouses photos?

[Crimson Rambler]

Our discussion was about the colours used rather than the use of dark framing with pale coloured inner door.

 

Below is St Albans shed about 1900:-

 

 

Together with some wagons for @Compound2632

 

 

Crimson Rambler

 

 

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, Crimson Rambler said:

Our discussion was about the colours used rather than the use of dark framing with pale coloured inner door.

 

Fair enough. Did you reach any conclusion other than Denby pottery cream and Venetian red?

 

1 hour ago, Crimson Rambler said:

Together with some wagons for @Compound2632

 

 

I'm glad you've posted a close up of these - looking at other prints of this photo I had been completely uncertain but now I think one can see that at least the wagon one the left has two planks at the end. This corresponds to Drawing 10 of 1873/4, which represents an intermediate step between the 3-plank dropsides of the 1860s, which had no end pillars and hinges on brackets fixed to the solebars, and the wagons built to Drawing 213 of Nov 1875 from Lot 6 onwards - Lot 6 was placed on 32 July 1877 - a curious delay. It's unclear how many wagons were built to Drg 10 but there's a good lot of them at St Albans; they also turn up in ED livery in photos of line widening work etc. throughout the 1890s. I understand that this will be the subject of an article in a forthcoming issue of the Midland Railway Society Journal.

Edited June 27, 2021 by Compound2632
Typo. The R key is too close to the E key.