Illiterate symbols on wagons.

[Pandora]

I suppose it would be slightly more difficult to forge or falsify a symbol in contrast to re-lettering a wagon.

 

Reading the excellent Keith Turton books,   as to how wagons were hired out on casual trips or stored in sidings for repair and maintenance.  e.g. Summer when coal carrying work fell,  it would be very tempting for the unscrupulous  to switch identities between a good wagon and a bad one, swap the works plates, owners plates and a repaint etc.

 

As for missing wagons, as recently as the 1990s, a work colleague studying for an MBA was tasked with tracking down  private oil tankers, tankers would regularly go astray and be lost for months  when required inspections and maintenance, the system had been virtually a waqon spotters dream  job,  as in he would receive phone calls  and faxes with   " I was on my way to work and I saw 1234 in a consist passing through XYZ at 0840 hours".

 

As an aside  he saved his company a lot of money disputing bills from BR, BR would charge for mileage  " the long way round" his wagon spotters knew better!

[Quarryscapes]

Boyd mentions that the Rhosydd Slate Quarry was caught using Festiniog Railway slate wagons, despite it not actually being connected to the FR! (It was physicallyconnected via the wharves at Porthmadog and the Croesor tramway however) 

[Nearholmer]

Fascinating.

 

I'm still not sure it gets to the bottom of "why put an identification mark way up on the upper planks of a wagon" when stumbling about in the dark with a bulls-eye lantern happened near sole bar level.

 

On illiteracy, there are degrees. My grandfather wasn't illiterate, but with basic schooling to age 14, and working as a nurseryman then a gardener for 70 years thereafter, his reading level was fairly basic - When I was about ten/twelve, I used to watch with fascination as he worked his way through seed catalogues, and bits of his daily paper, clearly having to "go carefully". Anything more complex was my grandmother's territory. It wasn't that he lacked intelligence, indeed far from it, but he had been poorly schooled, and his daily work barely required the basics.

 

On lost wagons, excuse if I bore by repetition, but there was a story, which I think was true, that when TOPS was introduced and things were tightened-up, a van was found at Eastleigh or Southampton, which had been lost since c1947. It contained, in pristine condition, an entire cargo of utility furniture ........ So a few families must have gone without kitchen tables for about thirty years!

 

Kevin

[kevinlms]

Fascinating.

 

I'm still not sure it gets to the bottom of "why put an identification mark way up on the upper planks of a wagon" when stumbling about in the dark with a bulls-eye lantern happened near sole bar level.

 

On illiteracy, there are degrees. My grandfather wasn't illiterate, but with basic schooling to age 14, and working as a nurseryman then a gardener for 70 years thereafter, his reading level was fairly basic - When I was about ten/twelve, I used to watch with fascination as he worked his way through seed catalogues, and bits of his daily paper, clearly having to "go carefully". Anything more complex was my grandmother's territory. It wasn't that he lacked intelligence, indeed far from it, but he had been poorly schooled, and his daily work barely required the basics.

 

On lost wagons, excuse if I bore by repetition, but there was a story, which I think was true, that when TOPS was introduced and things were tightened-up, a van was found at Eastleigh or Southampton, which had been lost since c1947. It contained, in pristine condition, an entire cargo of utility furniture ........ So a few families must have gone without kitchen tables for about thirty years!

 

Kevin

But surely its easier to see painted symbols or big letters at a much greater distance in daylight at least, than looking at solebars?

 

As for illiterate, my mother told me she went out a couple of times with a bloke. He called around to pick her up & while waiting for her to powder her nose etc, sat at the kitchen table, with newspaper flicking through it & discussed the news with my grandfather. Later she found out, that he was illiterate & he must have heard the news on the radio & memorised it!

[Nearholmer]

Kevin

 

"But surely its easier to see painted symbols or big letters at a much greater distance in daylight at least, than looking at solebars?"

 

Railwaymen, specifically shunters and number takers, worked close-up to the wagons, so being able to read lettering at a distance probably didn't help them much.

 

The important thing for the railwayman was the wagon number (conveniently at head height when standing alongside) and who owned it. Trying to see big lettering down the side, or a logo up-top, just means that you have to crane your neck, and shine your feeble lamp upwards into the gloom and falling rain.

 

It is noticeable that when the big-four rationalised identification detail in about 1937 (maybe slightly earlier?) they grouped all the vital data at shunters' eye level in one corner, and that BR and all the interchanging railways on the continent and in the USA do the same.

 

Big letters were possibly useful for publicising the brand to potential customers (hence some mega-decorated private owner wagons and fancy paint jobs on US freight cars), but of marginal benefit to shunters, I would suggest. It may be that the latter actually relied on the cast-iron ownership plates on the sole bars if in doubt.

 

Kevin (mostly SR, rather than LMS)

[Poggy1165]

It may be relevant that for many years most companies' wagons were most clearly identified by a cast plate on the solebar. 'Big' lettering became fashionable from circa 1900. Prior to that most railways used either relatively small letters or 'illiteracy' marks. (Aka logos.) Or in some cases, both.

 

It was relatively late (circa 1912 IIRC) that the RCH decreed that the wagon number should always be on the left. Presumably this was to make life a little easier for shunters and the like. The needs of these chaps were rarely considered at all in earlier years, hence they might find a brake lever at either end, or none at all on one side. Must have been great fun on a dark rainy night in Dukinfield.

 

It should be remembered that compulsory education was not brought in until 1870, and that even after that you could go on 'part-time' quite young. My grandfather started in the mill at nine years old (part time) in the 1890s. He was an intelligent man, and could certainly read and write, but he had barely been educated in the sense we think of the term today. 

 

Funnily enough, a great-uncle of mine, by far the richest member of the family, was completely illiterate. He was in employment all his working life, (albeit not on the railways) and the only 'issue' he had was that he had to get my dad to do his tax return for him. I'm not convinced that being illiterate in the 'old' economy was as serious a matter as it would be now.

[kevinlms]

Kevin

 

"But surely its easier to see painted symbols or big letters at a much greater distance in daylight at least, than looking at solebars?"

 

Railwaymen, specifically shunters and number takers, worked close-up to the wagons, so being able to read lettering at a distance probably didn't help them much.

 

The important thing for the railwayman was the wagon number (conveniently at head height when standing alongside) and who owned it. Trying to see big lettering down the side, or a logo up-top, just means that you have to crane your neck, and shine your feeble lamp upwards into the gloom and falling rain.

 

It is noticeable that when the big-four rationalised identification detail in about 1937 (maybe slightly earlier?) they grouped all the vital data at shunters' eye level in one corner, and that BR and all the interchanging railways on the continent and in the USA do the same.

 

Big letters were possibly useful for publicising the brand to potential customers (hence some mega-decorated private owner wagons and fancy paint jobs on US freight cars), but of marginal benefit to shunters, I would suggest. It may be that the latter actually relied on the cast-iron ownership plates on the sole bars if in doubt.

 

Kevin (mostly SR, rather than LMS)

I don't doubt it, but wagons weren't always in a location suitable for reading cast plates on sole bars. An obvious location where bigger numbers on the side were more useful, was when a wagon was in a goods shed & a plate would be harder to see - crawling on hands & knees. At least that's what I had in mind!