Castle Aching

[Compound2632]

41 minutes ago, Schooner said:

 

 

No, no, transport of tobacco products was a Great Central speciality, from Nottingham.

[Tom Burnham]

17 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

I haven’t been there since we electrified the Hastings Line, which was …,, er …… quite a long time ago now.

Ah, the 1066 gala day.  I was helping to run a sales stall in the deicer unit on display at Hastings station, facilitated by Alan Barter.  Substations were loaded to max with all the special trains, I was told.

[Donw]

I have had the pleasure of driving one of those Cadbury tanks at Tysley.  Firing the thing was interesting no room to swing  a shovel it was more of a flick action from the side.

 

Don

[Nearholmer]

“Substations were loaded to max with all the special trains, I was told.”

They were, but that all went well.

 

At the same sort of event for the East Grinstead electrification, “traffic” got very carried away about what they were going to run, without consulting us electrical bods, causing a heap of embarrassing circuit breaker trips, and one of my colleagues to have to drive from site to site twiddling all the relay settings, then drive round again at close of play to put them back to where they were meant to be. The settings applied for the day took advantage of the fact that the con rails were brand new, so at full cross-section, rather than making all the usual assumptions about loss of cross-section over time, and sweated the rectifiers more than you’d really want to.

Edited June 7, 2023 by Nearholmer

[Schooner]

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

Great Central speciality

 

But not a monopoly, I'm learning. Currently pulling at the LSWR thread:

(possibly Southern by the time of the above).

 

Tantalising reports of historic plantations in the Cotswolds too...

 

[Edwardian]

12 minutes ago, Schooner said:

 

But not a monopoly, I'm learning. Currently pulling at the LSWR thread:

 

possibly Southern 

 

Tantalising reports of historic plantations in the Cotswolds too...

 

 

Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah

 

 

[brumtb]

5 hours ago, Edwardian said:

 

Yes, like Huntley & Palmer, much outgoing goods seem to be in (MR) sheeted opens, while I suspect the manufacturer's branded opens bring coal in. Here you have the rather nice addition of incoming milk in pre-Grouping NPCs, in this case Midland and LNWR.

 

As Brumtb models post Great War pre-Grouping, he might push a point to include the 1925 Avonside, but yes, like you I was thinking pre-Grouping Birmingham chocolate factory railway as a suggestion.

 

 

I believe the first Avonside of four was supplied to Cadburys in 1910 and the last in 1925 so easily pre-grouping locomotives.  They apparently inspired the GWR 1101 Class, also built by Avonside in1926.

Tony

 

[Dave John]

There was also extensive tobacco traffic in Scotland since historically Glasgow was a major import centre. The Caley had a number of D39 ccts thirled to various  companies specifically for the traffic. 

[figworthy]

2 hours ago, Schooner said:

Tantalising reports of historic plantations in the Cotswolds too...

 

 

Indeed.  In September 1667 Pepys recorded in his diary that the lifeguard were sent to Winchcombe to spoil a tobacco crop there.  At the time, it was illegal to grow it in England as the Virginian colony had a government backed monopoly on it.   There is a street called Tobacco Close in Winchcombe which I presume relates to this.

 

Adrian

[Nearholmer]

22 minutes ago, brumtb said:

I believe the first Avonside of four was supplied to Cadburys in 1910

Some millennia ago, in one of Edwardians tangled skeins, we discussed the MR Deeley 0-4-0T in relation to these, but I have no idea what we concluded about which inspired which.

[Compound2632]

13 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Some millennia ago, in one of Edwardians tangled skeins, we discussed the MR Deeley 0-4-0T in relation to these, but I have no idea what we concluded about which inspired which.

 

The first batch of Deeley 0-4-0Ts was built in 1907 and the second in 1921/2, replacing Johnson 0-4-0STs (with which they had little in common in design) and ex-Severn & Wye 0-6-0Ts. The novel feature was outside Walschaerts valve gear driving slide valves. [S. Summerson, Midland Railway Locomotives Vol. 4 Ch. 12.] They didn't work in the Bristol area, at least at first, so wouldn't have come to the attention of the Avonside Co's drawing office staff except through the literature, I suppose.

Edited June 7, 2023 by Compound2632

[Edwardian]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

Some millennia ago, in one of Edwardians tangled skeins, we discussed the MR Deeley 0-4-0T in relation to these, but I have no idea what we concluded about which inspired which.

 

Not guilty

 

 

[Nearholmer]

Avonside had experience of outside Walschaerts going back to at least 1878*, when they built that strange Fairlie that ended-up on the M&SWJR. I’ll see if I can remind myself whether they had a standard 0-4-0 ‘industrial’ design that used it in the meantime. 
 

* even earlier actually, in that they built a double Fairlie, ‘Snake’, for NZ in 1874 which was so equipped. https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Snake,_a_double_Fairlie,_B_class_steam_locomotive_"B"_238_(0-4-4-0T)._ATLIB_257541.png
 

 

 

Edited June 8, 2023 by Nearholmer

[Schooner]

16 hours ago, Edwardian said:

Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah

Funnily enough this was the name of their steam traction engine, Zippy Ooh-Arr

[Michael Crofts]

Returning to the idea of private sidings where the industry was out of sight there is a good example just south of @Edwardian's patch, which he probably knows about, on the Newmarket-Ely line between Fordham and Soham. Known for some reason (which I haven't got to the bottom of yet) as the Burwell Tramway it originally served a manure works, then a brickworks, then also a Cold Store, and a fruit farm built a narrow gauge tramway to connect to it, and farmers loaded wagons where they passed their fields. All that was visible at the exchange sidings was a gate and a "loop" which was typically worked as described with wagons being propelled in through a trailing connection from the main line, and hauled out from a parallel siding, with the private locos propelling wagons in to the sidings. The sidings here were quite long but only because of the amount of traffic - there were other examples with short sidings.

 

And Leiston was definitely a place where the private locomotive worked on "Company" metals - there are several photos of Sirapite doing that, but I don't know whether it carried the Railway Clearing House plate which would have given it the proper authority to do so.

 

Is there nowhere on @Edwardian's layout for a private siding?

Photo by Edward Lawrence, 3 August 1961. I saw this sort of thing with my own eyes, just once. Treasured memory.

 

[Nearholmer]

20 minutes ago, Michael Crofts said:

Known for some reason (which I haven't got to the bottom of yet) as the Burwell Tramway

Almost certainly because it was a tramway, that is not a railway in the legal sense of that word, and it went to Burwell (well, nearly to Burwell).

 

”Tramway” tends to conjure-up images of things built and operated under the (confusing and voluminous) legislation and requirements that governed tramways in the street, but more generally any railway that falls outside of the Regulation of Railways Acts is a tramway. Most were lines used for goods only, either non-passenger sprigs of ‘proper railways’, or ‘industrials’, but some were passenger carrying railways that had been built without the need to obtain formal powers, usually because the landowners themselves built them, or because they granted wayleaves or free consents. The tricky bit was public roads, but many tramways crossed public roads by consent of highway authorities. 
 

 

Edited June 9, 2023 by Nearholmer

[Edwardian]

1 hour ago, Michael Crofts said:

 

Is there nowhere on @Edwardian's layout for a private siding?

 

 

Well, at least one possibility occurs:

 

Royal Sandringham Lavender Biscuits

 

During the 1850s a manufactory was established on the Castle Aching Road outside the the village boundary devoted to the production of Dr Gulliver's Lavender Health Biscuits. The factory has expanded considerably since the purchase of the business by Huntley & Palmer of Reading in 1895. The sale was the culmination of a 10-year campaign by George Palmer of that firm to obtain the secret recipe after tasting one of the lavender biscuits at the Grand Hotel, Birchoverham next the Sea in 1885. Eventually he was successful, but only after he agreed to purchase the business and on condition that the manufacture continued at the Smoxborough works. This undoubtedly helped Huntley and Palmer to gain a Royal warrant from the Prince of Wales, also very partial to a nibble it would seem, and these fine comestibles are now sold throughout the world under the name of Royal Sandringham Lavender Biscuits.

 

[Schooner]

👀

[Compound2632]

24 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

these fine comestibles are now sold throughout the world under the name of Royal Sandringham Lavender Biscuits.

 

[16Brunel]

7 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

Isn't James' (our!) Castle Achingverse set in 1905?...

 

- Scott

[Nearholmer]

Sun setting?

[St Enodoc]

5 hours ago, 16Brunel said:

Isn't James' (our!) Castle Achingverse set in 1905?...

 

- Scott

Perhaps the Queen liked them but the King didn't.

[Schooner]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

Sun setting?

Not totally convinced we're looking at either Smoxborough or Smokesborough in the poster - destination rather than origin?

[Compound2632]

6 hours ago, 16Brunel said:

Isn't James' (our!) Castle Achingverse set in 1905?...

 

Hadn't won the Grand Prix since 1878 but still trading on the reputation.

 

1 hour ago, St Enodoc said:

Perhaps the Queen liked them but the King didn't.

 

H.M. Queen Alexandra and H.R.H. George, Prince of Wales - as in Bowen Cooke's Prince of Wales class.

 

34 minutes ago, Schooner said:

Not totally convinced we're looking at either Smoxborough or Smokesborough in the poster - destination rather than origin?

 

Of course: the Empire (in various now unacceptable female manifestations) awaits what Smoxborough provides.

 

Perhaps I should have adapted this female personification of the biscuit, but the curved lettering was harder to do:

 

 

  

2 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Sun setting?

 

The sun never sets on the birthplaces of the parents and grandparents of the citizens of Reading - the Empire is our heritage and we are living its fruits.

 

Edited June 10, 2023 by Compound2632
More, with added moralising.

[Nearholmer]

That poster is gold-dust at so many levels (even when it hasn’t been corrected to say Smoxborough) because it encapsulates a certain view of Britain from within Britain, at the time. Even the poster as a physical object is a brilliant example of where Britain was at at the time, I’d better the paper contains esparto grass, and the inks all sorts of chemicals from the four corners of the globe. It’s got sexism, racism, exoticism, the woman symbolising the USA has stolen the head-dress of the tribe she’s just dispossessed, ……. It’s not many single biscuit adverts that could form the basis of a PhD thesis, but I reckon this one could.

 

Not only that, but it’s beautiful to look at too.

 

 

Edited June 10, 2023 by Nearholmer