Castle Aching

[Northroader]

I feel a pre raff coming on. “ Pussy, puss, puss...”

[Hroth]

Arthur Rackham had some odd ideas....

 

 

All I can say is that it must have been a lot warmer in ancient times!

 

[RedGemAlchemist]

Whenever I think of Pandora's Box, this video analysis of what I believe is the earliest known version of the story comes to mind.
That or the late-80s Jim Steinman-formed rock band.

[Hroth]

There you go.  Got around to installing a profile pic....

 

Its all downhill form now, I tell ya!

 

Form?  FORM???

 

FROM!

 

Time for Lunch!  (As Zebedee might say....)

Edited April 14, 2018 by Hroth

[RedGemAlchemist]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUdbZ9QY5VU

[Edwardian]

Remember Little Sister is Watching You  (http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/131803-school-project-the-victorian-railway/?p=3143331)!

 

Be that as it may, there have been reports of Sightings of wagons on Castle Aching (http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/131803-school-project-the-victorian-railway/?p=3141205).

 

Well, events over the last couple of months have resulted in Rumaging.

 

In an idle moment I plonked a dozen wagons on the only siding that I have managed to lay. I had been cogitating over siding capacity at CA. I made a somewhat spurious comparison with Alston.  Spurious because the board is as long as the board is, so it's not as if I had much choice and because Alston had rather different traffic needs.  Well, what can I say, I was reading a book on the Alston branch at the time. Anyhow, it's seven O'clock and I've already sunk half a bottle of indifferent red, so I shall continue.

 

I just wanted to see what a dozen wagons would look like.  Unlikely to see as many on the layout at one time in normal operations, but did it look crowded?

 

No, it looked satisfactorily uncrowded.

 

Having said that, I would be delighted to learn that any of them could conceivably swell the ranks of wagons on CA.

 

To that end I will say, the South Wales wagons relate to the longstanding projected GWR project. There are then other odds and sods.

 

Now, I must confess, I know b8gger all about POs, as I don't have any books on the subject.

 

(One thing I do know, I truly loathe that wallpaper).

 

 

 

 

[Nearholmer]

I’d imagine that, apart from specialist needs, railborne coal would come from the eastern or midland mines, and I do know that Manvers Main was near the eastern end of the MSW 1500V dc line, so sounds plausible to me.

 

And, it’s the only one I can read.

[Hroth]

I was confused.  Then I stepped out of the shower and realised I was in Castle Aching once more.....

[Edwardian]

I was confused.  Then I stepped out of the shower and realised I was in Castle Aching once more.....

 

There have been many ways in which the crossing to a parallel universe has been portrayed, but, I think I am correct in saying, you are the first to discover a portal to another world in a shower.

 

So, well done there.

[Caley Jim]

The 'United' ones are Scottish.  They had several collieries in Lanarkshire.  Unfortunately, I can't read the smaller lettering clearly.

 

Jim

[Northroader]

“Dallas”, dear boy. Now, blowing up your picture and most (edit: for ”most” read “some”) of those wagon are Yorkshire / East Midlands, and highly suitable for WNR, there’s one from west wales with anthracite, and another east wales, steam coal, both believable.

 

Ps, the clean and dirty “United” have got “Swansea valley” underneath, Jim, there’s another lot down there.

Edited April 27, 2018 by Northroader

[Compound2632]

Remember Little Sister is Watching You  (http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/131803-school-project-the-victorian-railway/?p=3143331)!

 

Be that as it may, there have been reports of Sightings of wagons on Castle Aching (http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/131803-school-project-the-victorian-railway/?p=3141205).

 

Well, events over the last couple of months have resulted in Rumaging.

 

In an idle moment I plonked a dozen wagons on the only siding that I have managed to lay. I had been cogitating over siding capacity at CA. I made a somewhat spurious comparison with Alston.  Spurious because the board is as long as the board is, so it's not as if I had much choice and because Alston had rather different traffic needs.  Well, what can I say, I was reading a book on the Alston branch at the time. Anyhow, it's seven O'clock and I've already sunk half a bottle of indifferent red, so I shall continue.

 

I just wanted to see what a dozen wagons would look like.  Unlikely to see as many on the layout at one time in normal operations, but did it look crowded?

 

No, it looked satisfactorily uncrowded.

 

Having said that, I would be delighted to learn that any of them could conceivably swell the ranks of wagons on CA.

 

To that end I will say, the South Wales wagons relate to the longstanding projected GWR project. There are then other odds and sods.

 

Now, I must confess, I know b8gger all about POs, as I don't have any books on the subject.

 

(One thing I do know, I truly loathe that wallpaper).

 

As mentioned, I think your Swansea Vale anthracite wagons are good for CA - as Thomas T. Pascoe says, "malting, hop drying and horticultural coals" - anthracite was preferred for any industrial process where you didn't want to end up killing your customers by arsenic poisoning. However, unless there are a variety of such industries in West Norfolk, I doubt you'd see such a variety of collieries / factors? (Hoping someone proves me wrong.) I think United is a post-Great War amalgamation (United Anthracite Collieries). 

 

Are those South Yorkshire / Nottinghamshire wagons all RCH 1923?

 

There's a Great Western 4-plank open in there too, with cast number and GWR plates; as the cognoscenti know, this should be in red lead for CA's date. 

 

There are many more Lincolnshire & Yorkshire Tar Distillers wagons around than the company ever had in practice but I think that must be down to paucity of information on other firms. Also available in red lead. CA has a gas works?

[Guy Rixon]

What is the L & Y Tar Distillers wagon supposed to carry? Is it collecting residue from gas works to be distilled or is it distributing the results of the distillation?

[Compound2632]

The 'United' ones are Scottish.  They had several collieries in Lanarkshire.  Unfortunately, I can't read the smaller lettering clearly.

 

Jim

 

More than one United - the ones Slater's did say SWANSEA VALLEY on the bottom plank.

 

What is the L & Y Tar Distillers wagon supposed to carry? Is it collecting residue from gas works to be distilled or is it distributing the results of the distillation?

 

My understanding is, the former. I think the products would be distributed as merchandise. 

[Londontram]

More than one United - the ones Slater's did say SWANSEA VALLEY on the bottom plank.

 

 

 

My understanding is, the former. I think the products would be distributed as merchandise.

 

possibly in large glass carboys an distributed maybe in open wagons packed in straw. The tar tanks would have been used for collection of the base material only

[Caley Jim]

More than one United - the ones Slater's did say SWANSEA VALLEY on the bottom plank.

Well, you learn something new every day!  The livery is pretty well identical!

 

Jim

[Regularity]

It’s not just where they have come from, but also the size and the livery. Coal wagons got larger over the years, but for 1905, you would have a mixture of coal wagons of varying heights, with 5, 6 and 7 planks being most likely, and even the occasional 4 plank wagon in use. They would also be unlikely to exceed 15’ over the headstocks, and some (but not many) could still be dumb buffered.

 

But the number of railway modellers who would know this is probably in the low single figure percentages, and even then, all except those obsessed with private owner wagons would suggest acquiring a nice looking rake like yours to be getting on with, and would replace/upgrade them later on. It’s what I am doing. I tell myself that one day I may replace them, but in reality, I fully accept that there may be a very large amount of self-deception going on.

 

Incidentally, don’t forget to press standard 5 plank company opens into coal service if required. You could certainly have a pair of GER steel-solebar 5 plank wagons lettered LDEC on your layout.

[Regularity]

More than one United

 

Try saying that at Old Trafford whilst wearing a white shirt, and see how long you live!

[Compound2632]

Incidentally, don’t forget to press standard 5 plank company opens into coal service if required. You could certainly have a pair of GER steel-solebar 5 plank wagons lettered LDEC on your layout.

 

Or even three-plank dropside wagons.

[Nearholmer]

Tar distilleries were evil places, which made all sorts of things, but mostly environmental pollution.

 

The big one in the SE was on the Rye Harbour Branch, and it took tar from a wide area of Kent and Sussex. The outgoing products included the various lighter fractions that were sent out in carboys, but old photos show a lot of wooden casks too. Whether some products, pigments perhaps, were sent out as ‘cake’ in casks, or whether the very heaviest fraction, which I think was mixed with sand to make road surfacing, went in casks, I haven’t worked out.

 

And, maybe creosote went in casks.

 

I used to have a very good coloured chart, from an old encyclopaedia, but this is quite a good one.

 

Lots of the uses on here have now been banned, especially the uses in foodstuffs.

Edited April 27, 2018 by Nearholmer

[DonB]

Post WW2,  I worked in a laboratory using chemicals supplied in Glass Carboys which were inside a wire cage packed with straw. I have no idea when the wire cage was introduced, but it made handling and moving the carboys relatively easy for the junior members of staff ( usually 16-y-old Boys).  Wikipedia says they held 20 (USA)gallons. weight would be about 1.25 cwt.

 

Unloading them, in the CA time-frame, from a straw packed open wagon onto a horse drawn flat -bed would have been difficult and dangerous. As I understand it, the railways were "Common carriers" (terminology?) and had to take anything offered for transit. I assume there was an Act of Parliament enforcing this, but when was it enacted?  

[Hroth]

Post WW2,  I worked in a laboratory using chemicals supplied in Glass Carboys which were inside a wire cage packed with straw. I have no idea when the wire cage was introduced, but it made handling and moving the carboys relatively easy for the junior members of staff ( usually 16-y-old Boys).  Wikipedia says they held 20 (USA)gallons. weight would be about 1.25 cwt.

 

Unloading them, in the CA time-frame, from a straw packed open wagon onto a horse drawn flat -bed would have been difficult and dangerous. As I understand it, the railways were "Common carriers" (terminology?) and had to take anything offered for transit. I assume there was an Act of Parliament enforcing this, but when was it enacted?  

I have a feeling that "Common Carrier" status dates from the very first days of public railways.  The only other mass transporation model at the time was the canal system where sole traders and carrying companies paid tolls to carry cargo upon the waterways.  The canal companies "merely" provided and maintained the infrastructure (a familiar way of doing things, eh?).  With steam locomotion, it was decided that this would be a Bad Thing and that the railway companies should provide the means of transporting anything presented to them, rather than having a murderous free for all.  The nearest thing the railways got to the canal model was the Private Owner wagon.

 

Of course, where the railway model came unstuck was when the motor lorry became viable after WW1 and siphoned off all the lucrative traffic onto the roads, leaving the railways to handle a the unprofitable stuff and items that even a convoy of lorries couldn't carry economically.  Eventually the burden of "common carrier" was removed but by then it was far too late.

[Nearholmer]

Bit more about the processes and products, and even barrels, here http://drcspatial.usask.ca/wiki/index.php/Ordnance_Wharf_Tar_%26_Pitch_Works

 

Forbes, Abbot and Lennard owned the works at Ry Harbour, as well as the one mentioned in the article, and they had a fleet of rail wagons, a drawing of one was published donkeys years ago in a modelling magazine.

[St Enodoc]

Post WW2,  I worked in a laboratory using chemicals supplied in Glass Carboys which were inside a wire cage packed with straw. I have no idea when the wire cage was introduced, but it made handling and moving the carboys relatively easy for the junior members of staff ( usually 16-y-old Boys).  Wikipedia says they held 20 (USA)gallons. weight would be about 1.25 cwt.

 

Unloading them, in the CA time-frame, from a straw packed open wagon onto a horse drawn flat -bed would have been difficult and dangerous. As I understand it, the railways were "Common carriers" (terminology?) and had to take anything offered for transit. I assume there was an Act of Parliament enforcing this, but when was it enacted?  

In the 1960s there was a craze for "bottle gardens" which were often made in old carboys. As my Dad worked for a chemicals manufacturer at the time, we had to have one. It was fine until we all got fed up with tending it and it turned into a bottle jungle instead. Eventually when we moved the contents were thrown out but the carboy - empty - lived in the corner of the garage for several years after that. It can just be seen in the first photo on this post:

 

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/94350-mid-cornwall-lines-1950s-western-region-in-00/&do=findComment&comment=1727920

[TheQ]

I'm losing track of things so this may be a repeat, at Fakenham just 18 miles from castle Aching area is a scheduled ancient monument. Aka Fakenham gas works http://fakenhamgasmuseum.com plenty of scope for sidelines in chemicals.

 

Also if we are being fictional why do we have to have real coal company wagons? The north Norfolk coal fields were generally impractical to be mined but a little fiction means they could have been. This report shows a proposal to mine the coal offshore but the fields don't neatly stay offshore in the box on the map. I vote for Cromer colliery to supply coal http://www.marinet.org.uk/campaign-article/fuel-from-the-seabed