Castle Aching

[Edwardian]

I think the ends are on a shallower arc than that GER wagon (upgraded, you say?) - 

 

I agree. So whose wagon might it be?  

 

9419 is a mid-'60s to mid-'70s type, but the single-side brakes and Worsdell Type A grease axleboxes date from the 1880s.

 

I would like to model both, with 13513, a later type, still in GE service, and the 9419 type sold off to the WNR. 

 

 

The Lightmoor PO wagons index lists Booth & Fosdick, Booth & Mitchell, and William Henry Booth, all of Ipswich - probably the same Booth with different partners or none at different times. Need a complete set of PO wagon picture books!

 

 

 

Yes, PO wagons are a serious gap in my library.

[Martin S-C]

It may not be "BOO...". I think there's a possibility those letters could be Cs or Gs as well.

I tend to find that the smaller traders prefixed the owners name with his first name initial so a trader named John Booth would letter his wagons "J. BOOTH & Co." It was quite unusual to have a family-named company PO wagon with ONLY the surname on it. Single-word wagon liveries were usually bigger concerns that were more widely known such as collieries.

"BOO..." / "BOC..." / "BOG..." could be the start of a place name as in "BATH STONE COMpy."

[Compound2632]

Yes, PO wagons are a serious gap in my library.

 

1. Buy an extra bookcase.

2. Win the lottery or sell a spare house...

 

The frustration with the Keith Turton and Bill Hudson volumes is their lack of thematic or period coverage - even the Grouping era modeller will find that only around 5% of the wagons in any given volume are relevant to their area of interest. It's even tougher being into pre-grouping. If you're modelling Stroud (Glos) then Ian Pope is your friend! For my c. 1902 Midland &c. in Birmingham theme, I'm lucky that both Pope's Gloucestershire book and Keith Montague's Gloucester Carriage & Wagon Co. contain a number of wagons that can certainly run between the North Warwickshire coalfield and Gloucestershire / Worcestershire via Midland metals. 

 

It may not be "BOO...". I think there's a possibility those letters could be Cs or Gs as well.

 

I tend to find that the smaller traders prefixed the owners name with his first name initial so a trader named John Booth would letter his wagons "J. BOOTH & Co." It was quite unusual to have a family-named company PO wagon with ONLY the surname on it. Single-word wagon liveries were usually bigger concerns that were more widely known such as collieries.

 

"BOO..." / "BOC..." / "BOG..." could be the start of a place name as in "BATH STONE COMpy."

 

True, but when in coal merchants were in partnership, surnames only seems to have been the order of the day, so BOOTH & FOSDICK is plausible.

 

Referring again to Stroud, one can follow the career of J. Dickenson (solo, 1894) through partnerships: Dickenson & Prosser (1897); Dickenson Prosser & Cox (1903); and Dickenson & Cox (1924) - but loyal to Birch Coppice Colliery throughout. 

 

I may have been staring too hard at that Faversham egg hut photo but I'm starting to think the arc-ended wagon may have dumb buffers.

Edited December 21, 2018 by Compound2632

[Martin S-C]

Stephen, you're right and BOOTH & MITCHELL was the same Booth as William Henry Booth. There's a bit about them/him in Keith Turton's PO Wagons, a Ninth Collection. I don't have the Bill Hudson volumes that cover the other Booth wagon. The 1907 photograph of BOOTH & MITCHELL wagons empty at Peterborough shows, some distance away from the camera, what look like 5-plank wagons.

 

 

 

[Hroth]

In the spirit of Seasonal Goodwill, may I draw the attention of my fellow Parish Councillors to the IOT tutorial chaired by Mr M Bragg on Wireless 4 yesterday (Thursday) concerning the introduction of the New Poor Laws in 1834 and the privation and suffering that they drew in their wake?

 

(Not being too political about these things, the Universal Credit system currently being "rolled out" seems to have been thought up by a similarly mean-spirited mindset and appears to be having the same sort of results)

 

Perhaps the only Good Thing that came out of the New Poor Laws appears to have been "A Christmas Carol", published in 1843.

[Talltim]

 

That photo is a candidate for the Real thing that looks like a model thread.

[Nearholmer]

Yes, I heard part of that, then later watched a documentary fronted by Griff Rhys-Jones about Dicken’s role in establishing Christmas - a very good pairing, which was good, proper, Reithian BBC stuff.

[Compound2632]

Brilliant! I don't believe that guff about the wagons being impounded on the dissolution of the partnership. It would be unusual for the wagons to be owned by the partners; they're much more likely to be on hire from one of the builders / finance cos. - most wagon builders also traded as lessors.

 

But the really exciting feature of that photo is the view of the insides of the pair of Midland D389 timber trucks - most photos were taken with the camera around 4ft above rail level. Then the ubiquitous D299 wagons - but this is a Midland yard.

 

BTW the dimensions given for the MR registered wagons - 14'6" x 7'0" x 3'2" - will be internal dimensions; with 3" sheeting, length over headstocks will be 15'0" and 7'6" width over sheeting. Those are 8 ton wagons; the subsequent 10 ton wagons will be around 4ft deep - six or seven planks.

 

None of those listed carry as low a number as 9 so we could still be barking up the wrong tree! Mind you, the numbers visible in the photo, 167 and 325, don't feature in the list either. No. 167 is a seven plank wagon but No. 325 seems to have five unusually wide planks (9"?) and the one beyond it, six, but they're all about the same depth.

Edited December 21, 2018 by Compound2632

[corneliuslundie]

For the record, two Booth & Fosdick wagons appear in a photo in Hudson's volume 2 but there is no text reference. They have low rounded ends.

Jonathan

He who has too many books on PO wagons

[Regularity]

The aspects needing work were adjusting the couplings - Alex Jacksons without the droppers, so manual only;

 

They will be replaced with screws and 3-links.

...as Tim says getting the ex-LSWR carriage to go round the curve onto the branch. Only later did I discover that it never did, even when Barry Norman first built it. 

 

Barry built the platform before he built the coach, and forgot to allow for the footboards.

In actual fact, the platform ramp starts where the prototype’s ended. Possibly an element of over compression, or a misinterpretation of a photo due to a parallax error? Whichever, Barry told me that no one had ever noticed this in nearly 30 years!

It is something I shall have to ponder, but the problem is not with the coach.

By the way, for those who haven't seen the layout at shows, the whole set of stock goes in a shoebox with room to spare.

 

Barry actually built a further 5 wagons, which went to a good friend of his.

I was fully aware of the foibles of the layout before I acquired it, including its need for more cross-bracing to stop it swaying sideways in the breeze....

[sem34090]

Is there room on the WNR for a lovely little Belgian lady named Yvonne?

(Yes I am spreading that image of her around RMweb... I may have fallen in love! )

[Nearholmer]

Surely, that must have been gauge-widened from c600mm. It looks like one of the Couillet(sp?) locos that was used in Spain until the 1970/80s.

 

Edit: By St Leonard, not Couillet; regauged from 1000mm, not 600mm; and, it worked in Belgium, at a colliery, not Spain. So, I was wholly wrong.

Edited December 21, 2018 by Nearholmer

[Martin S-C]

They will be replaced with screws and 3-links.

Barry built the platform before he built the coach, and forgot to allow for the footboards.

In actual fact, the platform ramp starts where the prototype’s ended. Possibly an element of over compression, or a misinterpretation of a photo due to a parallax error? Whichever, Barry told me that no one had ever noticed this in nearly 30 years!

It is something I shall have to ponder, but the problem is not with the coach.

Barry actually built a further 5 wagons, which went to a good friend of his.

I was fully aware of the foibles of the layout before I acquired it, including its need for more cross-bracing to stop it swaying sideways in the breeze....

When you get Lydham Heath on the road Simon I look forward to seeing it.

[Nearholmer]

I think this is Yvonne, buried under a heap of Edwardian cheminots.

 

EDIT: No, I don't think it is, but its a nice picture anyway!

Edited December 21, 2018 by Nearholmer

[Donw]

The most bizzare part of it is that folk of our generation, who in the natural course of things would be drifting from radical youth towards reactionary old age, are mostly heading in the other direction...

 

Pray which generation are we? I liked the fact that we seem to be a wide range of ages on this thread.

 

 

To me one of the most annoying things is how we have let a simple thing like a drone ruin Christmas for so many and there seems to be a lot of folk who will be out of pocket if the airlines/airport people can wriggle out of responsibility. This is something that many have said could be a real problem but there is no sign the authorities have done any contingency planning.  Forunately this does not affect me personally although it does make me wonder whether flying a drone above us could put a spoke in those low flying aircraft that use our area for practice.

 

Don  

[Compound2632]

Pray which generation are we? I liked the fact that we seem to be a wide range of ages on this thread.

 

Mine and James', though from what I can glean he's slightly younger than me - a contemporary of my wife's, I believe. 

[Shadow]

Came across a better quality image of the Egg Depot. (http://www.oldukphotos.com/norfolk-fakenham.htm)

 

Definitely looks like Booth and number 931 ?

 

Edited December 21, 2018 by Shadow

[Compound2632]

Came across a better quality image of the Egg Depot. (http://www.oldukphotos.com/norfolk-fakenham.htm)

 

Definitely looks like Booth and number 931 ?

 

 

 

... which would make it a 10 ton wagon built by S.J. Clay in 1897, thereby putting a spoke in my 8 tons = 5 planks 10 tons = 7 planks equation!

 

And the other wagon looks even more dumb-buffered.

Edited December 21, 2018 by Compound2632

[Nearholmer]

And, now that I've caught up with which wagons are in question, the round end on the LH one reminds me of the sort of modest curve used on some early coal wagons, rather than the (company specific) higher ends that characterise merchandise wagons designed for sheeting.

Edited December 21, 2018 by Nearholmer

[TT-Pete]

A good excuse for staying warm inside and browsing 'Brassey's Naval Annual'.

 

Hence "naval gazing"  :^)

[Edwardian]

Hence "naval gazing"  :^)

 

I initially misread that ...

[Talltim]

Pray which generation are we? I liked the fact that we seem to be a wide range of ages on this thread.

 

Don

There’s two generations of one family who post the thread!

[sem34090]

I wonder how many others of my generation regularly contribute?

[corneliuslundie]

The rounded ends are very similar to those on two kits i am building as mentioned above, also wagons built by the company on the line of the S&D whose name escapes me. Quite common at one period on coal merchant operated wagons, though I do not know what advantage they gave.

Jonathan

[Northroader]

Good to hear that Lydham Heath has found a good home. I think I must have seen it at a show soon after it was built, long, long ago, and was all for it, being a BCR fan. Thing I remember about it was the huge row of trees running along the back, I wouldn’t have thought being able to pack the stock away after a show was such a problem as dealing with the trees?