More Pre-Grouping Wagons in 4mm - the D299 appreciation thread.

[jamie92208]

2 hours ago, Chris F said:

 

Although I'm an avid follower of D299's adventures on the regular, like, it's been giving me the shivers the last few days.  We have followed in my granddad's footsteps as he started his career as a collieryman at Pope and Pearson, living across t'street in t'buildings on Pope Street, before moving on to Ponty-Prince and then finally Kellingley.  I have vague and flickery memories of Pope Street in the late Seventies and early Eighties.

 

Anyroad.  Just interjecting my thanks to all contributors.

I spent 4 years as a police officer at Ponte and from my office could see Ponte Prince.  I had to liaise with them about coal thefts and that's how the coal came about.  I spent most of my working life in the coalfields and lodged with a retired deputy whose lamp I still have.  All those colliery names are very live to me and I can picture most of the sites.  Many were still working when I first went there in 74.  Good people badly served.  I've got a good collection of PO wagons and am doing my best to research the subject and add to the pool of knowledge. 

 

Jamie

Edited December 7, 2023 by jamie92208

[sir douglas]

ive also got myself some coal, an overgrown canal path i use daily was cut back and resurfaced earlier this year, and a lot lumps came up during the digging, so went along and got a little plastic bag full which will last me for years

[Compound2632]

I can't compete. My coal comes in packets at great expense:

 

 

The O gauge stuff is from Geoscenics: https://www.geoscenics.co.uk/ and is much the most suitable for my period, though some of the wagons recently illustrated used the Peco coarse grade stuff. 

 

At least I avoid the toil of crushing and grading full-sized lumps of coal. So what I lose in kudos I gain in convenience.

[billbedford]

Is there still a line of small coals along the tideline of the beach at Cleethorpes?

[Compound2632]

49 minutes ago, billbedford said:

Is there still a line of small coals along the tideline of the beach at Cleethorpes?

 

We visited my sister-in-law's recently-acquired coastal palace earlier this autumn. On our walk into Amble, we met an old man scavenging seas-coals. This got me onto reading up on Warkworth Harbour, the most northerly of the Northumberland coal ports, served by a branch off the Newcastle & Berwick main line and by a mineral line. It rapidly became apparent that the inland villages we'd driven through were former pit villages. 

Edited December 8, 2023 by Compound2632
sp.

[Compound2632]

I've been asked, so will pass the question on to @41516, whether there is any evidence for Burton beer traffic in Great Western wagons (pre-Great War), or whether consignments to Great Western stations would inevitably go out in a wagon of one of the local companies - Midland, LNWR, GNR, NSR - whichever was the the company over whose lines the consignment travelled to reach Great Western territory. (Not a GNR wagon, then!) 

[41516]

I can't recall ever seeing any GW wagons in pre-war photographs and postcards, nor a GW wagon label from Burton.  Not a no, but I suspect would be most unlikely.   When and which brewery are also two important questions, as the smaller breweries were less likely to have any more than a regional foothold and thus less likely to be sending out casks to every corner of Great Britain.

 

The other issues brought up before in the thread may depend on somewhat unknowable element of agencies and local dealers, where beers could be send out to regional ales stores and then distributed locally. To give a GW example, it is likely that Bass's Bristol agency dealt with sales the south west for c1900 and barrels would be dispatched and managed by the agency from the local stores.

 

Kelly's Directory of Bristol, 1902.

 

 

Address appears to be the offices - A quick search hasn't revealed a location for a related ale store as yet. Any locals perhaps with a lead? To give the regional perspective, in 1900 the Bristol agency was was only responsible for 1.6% of Bass, Ratcliff and Gretton domestic sales, dwarfed by sales to London and the north, matching the somewhat slender pub holdings in the south west.

 

So you may well have beer from Burton, dispatched by a Burton company but directed from from a Bristol office and ale store in a GWR wagon for onwards travel, but probably in smaller quantities.

 

Post war even with Common User scheme in place GW wagons are uncommon (I can think of a couple of aerial photos in the early 1920s with a single wagon visible) and this goes on right through to BR days just due to the lower proportion of stock in the pool compared to the LMS/LNER. 

 

 

EDIT - There might be an Iron Mink lurking in the background of a photo, but I'm not sure of date or if that helps!  Will try and find it.

 

EDIT II:  Worthington's Brewery C1896. What say you, Mink fans? 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 8, 2023 by 41516
Mink memory activated

[Compound2632]

30 minutes ago, 41516 said:

EDIT II:  Worthington's Brewery C1896. What say you, Mink fans? 

 

Certainly a mink.

[figworthy]

8 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

We visited my sister-in-law's recently-acquired coastal palace earlier this autumn. On our walk into Amble, we met an old man scavenging seas-coals. This got me onto reading up on Warkworth Harbour, the most northerly of the Northumberland coal ports, served by a branch off the Newcastle & Berwick main line and by a mineral line. It rapidly became apparent that the inland villages we'd driven through were former pit villages. 

 

Amble in the late 1960s - early 1970s :

 

 

Adrian

Edited December 8, 2023 by figworthy

[41516]

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Certainly a mink.

 

Red or grey?

 

(Ducks for cover)

[Chrisbr]

Looks brown to me.... 😂

[magmouse]

1 hour ago, 41516 said:

Red or grey?

 

Yes, definitely red or grey.

 

Nick.

[Buhar]

26 minutes ago, magmouse said:

 

Yes, definitely red or grey.

 

Nick.

Oh look!  A squirrel.

 

Alan

[jamie92208]

A little bit more of PO info that appeared in FB today.   J & J Charlesworth were coal owners in the Rothwell area and promoted and were shareholders in the East and West Yorkshire Union Railway that was centred on Rothwell.   It connected several of the Charlesworth collieries along with brickworks and coke ovens. 

 

This photo shows the scene of a runaway at Masham in 1902 where the train ran across the road and into the exchange sidings with a narrow gauge construction railway that served a reservoir project run by Leeds.

The vehicle would probably have been registered on the Midland.  By chance a google search turned up another Charlesworth wagon being tippled at Hastings Power station in 1925 so they got around a bit.  I just thought it was a nice photo in our leaders time frame.

 

Jamie

J 

[Schooner]

"Oh dear me, no, Sir, you can't park there, Sir"

[jamie92208]

6 years ago I was exploring the Arras battlefield where uncle had been killed in 1917.  As my friend and I were walking g rounfpd we came across a group of cyclists.  We got chatting and it was Paul Theakston the owner of the Black Sheep brewery alo g with family and emp, oyees.  He had a great Uncle who had lost a leg in the same battle. We chatted about Masham and he talked about the railway and the exchange sidings.  The narrow gauge had survived into WW1 and had been used by the Leeds Pals,whose training g camp was on the route.  Theakston mentioned the accident and wanted to find out more.  I was able to let him have the details of the relavent Harold Bowtell book.  Strange how random conversations produce connections. 

 

Jamie

[MarcD]

On 08/12/2023 at 18:20, 41516 said:

I can't recall ever seeing any GW wagons in pre-war photographs and postcards, nor a GW wagon label from Burton.  Not a no, but I suspect would be most unlikely.   When and which brewery are also two important questions, as the smaller breweries were less likely to have any more than a regional foothold and thus less likely to be sending out casks to every corner of Great Britain.

 

The other issues brought up before in the thread may depend on somewhat unknowable element of agencies and local dealers, where beers could be send out to regional ales stores and then distributed locally. To give a GW example, it is likely that Bass's Bristol agency dealt with sales the south west for c1900 and barrels would be dispatched and managed by the agency from the local stores.

 

Kelly's Directory of Bristol, 1902.

 

 

Address appears to be the offices - A quick search hasn't revealed a location for a related ale store as yet. Any locals perhaps with a lead? To give the regional perspective, in 1900 the Bristol agency was was only responsible for 1.6% of Bass, Ratcliff and Gretton domestic sales, dwarfed by sales to London and the north, matching the somewhat slender pub holdings in the south west.

 

So you may well have beer from Burton, dispatched by a Burton company but directed from from a Bristol office and ale store in a GWR wagon for onwards travel, but probably in smaller quantities.

 

Post war even with Common User scheme in place GW wagons are uncommon (I can think of a couple of aerial photos in the early 1920s with a single wagon visible) and this goes on right through to BR days just due to the lower proportion of stock in the pool compared to the LMS/LNER. 

 

 

EDIT - There might be an Iron Mink lurking in the background of a photo, but I'm not sure of date or if that helps!  Will try and find it.

 

EDIT II:  Worthington's Brewery C1896. What say you, Mink fans? 

 

 

 

 

Definitely an iron mink but what type? And who was the operator? Most of the Welsh companies had them as well as some private businesses. They are not just a GWR thing. I have the HMRS iron mink book at home so I will have a look tomorrow night when I get home from Manchester show. 

Things that change length of body, wheel base and position of the vent on the end.

 

Marc

[Dave Hunt]

On 06/12/2023 at 22:06, jamie92208 said:

I also needed, it's of dirt for ground cover in the shed yard.  A friend who volunteered at Howarth brought me a big tub of smoke ox char from the only surviving 4F.  It certainly looks the part. 

 

Is that overdone jerky?

 

Dave

[corneliuslundie]

Also re the Iron Mink, not all had rounded corners.

J

[Compound2632]

44 minutes ago, MarcD said:

Definitely an iron mink but what type? And who was the operator? Most of the Welsh companies had them as well as some private businesses. They are not just a GWR thing.

 

But the date of the photo is c. 1896 which is, I think, before the Welsh companies etc. started copying the iron mink design? [Edit: checking in All About I find there were a handful for the R&SBR in 1888.] Anyway, numerically and operationally, the balance of probability has to be in favour of it being a Great Western vehicle.

 

Did any of the Burton breweries have any use for tinplate?

Edited December 9, 2023 by Compound2632

[Compound2632]

5 hours ago, jamie92208 said:

The vehicle would probably have been registered on the Midland. 

 

 

I think the register plate is between the arms of the vee-hanger but can't be read.

 

Not a Midland registration though. J. & J. Charlesworth had an early bout of registering with the Midland, with 50 10-ton wagons built by Charles Roberts and 70 8-ton wagons by Harrison & Camm in 1889, the former being Charlesworth fleet Nos. 1500-1549 and the latter 1551-1600 and 01-020 [sic], then in 1891 100 10-ton wagons from Charles Roberts, Nos. 1601-1700. After that they had their wagons registered elsewhere, apart from a handful of wagons in 1901. According to the article in Turton's Eighth Collection, 325 wagons were registered with the MS&LR between 1892 and 1899, all built by Harrison & Camm, Nos. 2070-2369, 3000-3074, and 3126-3175. There don't seem to have been any Great Northern registrations until 1922.

 

So I think No. 902 must have been registered with another company, perhaps the L&Y or, since the accident was on NER territory, that company - whose PO registers do not, as far as I'm aware, survive.

 

The "West Riding" designation is a bit confusing, since the West Riding Colliery at Altofts was Pope & Pearson's. 

 

Considering the size of the firm, their market penetration at Skipton in 1897/8 was negligible - just six wagonloads, or 0.5% of the total. Four of these were in Midland wagons from Rothwell Haigh Colliery, two for A.H. Preston (who mostly dealt with Lidgett, Wentworth) and two for William Fawcett, who also had two loads in J. & J. Charlesworth's own wagons, No. 1501 from Rothwell Haigh and No. 3041 from Robin Hood Colliery. Both those are from the batches mentioned above.

 

The engine in the accident picture is one of McDonnell's 59 Class - really a version of his 101 Class for the GS&WR, the largest and most long-lived class in Ireland. 

[jamie92208]

Thanks for that Stephen.  The L and Y is a possibility as their registers have only been partially transcribed.  There is even the potential thst they eventually registered their wagons via the EWYUR as they virtually owned it.  Their main Collieries were at Rothwell and Robin Hood, named Fanny, Rose and Jane, allegedly after the owners daughters.  That wagon was obviously quite early.  I will do a bit of digging. The one at Hastings in 1925 was in the 3200 series. 

 

Jamie

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, jamie92208 said:

There is even the potential thst they eventually registered their wagons via the EWYUR

 

I doubt that the EWYUR was in a position to register PO wagons - was it even party to the RCH? 

[jamie92208]

2 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

I doubt that the EWYUR was in a position to register PO wagons - was it even party to the RCH? 

A look in the TNA index shows Rail 1097/57 as Membership and covenants of the RCH for the EWYUR. most of its papers seem to be in RAIL170 thought here are accident reports in RAIL 1053/91 and 1053/92.  There are niscellaneous registers and papers in RAIL 170 that I think are held at Wakefield.  Another rabbit hole to dive down.  Reading about Charlesworth Collieries on the Durham Mining website they had Collieries in the south Yorkshire area near Kilnhurst, perhaps the West Riding near Wakefield was some sort of marketing designation to imply that the coal came from their collection of pits north of Wakefield. 

 

Jamie

[jamie92208]

Just thinking, the Kilnhurst connection probably accounted for the M S & L R Connection. There must have been a lot of D299 's around the Collieries though. 

 

Jamie