The Pre-Grouping Pedants Weekly

[Caley Jim]

That wasn't the impression I'd formed of either Richard Hodgson - something of a Scottish George Hudson - or Kippendavie, though the latter was an ex-Caley man and tried to promote amalgamation.

Once read that in (I think) the 1860's there was a proposed amalgamation between the Caley, Sou' West and the NB which was agreed at board level and only thrown out by the NB shareholders. Now how different would the railway history and map of Scotland have been if that had gone ahead!

 

Jim

Edited September 26, 2017 by Caley Jim

[Oldddudders]

Oysterperch/Oystercreek - seems we are both right; interesting !

I've just checked we are still on the 'pedants' thread before challenging you to an arm wrestle to determine who is the 'Older fart' (south of the Border from Smellie places)

My (often terrifying) maternal Grandad hooked me onto Roland Emett's scratchy mouldy looking drawings in Punch. He claimed the prototype for Emett's railway was up the road in Tollesbury but the blog in the link says the 'Crab & Winkle' nickname properly originates with the Canterbury & Whitstable.

Happily both possible inspirations date from pre-Grouping times.

dh

I had a colleague who had been SM at Kelvedon. But then I had boss who had been SM at Bailey Gate, and I shared an office with someone who had been Shedmaster at Dorchester. These days Smallbrook do quite nice models of Emett-esq whimsies. I think Phil Parker had one at the Taunton members’ day. And in my Control days (1968-73) the West Croydon - Wimbledon line was known as Sprat & Winkle. I was too young for the Festival of Britain (b 1948) but the concert hall that took its name was for many years managed by a family friend, Ernest Bean CBE.

[CKPR]

 

 

Now, now, all the Scottish lines have their charm. I felt that the strongest argument against Scottish independence was the essential contribution to English (!) politics of generations of Scots - from James I & VI to Blair, Brown and Cameron... Likewise, they've given us their locomotive engineers. Indeed, the county of Ayrshire alone probably accounts for more than any other corner of Britain - giving us both the Stirling and Drummond families - at one time or another on the Great Northern, South Eastern, London & South Western, and Hull & Barnsley after their Scottish careers. Although English-born, S.W. Johnson and William Stroudley cut their teeth in Scotland too - indeed the period when Johnson was in charge of the Edinburgh & Glasgow's locomotives with Stroudley and Drummond as his assistants could be regarded as crucially formative. Nice rake of North British wagons!

I agree re Ayrshire being the breeding ground for Locomotive engineers. Robert Urie, Hugh Smellie and Andrew Barclay can be added to the list.Nice NB Wagons but then the NB was never a threat to the Sou'West! In fact didn't the Sou West propose an amalgamation?Ian

Not forgetting that the far north west of Cumberland was something of a pre-group feifdom of the NBR and the Caley back in the day- we (i.e the M&CR) even had a junction with the latter. Edited September 28, 2017 by CKPR

[TheQ]

I reckon that it's a lot longer than 100 years, what about all those wagons runnning on  timber rails  for the mines. or come to that the Romans wore holes in their cobbles forming gullies which their 4ft 8.5 inch wagons were then force to run in, aren't they railways?

 

As for accents Cut glass Bristish accents are so 1920's and 30's You should go for French influenced (Brunel) or Northumberland Newcastle way, Gooch , Stephensons.  OR Scots (see above) railways were built by real men not Lords...

Edited September 27, 2017 by TheQ

[Northroader]

If you're looking at the wooden mine waggonways, and the Roman waggon cobbleways, we mustn't overlook that great railfan, Louis XIV, (w******, as I'm sure we'll be told) who managed a pregroup railway without wheels:http://forum.activitysimulatorworld.net/viewtopic.php?t=25481

[Compound2632]

The link takes us to some entertaining French pedantry - while Louis XIV's garden slide is a sort of railway, it's not a chemin de fer on account of having wooden, not iron, rails. Here's a modern analogue, albeit with wheels:

 

 

Perhaps more the ancestor of the guided busway than the true railway?

 

EDIT: note that modern users need safety helmets, on account of not having those amazing 17th century wigs to soften the impact when falling off.

Edited September 27, 2017 by Compound2632

[Guy Rixon]

Note that Louis' pleasure-vehicle is captioned as a roulette so must have had wheels even if the artist was too dim to draw them. Not a sledge. Collins' dictionary translates <<à roulettes>> as "on castors". The description of "sliding on the rails" is fully down to usual journalistic standards.

[Compound2632]

Note that Louis' pleasure-vehicle is captioned as a roulette so must have had wheels even if the artist was too dim to draw them. Not a sledge. Collins' dictionary translates <<à roulettes>> as "on castors". The description of "sliding on the rails" is fully down to usual journalistic standards.

 

Yes, unless the rails and runners were kept well greased, I can't see that there would be much hope of sliding along given the weight of the chariot and passengers. From the aerial photos on the French thread, the Marly gardens look fairly flat. 

[TheQ]

I think the text says "Glissant" Meaning Slippery

[Northroader]

There's a lively Welsh lady I know, and one of her favourite expressions if she's very busy is "I'm on castors!"

[Compound2632]

I think the text says "Glissant" Meaning Slippery

 

Or rather, sliding. Perhaps it was constructed to give the appearance of sliding but mechanically it probably did need wheels. As Guy points out, it is called une roulette; chariot glissant could be the caption-writers misunderstanding. Further research in the Archives nationales is required.

[Compound2632]

There's a lively Welsh lady I know, and one of her favourite expressions if she's very busy is "I'm on castors!"

 

In the days of voluminous full-length skirts, it was always a possibility.

[Andy Hayter]

Glissant can indeed mean sliding (but in days before proper railways perhaps sliding along a rail would be a better understood concept than running).  It can also mean floating along - as in offering little resistance to movement.

 

For me roulette is the key - indicating either small wheels (too small to be seen inside the guide rails?) or perhaps the game of chance being played since there seems to be no brake.   

[Worsdell forever]

Glissant can indeed mean sliding (but in days before proper railways perhaps sliding along a rail would be a better understood concept than running).  It can also mean floating along - as in offering little resistance to movement.

 

For me roulette is the key - indicating either small wheels (too small to be seen inside the guide rails?) or perhaps the game of chance being played since there seems to be no brake. 

 

** Break **

 

Pedants remember old chap...

[Andy Hayter]

My abject apologies for slipping into modern idiom

[Compound2632]

** Break **

 

Pedants remember old chap...

 

Give us a ...

[corneliuslundie]

Back to that wonderful photo of the breaksman aboard his break vehicle. I note that he stops the vehicle using a brake.

Re goods or freight, i would be grateful for further evidence as this is an active discussion relating to a book I am preparing for the WRRC at the moment.

And of course, many railways only (comparatively) recently switched to "van", preferring one of several other terms, while I was upbraided recently for pointing out that the Rhymney Railway used the term "box wagon" for high sided open wagons and then using it to describe a three plank wagon (because the Rhymney also did in this case).

And then there is carriage or coach.

Finally, since the Act of Parliament creating the Festiniog Railway company used the spelling with one F that remains the legal name of the company whatever operating name it likes to use. Similarly the Van Railway serving mines at what is now called Y Fan. But then you can blame the railway companies in Wales for all sorts of Anglicisations of names, though to be honest some of the Welsh versions of place names now in use are recent inventions for places which never existed until they were created by English speaking individuals.

Sorry to include so many topics but I have only just caught up with this thread.

Jonathan

[tomparryharry]

I saw a chap with a box of metric-sized nuts & bolts, whilst passing through Swindon today.

 

I thought "no, can't be".

 

However, you never know....

 

And he was wearing a stripey jumper.

 

Ian.

[Caley Jim]

Re goods or freight, i would be grateful for further evidence as this is an active discussion relating to a book I am preparing for the WRRC at the moment.

And of course, many railways only (comparatively) recently switched to "van", preferring one of several other terms, while I was upbraided recently for pointing out that the Rhymney Railway used the term "box wagon" for high sided open wagons and then using it to describe a three plank wagon (because the Rhymney also did in this case).

And then there is carriage or coach.

The Caledonian called their wagons (other than those for special traffic) 'mineral wagons', 'open goods wagons', or 'covered goods vans', but in the revenue returns they referred to 'coal and mineral' and 'general merchandise' receipts.  Passenger carrying vehicles were carriages.

 

Jim

[Compound2632]

Back to that wonderful photo of the breaksman aboard his break vehicle. I note that he stops the vehicle using a brake.

Re goods or freight, i would be grateful for further evidence as this is an active discussion relating to a book I am preparing for the WRRC at the moment.

And of course, many railways only (comparatively) recently switched to "van", preferring one of several other terms, while I was upbraided recently for pointing out that the Rhymney Railway used the term "box wagon" for high sided open wagons and then using it to describe a three plank wagon (because the Rhymney also did in this case).

And then there is carriage or coach.

Finally, since the Act of Parliament creating the Festiniog Railway company used the spelling with one F that remains the legal name of the company whatever operating name it likes to use. Similarly the Van Railway serving mines at what is now called Y Fan. But then you can blame the railway companies in Wales for all sorts of Anglicisations of names, though to be honest some of the Welsh versions of place names now in use are recent inventions for places which never existed until they were created by English speaking individuals.

Sorry to include so many topics but I have only just caught up with this thread.

Jonathan

 

The Midland's train control instructions of January 1909 [Essery, Midland Wagons Vol. 2 pp. 109-110 (OPC, 1980)] speak of "goods and mineral trains". Contemporary with this, the LNWR Conciliation Board hearings, as reported in Talbot, The North Western at Work (PSL, 1990), refer to the "Goods Department" and consistently use the term "goods" - and also "Breaksmen and Shunters".

 

So in the late Edwardian period, the term 'freight' seems to be unknown to our two largest railway companies, companies that were also among the most forward-looking in terms of management methods. But note also the Midland's distinction between "goods trains" and "mineral trains" and the need to refer to "goods and mineral trains" together.

 

All my books on pre-grouping passenger-rated stock have "carriages" in the title but Essery and Jenkinson's seminal work is entitled The LMS Coach. This seems to reflect LMS practice - the terms "coaches" and "coaching stock" is used repeatedly and some official correspondence is quoted in relation to the ill-fated second generation of Coronation Scot trains, in which the term 'coach' is used interchangeably with but more frequently than 'vehicle' and 'car', In contrast, Lacy & Dow, Midland Railway Carriages (2 Vols, WSP, 1986) quotes from the minutes of the directors' Carriage & Wagon Committee which use the term "carriages" from first to last. This is also the term used in the 1911 Railway & Travel Monthly article reproduced in Essery, Op. cit., Vol. 1.

 

There's less evidence for break / brake - the Derby Lot List as reproduced in Essery, Op. cit., uses "brake" right back to Lot 2 of 1877 but the spelling might have been modernised in transcription. Lacy & Dow quote from Williams, The Midland Railway: its rise and progress (edition of 1878) "breaks and parcels vans". Despite its use of wooden blocks and other archaic aspects of brake gear design, I haven't found any evidence for "break" in my various LNWR books apart from the use of "breaksmen"as noted above - but again this may be the result of normalisation of spelling by modern authors.

[DaveF]

I have a copy of a small book, reprinted by the Railway Gazette from an article in the magazine of July 8th 1921.  It is entitled "The Traffic Control System of the Midland Railway".

 

It repeats the 1909 instructions concerning goods and mineral trains.

 

However the article also contains facsimiles of a number of Midland railway documents as used in 1920/1, which refer to freight trains instead of goods trains.

 

David

[Regularity]

My brake was broken: there was a break in the lever.

[Compound2632]

runs as required has requested that I repost the following observation here so that it can be responded to without taking the Castle Aching thread off-topic...

 

Following the posting of one of Monet paintings of the Gare St Lazare, he had requested a pre-Raphaelite painting of a railway station to provide balance. My response:

 

The problem here is that railway stations were simply too prosaic and mundane to form a suitable subject for a pre-Raphaelite artist. Indeed, unlike railway modelling, the whole railway set-up was based on principles that ran directly contrary to William Morris' ideal of the individual craftsman.

[wagonman]

The GWR referred to Private Owner wagons as Freighters' wagons, this being the case from the 1860s onwards, though in other contexts they used the word 'Goods'. Just to confuse everything.

[BG John]

runs as required has requested that I repost the following observation here so that it can be responded to without taking the Castle Aching thread off-topic...

Taking Castle Aching off topic? I think you should be posting this the The Forum Jokes Thread, or at least Things That Make You Smile, not here .

Edited September 28, 2017 by BG John