PO wagons, how did it work in practise?

[Gary H]

My question relates to private owner wagons of the era 1920's through to 40's and how things worked with regard to say a coal or coke wagon with the owner's name on the side.

Did the wagon carry coal for that particular wagons owner all of the time?

Was the wagon leased from the owner to other wagon owners?

Who was responsible for the maintenance of the wagons?

DId these wagons stray far from the geographical area displayed on the side?

Are there any parallels with regards to owners of today's modern wagon fleets like Naco etc?

Edited March 16, 2018 by Gary H

[MarcD]

Hi Gary 

Did the wagon carry coal for that particular wagons owner all of the time?

       Most of the time. They may have been loaded with coal for another agent/merchant to pay their way to their final destination. 

 

Was the wagon leased from the owner to other wagon owners?

       Some times there seamed to be 3 ways of paying for the wagon Buy out right, Hire Purchase , or Hire. The first option usually transaction between builder and user. The second 2 options could be with either the builder or a hiring/finance company  

 

Who was responsible for the maintenance of the wagons?

       Maintenance was the responsibility of the owner/hiring agent. 

 

Did these wagons stray far from the geographical area displayed on the side?

      Yes, location of the wagon would be dependant on the customer preference for the coal supply and that applies to both individual merchants, agents, factors or collieries 

 

Are there any parallels with regards to owners of today's modern wagon fleets like Naco etc?

       I couldn't say not knowing anything about modern PO wagons

 

 

In addition most PO wagons were pooled between 1917-19 and 1939-47

 

Marc

[Gary H]

Thanks for the informative reply, Marc!

Very interesting.

If anyone has any recdomendations on any books on the subject, please let me know.

[wagonman]

Did the wagon carry coal for that particular wagons owner all of the time?

 

Yes, that was rather the point of it.

 

 

Was the wagon leased from the owner to other wagon owners?

 

No. Wagons were bought for cash, or on hire purchase (usually over 7 years) financed by specialist wagon finance companies, or were taken on simple hire from the builder.

 

 

Who was responsible for the maintenance of the wagons?

 

The owner/operator was responsible – they often took out a repair contract with the builder but they could go elsewhere if they wanted. Some large collieries had their own repair facilities.

 

 

DId these wagons stray far from the geographical area displayed on the side?

 

They didn't have an area displayed on the side – they had their home station or the headquarters if a big coal factoring business like Stephenson Clarke. Merchants' wagons often travelled to the same colliery/ies many times. Anthracite wagons travelled all over the country, but much of the rest of the output from South Wales just went to the nearest port for shipment.

 

 

Are there any parallels with regards to owners of today's modern wagon fleets like Naco etc?

 

No idea – probably not.

 

As Marc has pointed out, from 1 September 1939 the government requisitioned most of them for the war effort.

 

 

 

Richard

[MarcD]

There are 5 books by the late Bill Hudson and there about 20 books from longmoor press on the subject. good place to look is Ebay.

 

Marc

[wagonman]

Thanks for the informative reply, Marc!

Very interesting.

If anyone has any recdomendations on any books on the subject, please let me know.

 

Probably the best general introduction is the small book "Private Owner Wagons" Bill Hudson did for the Oakwood Press about 20 years ago. It's probably out of print but for what it's worth the ISBN is 0 85361 492 X

 

 

Richard

[Bedders]

The file referred to in this topic - http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/98911-private-owner-wagons-index-searchable/ is a mine of information on po wagons

[wagonman]

There are 5 books by the late Bill Hudson and there about 20 books from longmoor press on the subject. good place to look is Ebay.

 

Marc

 

 

Errrm, that should be Lightmoor Press! One of them is mine...

[MarcD]

Errrm, that should be Lightmoor Press! One of them is mine...

 

Yes Humble apologies 

 

Marc

[asmay2002]

My question relates to private owner wagons of the era 1920's through to 40's and how things worked with regard to say a coal or coke wagon with the owner's name on the side.

Did the wagon carry coal for that particular wagons owner all of the time?

Was the wagon leased from the owner to other wagon owners?

Who was responsible for the maintenance of the wagons?

DId these wagons stray far from the geographical area displayed on the side?

Are there any parallels with regards to owners of today's modern wagon fleets like Naco etc?

 

Firstly the name written in large letters on the side wasn't necessarily the owner of the wagon.  Some wagons were leased from wagon hire companies (some of whom were wagon builders too e.g. Gloucester RCWCo) and the owners name would be on a cast plate on the solebar with the name of the company it was being hired to on the side.  Other wagons may be owned outright by the company whose name was on the side or on hire purchase. 

 

Some of the time the wagon would be empty (obvious).  Sometimes wagons owned by collieries might be seen back loaded with pit props.

 

There was often another plate on the solebar giving details of the wagon repair company responsible for the maintenance of the wagon.  There were several specialist companies who did this for multiple customers.  Many bigger owners would maintain their own wagons.

 

Some wagons could go a long way from the the name on the side but many did not.  Colliery wagons would go to wherever their load had been sold.  Coal merchants wagons would make a journey to wherever their owner had bought coal from.  Price was a major factor in this but some types of coal travelled quite a long way from their home colliery (e.g Midlands and South Wales to London). Anthracite in particular was used in the brewing industry and for heating in places like hospitals where low sulphur content was required so these wagons could go a long way from home because it wasn't mined in many places (principally South Wales and Scotland).

 

Yes there are parallels with the likes of NACCO.  Wagon hire is a long established business.

[jamie92208]

Lots of good information there. I've done a lot of research into PO wagons on the Settle and Carlisle and can add to some of the above.

 

Many of the Limestone quarries had their wagons loaded both ways. Lime to a steelworks and coal on return either for general sale or for use in the lime works.

 

Also many of the smaller merchants wagons were painted with directions to go to a specific colliery.

 

in 1900 the cost of a 10 ton wagon was about £100 with 10% deposit and the remainder usually borrowed from a finance company.

 

Jamie

[sir douglas]

There are 5 books by the late Bill Hudson

 

5? i have 1 to 4 but didnt know about a 5th one

[jamie92208]

5? i have 1 to 4 but didnt know about a 5th one

It's smaller than the other 4 with a yellow cover and I think a different publisher.

 

Jamie

[wagonman]

5? i have 1 to 4 but didnt know about a 5th one

 

 

That's the Oakwood Press one that I mentioned back in post 6.

[Wickham Green]

 

As Marc has pointed out, from 1 September 1939 the government requisitioned most of them for the war effort.

 

 

Richard

...... after the war the surviving wagons were supposed to go back to their owners - including the few actually built during the conflict - but nobody got round to sorting this out before nationalisation came along. British Railway found itself lumbered with a huge fleet of wagons in varying states of decrepitude and proceeded to replace the majority with ( allegedly ) standard 16T steel wagons.

 

Those wagons which were NOT requisitioned / pooled would have been in specialised traffics : salt, roadstone, grain etc - some very localised - and these generally continues into B.R. days. 

[The Johnster]

PO coal wagons worked in different ways as well, with 'merchant's' wagons likely to be in small numbers as part of the consist of a train while they made their way from collieries to whatever coal yard they were destined for.  Wagons owned by the likes of gas works and similar sized customers might run in blocks to their destinations and be a more 'cohesive' sort of operation than merchant's wagons of domestic coal. and colliery owned wagons were more likely to run in block trains from a single colliery to a single destination, perhaps a port or steelworks that thought nothing of taking in 1,000 tons or more several times a day.  These wagons were effectively in circuit working, and the empties worked back as block trains as well.

 

Empties were always an issue, with the collieries never having enough of them and the railway battling to get customers to unload them and return them instead of keeping them in storage sidings where they represented a free stockpile of coal for the customer without taking any space or having to be unloaded and reloaded.  This basic conflict of interest lasted well into BR days and was still an issue when I worked on the railway in the 1970s, complicated by the collieries attempts to store loaded wagons at the pits in order to have a stockpile to sell and to take advantage of the free storage.

 

Export working to ports may have differed from area to area but I can say a little about how things were done at Cardiff.  The process started in the Coal Exchange building where an agent would order coal on behalf of a customer from the pit's representative; the world's first million pound cheque was signed in this building.  The customer's needs varied, and coal is not just black rocks; coal from different areas and sometimes different seams within the same pit has different sulpher, CO2 and other chemical compositions and different burning temperatures and waste products.  So, an order for, say, a steelworks in Northern Spain, might have different characteristics to one for, say, Valparaiso gas works, or ship bunkering coal for Aden.

 

As these requirements could rarely be supplied by one pit, coal from different ones was loaded into the ships at the required proportions, which meant that a block train arriving in the reception sidings had to be broken down and shunted out before it went to the hoists on the actual wharves.  This process of course further delayed the return of the empties, which had to be got back off the dock and shunted out by owner, and the collieries complained bitterly.  One of the claimed advantages of the new docks at Barry when they opened was that greater supply of hydraulic power than at Cardiff meant that the hoists could be operated more quickly and in greater number, which was good news for everyone; the shipowners paid less port fee, the pit got it's empties back quicker, and the railways were less prone to abuse from free storage!  You start to see why it was worth the Barry's while to build a main line from Pontypridd that avoided Cardiff altogether despite it being mostly through thinly populated rural country that added little to it's income!

 

I suspect that very few coal wagons were worked with back loads; they would have to be swept out by someone paid to do that job first and were needed asap back at the pits.  The ability to use them for sugar beet traffic in East Anglia was only possible because the demand for domestic coal dropped in the summer, and this is specialised seasonal traffic, not back loading.

[wagonman]

 

 

I suspect that very few coal wagons were worked with back loads; they would have to be swept out by someone paid to do that job first and were needed asap back at the pits.  The ability to use them for sugar beet traffic in East Anglia was only possible because the demand for domestic coal dropped in the summer, and this is specialised seasonal traffic, not back loading.

 

 

The only snag with that argument is that the sugar beet harvesting 'campaign' is conducted through the winter months.

[The Johnster]

The only snag with that argument is that the sugar beet harvesting 'campaign' is conducted through the winter months.

 

Agriculture is not my strong point...

[TheGunslinger]

I think the elephant in the room is the common problem:

"Help! I've bought a bunch of PO coal wagons because they looked nice but they're all for completely unrelated collieries all over the country! What do I do now?!"

 

Obvious answer is "Rule 1", but are there ways to have a complete hodge-podge assortment of PO wagons that is prototypical? My own solution is a fairly large coal merchant that services a number of small industries (none large enough to justify their own spur) with differing requirements in coal. A 3-pack of PO wagons from Parkend gives a more unifying location (somewhere in the vicinity of the Forest of Dean) and a supplier that handles the bulk of coal orders, but discerning customers may order coke derived from the north coalfields and thus "return to LMS" coke wagons are not unusual.

[wagonman]

I think the elephant in the room is the common problem:

 

"Help! I've bought a bunch of PO coal wagons because they looked nice but they're all for completely unrelated collieries all over the country! What do I do now?!"

 

Obvious answer is "Rule 1", but are there ways to have a complete hodge-podge assortment of PO wagons that is prototypical? My own solution is a fairly large coal merchant that services a number of small industries (none large enough to justify their own spur) with differing requirements in coal. A 3-pack of PO wagons from Parkend gives a more unifying location (somewhere in the vicinity of the Forest of Dean) and a supplier that handles the bulk of coal orders, but discerning customers may order coke derived from the north coalfields and thus "return to LMS" coke wagons are not unusual.

 

 

The simplest answer to your dilemma is to set your layout in 1940. Otherwise, if you can get hold of a copy of Len Tavender's 'Coal Trade Wagons' you will see that some colliery wagons travelled quite large distances – from the Midlands to Sussex for example; merchants' wagons tended to shuttle between their home station and one or two regular collieries (not always the nearest); factors' wagons tended to have the widest range, though still usually regional: Renwick Wilton wagons were seen anywhere in the South West and in transit to the Midlands coalfield.

 

Away from industrial areas, the main source of coke for domestic or light industrial use was the local gas works.  Coke for use in iron works (Foundry Coke) was normally produced at the colliery or sometimes the steelworks. For instance, much of the coke used at the Westbury iron works in Wiltshire was produced at the colliery at Newbury or Vobster where there were banks of coke ovens. Coke for the Workington steel works came 'over the top' from Co Durham. And so on...

 

 

Richard

 

 

PS: when does a "large coal merchant" become a Coal Factor?

Edited March 20, 2018 by wagonman

[Guy Rixon]

The simplest answer to your dilemma is to set your layout in 1940. Otherwise, if you can get hold of a copy of Len Tavender's 'Coal Trade Wagons' you will see that some colliery wagons travelled quite large distances – from the Midlands to Sussex for example; merchants' wagons tended to shuttle between their home station and one or two regular collieries (not always the nearest); factors' wagons tended to have the widest range, though still usually regional: Renwick Wilton wagons were seen anywhere in the South West and in transit to the Midlands coalfield.

 

Away from industrial areas, the main source of coke for domestic or light industrial use was the local gas works.  Coke for use in iron works (Foundry Coke) was normally produced at the colliery or sometimes the steelworks. For instance, much of the coke used at the Westbury iron works in Wiltshire was produced at the colliery at Newbury or Vobster where there were banks of coke ovens. Coke for the Workington steel works came 'over the top' from Co Durham. And so on...

 

 

Richard

 

 

PS: when does a "large coal merchant" become a Coal Factor?

 

I set one of my (aborted) projects in September/October 1939. I was assuming that the wagons were making their first or second runs after pooling, so were in their regions of origin but the merchants wagons not typically loaded for their original owners. I could have the regional flavour, but not worry too much about the exact owners.

 

IIUC, a merchant becomes a factor when they sell coal wholesale, buying from the pits and selling to retailers. Some factors, like Cory's in London, bought out coal retailers, but operated the latter as separate businesses under their original names.

 

In London a coal factor was specifically a person registered to trade at the London Coal Exchange. Trading in London was regulated to ensure that the local coal levy was paid and retailers were, I think, prevented from dealing directly with the collieries. This was probably the cause of Cory's arrangement noted in the previous paragraph.

[wagonman]

I set one of my (aborted) projects in September/October 1939. I was assuming that the wagons were making their first or second runs after pooling, so were in their regions of origin but the merchants wagons not typically loaded for their original owners. I could have the regional flavour, but not worry too much about the exact owners.

 

IIUC, a merchant becomes a factor when they sell coal wholesale, buying from the pits and selling to retailers. Some factors, like Cory's in London, bought out coal retailers, but operated the latter as separate businesses under their original names.

 

In London a coal factor was specifically a person registered to trade at the London Coal Exchange. Trading in London was regulated to ensure that the local coal levy was paid and retailers were, I think, prevented from dealing directly with the collieries. This was probably the cause of Cory's arrangement noted in the previous paragraph.

 

 

Thanks for the info about the Coal Exchange. I think there was a similar arrangement at Cardiff. My original question was slightly rhetorical in response to TheGunslinger's putative situation. In the West Country, in addition to the big boys like Renwick Wilton and Dunkerton there were a number of smaller soi disant coal factors like F Bird & Co who were wholesalers but who also had their own retail depots. At one point Bird even had colliery interests. I doubt if any of them got within a hundred miles of the Coal Exchange though.

[The Stationmaster]

Thanks for the info about the Coal Exchange. I think there was a similar arrangement at Cardiff. My original question was slightly rhetorical in response to TheGunslinger's putative situation. In the West Country, in addition to the big boys like Renwick Wilton and Dunkerton there were a number of smaller soi disant coal factors like F Bird & Co who were wholesalers but who also had their own retail depots. At one point Bird even had colliery interests. I doubt if any of them got within a hundred miles of the Coal Exchange though.

 

Don't forget a lot of the coal going into the West Country arrived there by ship as it was cheaper than sending it by rail.  But having arrived by ship at least some of the onward movement was by rail such as the flow from Kingswear to Torquay gasworks although i don't know if much domestic coal followed a similar pattern.

[Pandora]

There was the London Coal Tax which operated for 300 years and the final collection of tax was around 1890.  The  boundary was an irregular loop of markers  around 12 to 18 miles radius from the centre of London,  some impressive boundary markers were erected in the 1860's  and many still exist and a few examples can be seen near the lineside .

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal-tax_post

 

One example may be seen at the London end of Swanley Station high up in the  down side embankment

 

A list of survivors:

 

https://archive.is/20121224102205/http://www.rhaworth.myby.co.uk/coalwine/postlist.htm

Edited March 20, 2018 by Pandora

[The Fatadder]

Don't forget a lot of the coal going into the West Country arrived there by ship as it was cheaper than sending it by rail. But having arrived by ship at least some of the onward movement was by rail such as the flow from Kingswear to Torquay gasworks although i don't know if much domestic coal followed a similar pattern.

Interesting, so in practice you were more likely to see coal landed at Kingsbridge and taken by rail to Brent, than you would to see coal arrive at Brent on the pick up goods from Newton and be transferred down the branch to Kingsbridge?